DP is underemployed at the moment, fairly typical in his job cycle during the summers.
He makes a good rate the rest of the year so we end up pretty even overall but I do hold the steadier job. Right now I keep a tally of what he'll owe me when his pay comes back to regular again (for SDs medical premiums, any other expenses he needed me to cover for emergency, the extra payment on the Visa the last couple months, etc.).

He's good at understanding he needs to pay me back and why.

He's not lazy with his job and I know he doesn't like it...part of why he doesn't get another temp job or something in the summer I think has to do with the SDs. What's he going to do if he has to go to work? Get a child minder / sitter or something? (oh no the horror!)

He's also watching expenses very, very closely and was not looking forward to taking SD12 school clothes shopping today. SD10 opted out (she doesn't really need to much at the moment anyway) but SD12 outgrew pretty much everything from last year over the summer. BM took her shopping for some things already so I helped him and her create a "needs" not "wants" list last night and advised him where to go to get the best prices and find the biggest selection for her.

I have a real issue with one person being the bread winner and the other sitting on their ass. It really has nothing to do with gender. To me it's more about one person taking advantage of another. If the man works and the woman stays home and takes care of kids that's one thing... I get that being a SAHM is WORK. But it seems like when the woman works and the man doesn't, the man is NOT doing the work of a SAHD.. more like he's acting like a man child and playing video games, ignoring household chores, sleeping til 3 pm and just being a lazy bum. I could never.

My DH does not work because he is disabled. Was law enforcement and got hurt on the job. Sure there are days when he lays in bed, but it's NOT because he's lazy, it's because he is in pain. But he also plays the role of SAHD.. he picks our BS6 up after school, takes care of him when there is no school, takes him to karate after school etc. The man truly does as much as he can. So I'm all good with that. Now if he was sitting home on his ass.. perfectly capable of working, but choosing not to then we would have a major issue.

To me a marriage is a partnership. Sure there might be times when one person has to pull more weight than the other due to circumstances, but it should not be one person doing everything all the time. It's no different than enabling a damn skid.

I think it's about what's important to you.

My DH enjoys his job, earns good money, and adores me and DD. We live on his salary. He has zero resentment about it. It's a choice we've made as a family. There will always be choices - but how we earn and spend money, and what we do with our time are family decisions for us.

It was hard for me when we were first married. I'd moved overseas, didn't speak the language, and after 18 years of being entirely self-supporting, and working d@mn hard at it too, I couldn't find a good job. So I took a really low-level job, delivering mail. I struggled with a lot of emotions about not contributing. But the bottom line for our family situation was that my contribution via a job wasn't necessary. So I eventually learned that I am not valued for my paycheque (or my housecleaning, another topic omg!).

I have had periods since I've lived here that I have earned really good money (I learned the language, lol), and that's been nice. But now with DD, I'm glad we can arrange things so that I'm with her most of the time. I'm also glad that we have enough $$ to have a babysitter too!

But it's a balance. DH works a lot. We arrange our family life so that we usually have dinner together, and he puts DD to bed a bit more than half the time. I arrange my day so that we can eat when DH walks through the door, and that DD is otherwise ready for bed.

DH has gotten international job offers where he would have to work longer hours, and most weekends. We haven't even considered them because we value the time together so much. That's also why we haven't moved back to Canada. Longer hours, about the same take-home pay, and 1/4 the vacation time.

DH is underemployed. It fluctuates, really. He also was injured on the job awhile back so was put on "light duty." Things have been real tough.

I don't make great money, right now we take home pretty much equal pay (after CS), but my job is steady.

I am not sure why I chose this difficult scenario for my life. I could very well have married my ex who is filthy rich now. Sometimes that stings. Maybe it was one part the "fixer" in me. One part of not being able to help who you truly love. One part feeling like I wanted a partner not a provider.

For me, as long as his head is in the right place and he is always trying to better himself; I am ok with it. It is when I feel he is slacking that I have a meltdown, because he comes with so much more baggage than me... it just all feels terribly unjust sometimes. I guess it depends on the day for me.

I think it depends of the situation...

If a parent is required to stay at home to raise the kids(lack of affordable child care for one example) then the person making the greater income should work and the other stay home, which ever it may be.

But if a man or woman is purposely under employed or unemployed and being kept, simply because he or she doesn't want to work, not because he or she can't, then that's a whole differnet ball game.

"Is it that as humans we should love someone for what they are and not what they earn or own materialistically?"

I can chime in here. As someone who makes a sufficient salary to wholly support myself in a good standard of living, I have the "luxury" of not having to choose a mate based on their relative earnings. I can make my choice of mate on other attributes that don't involve their bottom line.

