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Reaching out for some advice.

My wife and I are planning to retire in 5 years at age 62. I used to work in private industry, made good money, and saved for retirement. Now I work in human services and make 2/3 of what I used to earn. We married when we were 30.

My wife had gone back to college to get her bachelor's degree and graduated about a year after we married. She had a office management job up to 2002. From 2002-2008, she opened her own business and had no income. From there, she has worked similar management jobs that lasted 2-4 years. However, in the last 12 months, she has been let go from her last two jobs (personality issues). Now she want's to work part-time in a different field until retirement.

She got a job offer for 20-30 hours/week during school season driving a van for $14/hour. In the last couple of months, she keeps saying she wants to take early retirement. My reply is you took it from 2002-2008 when you did not earn any income. I would be happy if she wants to work full time in a different field.

With my current income, at least we would be able to keep a roof over our heads and food on table but that's it. Her job offer is only 6 months/year. Ask you can guess, I would like her to provide more income to the relationship.

Your thoughts/comments?

Based on what you've posted, I'd feel the same way you do. She needs to contribute as much as you are. Actually, since she wasn't bringing in any income for 6 years, maybe you should be the one to work part time or retire early while she continues to work.

She should look for a full time job. And my opinion has nothing to do with her being a WS. If she only wants to work part ime, early retirement for her should be off the table.

I think money issues are always about communication, problem solving, negotiation, and goal setting.

If you guys can't agree, then maybe see a MC to help fine tune these skills?

I also know that when I keep track of who does what, it means that my needs aren't getting met, and I need some down time,

I'm the primary breadwinner. I bring in about 75% of my family's income.

My husband works part time. He also is the primary care giver of our kids and will be doing elder care when the time comes.

I value his contributions to the home. The upshot, is though, that as the breadwinner, I don't get to decide that I want to cut back on my income or switch jobs that would make us worse off in terms of things like health insurance coverage.

Honestly, I don't care much when he retires, as long as he waits until our kids are done with private school, as that what is pay covers. That's about 14 years out for us. I can't quite retire that early...I need 30 years of service in the books, and at that point, I'll have 29.

I may ask him to work full time again, if it looks like divorce will be in our future. But, that's mostly because I want to minimize alimony. I'm the BS. And I don't want to be paying for his lies for my entire life, one way or another.

Marriage is not 50-50 or even 100-100. Life is not fair. Fair does not mean equal. But, we are both working towards our overall life goals, and that's all that's important.

[This message edited by secondtime at 6:35 PM, August 8th (Wednesday)]

Many thanks for the replies.

About a month before she was let go from her last job, we purchased a brand new 2018 minivan for her. We paid cash so no monthly payment. If I knew she would be gone in 4 weeks, you can bet there would have been no new vehicle.

Back in 2013, I took 9 months off of work due to job burnout. When I went back to work, wife mentioned that she was stressed due to being the sole provider of income and health insurance. I wanted to reply that I've been doing that for us for almost 8 years.

Wife seems not to understand that the retirement accounts are to generate income since neither of us have any pensions. Sure we will draw on the accounts but the money needs to last for at least 15-20 years. I mentioned that if she wants to work part time, that will affect the things we want to do in retirement since the contribution levels will be less.

However, in the last 12 months, she has been let go from her last two jobs (personality issues).

Is there something more going on with her? Being let go twice in the past year for the same reason indicates something is going on there. Combining that with her desire to now work a job in a different field? And it seems she is looking at a position where she would hope not to have to "take the office home with you" mentally at the end of the day.

It just sounds like more might be going in with her.

she keeps saying she wants to take early retirement. My reply is you took it from 2002-2008 when you did not earn any income.

This would upset me if my SO said it. If she was truly running her own business, she was working but it was just not profitable (very common with new business ventures). I would not consider that a retirement.

I am leaning towards the advice you received on maybe working with a counselor on this issue. As we all know, money can be a HUGE issues with couples and you want to make sure you are both on the same page here or this will manifest on you.

You sound like a stable,sensible,good person~but I think you are trying to be (TOO) nice.

I think that you need to tell her that she has to find a full-time job, and get her involved in looking at the long-term/retirement plan. Maybe she'll have to work at it for a few years, maybe longer. But if neither of you have pensions, she HAS to be willing to do her part!?

Many people (like your wife) underestimate how much they need at retirement. You may live 10 more years~or 25! You may have home repairs,medical bills, or other unexpected events. I say this as a retired person who has several friends who had good jobs, but retired too early and/or saved too little. One is basically living on credit cards, two are struggling, and one has taken a part-time job just to stay afloat.

I wish you luck in trying to get your wife to understand how important it is to both of you to get into a better situation before retirement!

[This message edited by tigerfann at 8:10 AM, August 10th (Friday)]

I've worked from home for 20 years and know way too many women who took advantage of their husbands and ignored their other responsibilities while they played business women online.

That kind of shit creates a fog all its own. These women hire nannies and go to conferences and start coaching and writing guides for others to make money, but they aren't really earning a dime. Very frustrating. But they create more people just like them ... looking for their passions, looking for connections, to provide solutions, positivity ... and downplay profits, because they don't know HOW to generate them aside from lying to other women.

I've seen countless marriages be hurt by it too. It's difficult to warn people, because any negativity is a big no-no in the blogosphere, in my experience. It gets written off very quickly in favor of advice on how to generate more engagement (not sales ).

My point is, she might have a false sense of security and success because of this nonsense, so I wouldn't bring up a lack of profits or anything having to do with her failed business. I would focus strictly on the numbers as they are now and what they need to be during retirement. Force her to focus the discussion on the bottom line.

