Spouse Occupation

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What does your spouse / significant other do for a living?

  • Stay at Home Mom / Dad

    Votes: 4 25.0%
  • Engineer

    Votes: 2 12.5%
  • Nurse

    Votes: 3 18.8%
  • CPA

    Votes: 1 6.3%
  • Teacher

    Votes: 1 6.3%
  • Proffessor

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Medical Doctor

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • administrative / clerical

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • construction

    Votes: 1 6.3%
  • Real Estate

    Votes: 1 6.3%
  • Stripper

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Marketing / Consulting

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • General Business

    Votes: 1 6.3%
  • other :D

    Votes: 2 12.5%

  • Total voters
    16
MIAF is working as a waitress and having a hard time keeping up with her bills. She WAS a hairdresser, but the area we live in is so depressed she can't find work doing that anymore.

 
There wasn't a category for my wife's job, so I picked Stripper. But who is the other stripper? :D

She has a Master's plus, and is further trained in a medical specialty, but is a few hours and residency shy of a doctorate, so I can't put her down as a doc either. She would kill me if I put her down as a nurse, (not that there is anything wrong with that), so stripper works.

There should be a medical catergory for PA's, OT/R's, PT's, etc. Although, she won't show it but gets pissed if someone says "oh, aren't you a physical therapist".

It gets her when people assume she's a nurse too. She smiles and takes it, but I know better.

I guess it'd be like someone asking a P.E. "oh, aren't you an AutoCAD drafter?". (not that there is anything wrong with that)

Funny thing is, she mentioned staying at home after our 3rd one, but her and I both know that she'd go crazy in the house all day. She's a great Mom, but needs her time to do her thing too.

I take my hat off to all Stay-at-Home Mom's. I couldn't imagine trying to pull it off.

 
My husband is an engineer. we make it work because we're totally different types of engineers and our strengths tend to compliment each other (at least that's what I tell myself).

 
She's a hell of a lot better than I am. I think she actually likes people. This may be a symptom of not getting into engineering until grad school.

I had to help her 'think like an engineer' when she started grad school. That was easy for me, I'm totally hardwired like that. She came from a pure science background.

I started taking MBA classes a few weeks back. It's a whole different mindset that is not natural for me.

 
She's a hell of a lot better than I am. I think she actually likes people. This may be a symptom of not getting into engineering until grad school.
I had to help her 'think like an engineer' when she started grad school. That was easy for me, I'm totally hardwired like that. She came from a pure science background.

I started taking MBA classes a few weeks back. It's a whole different mindset that is not natural for me.
The problem with the MBA program lies in your last statement:

MBA is not natural.
 
How do you folks with SAHMs make it work financially? Between CC, mortgage, student loans, and insurance, breaking even in a month without a second income is tough. We don't even splurge on weekends. Do I really make that little?
In the time we were engaged before marrying (I had graduated and went to work while she was finishing school), I lived in squalor and paid off $25k in school loans in 1 year.

We got married and lived in an apartment for a couple years. Where I live has low cost of living. We decided we could afford a house instead of rent, and only saw our monthly payment go up by about $150 per month to own. Chose to go with a fixer upper - kept the payment low and we did a lot of changes to the house (lot of sweat equity).

Did that for 6 years, then moved to a bigger house as the family grew. My wife held a job until #2 came along, then became SAHM. Now we have 3 and he's almost 2 years old, and she mentioned the other day that she was feeling the need to do "something". Even until our kids are probably in Junior High, she'll be mostly SAHM. Doing a PT type job just to bring in a few bucks to pay some bills would be good. Even so, just because of where we live, we're in a 3200 sq ft (5 bedroom house) and our monthly payment (including taxes and insurance) is $1000.

Seriously, I could go work at McDonalds, and my wife get a part time job and we'd be able to pay bills.

I think it just takes a little time - get out from under as much debt as possible, and then be smart.

 
^^^ Agreed.

When my wife went back to school for all of 2008 (she had classes and residency requirements full time from mid January through Xmas graduation), we depended 100% on my income. She only qualified for enough student loans to pay for her school and I had to cover the rest. We had no credit cards, I was able to defer my student loans until she graduated, and everything else was minimized. We moved to a cheaper part of town so we could afford rent, and we basically had $100/week to cover food, gas, & entertainment. Sounds like plenty until you factor in 2 kids under 3.

People quickly forget how much their spending adjusts to their income. This is why people who make $150k per year end up living paycheck to paycheck. My brother and sister-in-law have 2 kids (3rd on the way) and they live comfortably on 1/2 of only my income. It's wierd when my household income is 4x my brothers, and he's the one living comfortably. I just buy too much shit...

 
^That is exactly why every time I have received a raise, I automatically have that money deposited into my savings account that I never touch. This way, I still bring home the same amount since I only spend money out of my checking account. It helps to build up my savings too, which is nice.

 
That's what I'm doing with both my COLA raise as well as my wife's promotion money this year. We allowed ourselves to expand the budget last year, just because we were going crazy with the cuts we had to make the previous year. Now we're in a more comfortable position which allows us to start saving for a down payment on a new house. Our goal is to buy something mid-2011.

 
We're people who never buy anything. We splurged on a tv only because my 10 year old, 20-inch tv decided not to turn on until the 20th time you hit the power button. We have 8 months of living expenses in the bank and whatever comes in that is beyond paying bills goes to the IRA. Once the IRA is maxed out (won't happen this year), some of the excess money goes to mini-Master's education and the rest into extra mortgage principal. Well, that's all in theory. We have yet to get past the IRA step. Maybe this year. :dunno:

 
hmmmm... my 10 year old TV decided to eat its own power button... leaving an empty rectangular hole... the remote still worked, but we took that as a sign it was time for an upgrade...

 
My TV is almost of legal drinking age! Hope it hangs in there for a few more years!

 
hmmmm... my 10 year old TV decided to eat its own power button... leaving an empty rectangular hole... the remote still worked, but we took that as a sign it was time for an upgrade...
sounds like my parent's TV, except they still use it and I know why the power button is missing. My brother and I thought it would be a great idea to use our rubber-band guns instead of the TV remote (this was probably mid 90's), and unfortunately the only way this worked was if the gun was about an inch away from the button. After about 3-4 shots, the button disappeared into the case. I don't think my parents ever found out why it broke.

 
I still have a 13 inch TV I bought from Target while I was working there in 1987 - a JVC. Still works, but it only goes up to channel 25 or so. The picture still looks good, even. We were using it in the kitchen but our housekeeper's Samsung died, so she's using it now in her room.

 
oh yeah, I'm still using that MEASLY 50" Plasma that I got a little over a year ago, the remote and HD work fine, but man....... the suffering.

 
oh yeah, I'm still using that MEASLY 50" Plasma that I got a little over a year ago, the remote and HD work fine, but man....... the suffering.
How could you live like that, it must be rough. You're only slightly better off than my year-old 46" LCD. Good thing I have the Playstation3 w/ blu-ray disks & 7:1 surround sound to make it tolerable.

 
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