In the end, the man I am currently with has made less than me during most of our years together. He also had children which further reduced his "discretionary income". He was not lazy though and was a full contributor to our relationship. A lot of the drivers behind his lower income was the fact that he has owned several small businesses. For reasons beyond his control (economy & other issues), his businesses have struggled over the past 8 years. He did work as an employee for a few years and during that time, his salary was almost 2x mine. But that industry is currently in a downtrend and he is back to earning less.

I can say this, in the last 14 years, we have only rarely had to pay any tradesman to do work on our cars,boats,power equipment homes, etc... He makes sure our animals are properly cared for (at times we had quite a herd) and that we had good meals on the table and that all my needs were taken care of.

I have never had any worry of him cheating or lying to me. When he has had money to spend, there was never any question of spending on us. He is thoughtful, hard working and faithful and loving.

Yes, there were times when I had to help pay support for the kids, but he never assumed he had any right to tell me how to spend the money I earned. He didn't spoil the kids on MY nickel (actually really not at all..lol)

So, I had the luxury of picking my mate when some may have to take the materialistic side of things more into account.

I chose DH because I love who he is, not because of how much he makes.

If he didn't work by choice, I doubt I would have ever dated him--I place high value on industriousness.

In my case, I never carried the household. DH has always made more money than me, but due to his poor saving habits, kids, divorce, and his ex's spending habits, he had nothing coming into the relationship. On the other hand, I had savings, a house, and was planning a very early retirement for myself.

DH told me a lot of things that I wanted to hear early on and I didn't know better. I had not spent a lot of time with kids in general and in the early days it was fun spending time with the kids. Little did I know there was bribery involved. DH knew I was a great catch and latched on. Lol! I still feel a little conned by DH, but I guess, everyone tries to put their best foot forward in the beginning, so I don't feel like he was intentionally duping me.

I should have gotten out later. There were so many signs...like when DH didn't have money to make a car repair. It baffled my that a grown man with a really good job and two children could not afford two grand for a new transmission. What I didn't know was that he had no cash or even credit cards because he and his ex filed for bankruptcy. Or when DH would just leave me in the middle of dates because his ex had an emergency and he had to go and get his kids (so many times...sigh). Or when his phone would blow up because she sent him 20 text messages because he wasn't responding back to her. Then he would get another 20 messages from SD relaying messages from BM.

Things are better now though. DH grew a ball and stands up for himself sometimes. We just need the other the come in so she'll completely leave us alone. We had a baby and I quit my job, so I got my early retirement (sort of). DH has learned from me and others and now saves his money and is doing a good job at it despite BM and the skids requests/demands.

I think if we were still in the same situation where we were a year into our relationship, we would not have lasted. I think it has because DH has improved a lot in his dealings with his ex, the skids, and financially.

A big part is also the fact that I like to "fix" my boyfriends, so it's a savior complex on my part too. DH jokes that there is so much fixing that I'll never leave him or that he should always make sure something needs to be fixed. We joke, but yeah, it might be true and something that I need to work on.

I've written and rewritten this about 5 times now.

My first husband, my son's dad, was the breadwinner. I did work a part-time job at home, mostly for spending money and to make my car payment. But he paid the mortgage, utilities, food, etc. I thought it would be heaven to be taken care of, but it was horrible. I hated having to explain what I spent money on and why, I felt very controlled. There were many reasons why, but this was just not for me. We divorced and I went to work FT to support myself and my child.

My 2nd husband, I thought I was getting old and that he may be my last chance at a husband. I was pretty naïve. We met at work, but within weeks of us moving in together (1.5 years later) he lost his job. I was supporting myself and my child already, so this was a huge deal to me. He was depressed and wouldn't even think about taking a job that was below him. Over the next 5 years he worked MANY jobs for a week or a month, but nothing stable and nothing that paid much. I still carried the burden financially. When he finally got a good job with the city, I was so relieved. He had benefits, retirement, great pay. He decided he liked having that money, and was not eager to share, or to pay more than his half. I cant even say how hurt and angry I was, and the resentment continued to build. We finally divorced, and he had the nerve to ask for spousal support and wanted half my retirement. Luckily my lawyer convinced him to change his mind.

DH and I started out very soon after my divorce. BM had wiped his bank acct out, he was renting a room and paying heavily for SD's CS and SS to BM. We both worked, and both made good money. He moved into my house initially, but it was very small so we found a larger one so everyone had their own room, and then some. DH never relied on me to pay his share, he always came up with whatever he needed to pay so I wasn't burdened. Now, we each work FT at good jobs, we each pay our parts and pay our child's expenses out of our separate accounts. I do have issues now with sharing my money, which I blame on my past experiences. But this works for us. If something happened to one of us, the other would step up and help out.