If she wants to retire early and work part-time, how much is she going to have to make per hour to make that happen? If she cannot find a job making that amount of money, is she going to work more hours or retire later in life?

Good luck, toonces.

I agree this is a conversation that needs to be had, and it is a trade off on full time and early retirement or part time and not early retirement.

T/J I love the image of Toonces the driving cat when I read your posts. Gave me a much needed smile today ! End of T/J

Many thanks for your replies.

To give some extra information, we have a little over seven figures saved for retired.

A couple of weeks ago, wife received a job offer driving a school van for the school year (180 days). About 20 hours week (split shift) for 15 dollars an hour. That would be $10.8K per year. So much for her college education and partial MBA. I asked what job she was going to do during the summer since she needs to contribute more to the household. She said there 'could' be summer hours. I asked how much but she had no answer. She could tell I was not happy so she declined the offer.

She was hoping for a municipal job that was 37 hours weeks. That was $20 an hour but came with benefits. Found out yesterday the job was filled by an internal employee.

Last week, she had an interview with a ecommerce company, again part time. She thinks she will receive an offer. But it's 25-30 hours per week at $15 hour (so about $21K year).

I want to tell her, fine you want to work part time, then I will delay retiring at 62. Every month you want to work less, adds an extra month of work for me.

Lately I have had thoughts wondering if she doesn't want to do her share of contributing to the household, perhaps the assets should be split and take our separate ways. I don't want a repeat of her 6 year 'hiattus' back in 2002-2008.

Thanks for listening.

Tell her she can work part time as long as she gets two part time jobs; that should equal one full time job. Your W is being lazy. She wants you to do the heavy lifting. I'd think that would be fine if she hadn't previously skipped out on the marriage. Once that happened, the rules changed and now she needs to pull her own weight or take her current half and leave.

I want to tell her, fine you want to work part time, then I will delay retiring at 62. Every month you want to work less, adds an extra month of work for me.

I don't understand this way of thinking. You've earned your right to retire when you want to. If she doesn't want to work full time, then she can work longer to make up the difference.

Then there is my wife, who five years ago had to retire because of her health, and would do anything to be able to return back to work full time.

Why does she want to work part time? Is she feeling ok, does she want to volunteer? Spend time with family? I don’t get why she doesn’t want to work full time.

This is from me, who’s husband constantly asks me to get a full time job. I would love to work full time. But I explain to him, kids go to school 30 min away, and I’m constantly at school for them. I don’t think it would work. I volunteer a lot and have worked part time, bringing in money. I am currently going to lots of medical appointments for myself, so a new job right now would mean WH picking up A LOT Of slack. Which he has stated he is not willing to do. So I tell him, it’s not possible, at this time....

Could your WS be depressed?

I think this an interesting topic.

Each of us get to define our partnerships the way we want to. But it is a partnership. I do think that this is something that changes over time. Other circumstances and obligations play a role in this roles we negotiate in our relationships but does one person get to make decisions with inaction for the both of you?

My H is the primary earner in our relationship. I’ve always worked at least part time. We pay the bills together, so we each know where we are at financially. Once I could go full time, I did. It was hard to go from making all school hour activities and events to those We alternatively took time off for. That’s not a choice you might make and that’s okay. I don’t regret it. Our first kiddo graduated college debt free 2 years ago and that’s is a priority for us for the second and third.

One partner IMO Shouldn’t take advantage of the other. And toonces feels taken advantage of. Working for no income is a luxury. It didn’t pay offf and rather than feel the desire to contribute to the partnership his wife feels entitled to work part time. I hope that you can sit down and verbalize your point of view. If she has a different perspective and you can’t come to an agreement then why waste another moment paying for a lifestyle that is passively dictated to you.

A few things to consider if you haven't. Take your retirement $'s and multiply it by .055 divide by 12 (that's about how much you can pull out monthly) then add your SS on top.

Health insurance is expensive. Even when you qualify for Medicare it's (with supplemental) @ $400 month per. Not free

You can't have enough and if you pull the plug it's hard to get back in if you need to.

She needs a full time job.

Here's a quick update. Today my college educated W starts her part time job. It only pays $15/hr for 20-30 hrs per week. At least this is better than her other job offer that paid the same but was only for the school year.

I am not happy with the part time situation since she is not doing enough to contribute to the household income since she is perfectly capable of working full time.

Here's an idea that we did when we were living together (before we were married). All household expenses were 50/50 between us (i.e. rent, food, utilities, cable, phone, etc.). We had our own bank accounts and a common account to cover the monthly expenses. I am thinking of going back to that model. So this winter, if it costs $800 to fill the heating oil tank, she needs to come up with $400.

If she was to be full time in the workforce, she would at least make the same salary as me. At her last job, she was making $18K more than me since I work in the human services field.

Thoughts and/or comments?

Why does your wife not want to work full time?

Seriously, what are her excuses for not working full time? I'd be furious if I were you.

like a previous poster mentioned, she could be depressed.

At her last three jobs, she was let go. The first two, she was there between 2-5 years. At her last job, it was almost a bully situation. She was already talking to headhunters about leaving and went to HR regarding her boss. Since she was there less than 3 months, she was let go.

I can't figure out what fantasy land she is living in thinking we can keep our standard of living with her working part time.

She was all proud about her first day. She made a small fortune of $90 (6 hrs X $15/hr). I work in human services and I made more than that before lunch. sigh......

Part of me wants to tell her that I am going to work part time too. Let her figure out the finances, health insurance, etc.

Yes I am pissed.