I've ended up supporting a loser man (with no BM and stepkids) TWICE!

I was in my twenties and I fell in love with a very, handsome coworker at the police department. He had two jobs when I met him. One full time at the police department with me, and one part-time at a hotel. Here is where I should have paid attention. He owed a lot of money to a lot of girlfriends of the past and was working the second job to pay the off.

So he moved in with me and quit both jobs!!!!!!!!!! he applied for the Border Patrol and they were going to take him any minute. 3 years later they took him. And as soon as he got word he left me. And I had paid everything for our entire 3 year relationship cause I thought I was investing in our future. That he was going to take me with him and that we were going to get married and have babies.
I paid off all his debts to credit card companies, to the IRS, and to those past girlfriends. They called and he was gone!!!!!!!

Of course he was back 3 days later. HE couldn't hack it. But by then I had changed the locks.

And when I met my now ex husband he had two jobs. He worked full time at the vet school and part time at the newspaper. We got married and had babies and he was inappropriately sending out sexually suggestive emails to an intern at the vet school who turned out to be underage and he lost both jobs! and I stayed with him and we went on to have three kids and he just kept cheating but this time it wasn't emails. He did clean and take care of the kids (and took care of the mistress's needs)

and I definitely supported DD2's dad financially although he makes more money than me. I paid 100 percent of the household bills while all his money went to child support and BM.

Low self esteem is a lot of it I think. And hopeium. Hope. and trickery, deceit, and tom foolery.

dup

I'm the bread winner. I own the house. I make triple what SO makes so now I pay the lions share. That doesn't make him a free loader or a deadbeat, we just contribute the same percentage of our pay to household bills. For me that means I pay 2/3s of the mortgage and he pays 1/3. That I think is only fair. But we now live in a neighborhood that SO couldn't afford without me so if we weren't together he'd live someplace cheaper so technically he is contributing a fair share. Granted he's handy so although we've only lived here for 2 months he's: replaced the garage door, built a shed, fixed a wall, landscaped the property, remounted the mailbox, demoed the master bedroom and bathroom, etc. Since not all contributions are financial I completely feel like it's fair. If he did nothing he'd be out but since he does contributes how much he makes is irrelevant and since he pays his child support out the rest of his 2/3s of pay I don't feel as if I contributed to that at all.

DH grew up traditionally to believe the man should be the breadwinner, but my own paranoia won't allow me to not bring in income.

Thankfully my job as a landlord from the assets I brought into the marriage affords me to be both an equal contributor and a SAHM. So finances are NOT a factor if we ever decide to divorce. I never wanted finances to be a factor as to whether or not I be miserable in a relationship.

He brings home less take home than I do but it doesn't affect how much he contributes because he can still cover half of the household expenses.

DH is currently the breadwinner, and was raised to believe that a man who can't provide for his family (including allowing his bride to be a SAHM) isn't working hard enough. It doesn't mean I don't work, but he sometimes feels like a failure that I have to work. I wasn't raised that way - both my parents worked and worked hard. We have separate accounts, but we don't really have separate finances. We partitioned out our budget and who pays what bills just for the best way of balancing so we don't both have empty accounts at the same time.

However I just got a promotion, and in the next two years, if I hit my marks, I will be making almost double what DH and I currently earn together. So we've talked about it and he will most likely be a SAHD and homeschooling our two boys. He will probably also have a side business since he's not good at sitting still.

Until I entered the stepworld, I'd never considered that anyone could worry about being able to "pay their own way" or making sure to financially contribute equally in a marriage. I'd always believed that when you marry you are merging all assets. There is no Mine & Yours, there is only Ours. Unfortunately there are too many selfish people in the world and that makes every need to CYA, even within a marriage. My brother learned that the hard way too. He had the same views I did, and his ex cleaned him out and left him broke. He worked full-time, she worked part-time yet she still wound up with an even half of their assets. The only lucky thing for him was that he consulted his lawyer before telling ex that he was done with her cheating ass, and they filed the papers right away. After his ex was served she'd gone out and maxed out every single joint credit card. Since the bills proved that the purchases were made AFTER the filing and serving, the judge put every cent of that debt onto her. But he had nothing.

I have an income that would cover me and my boys. DH and I do not have any joint credit cards. We do have one joint checking that utility bills and home improvement bills come out of. Beyond that, if DH told me right now he was leaving me - financially I'd be ok and I won't let that security go.

I know for a fact that my dh could not handle me making more than him. And as bad as this sounds I like being taken care of.