Sam_2.0
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Post by Sam_2.0 on Nov 8, 2012 21:10:17 GMT -5
At the end of the day its a crap shoot. But, although we all know exceptions, I think that making sure young un-married/un-committed women have access to reliable BC is a HUGE start to reducing poverty levels for women. Its horrible to have everything pulled out from under you, but what if you are 15 and never really had a chance to begin with?
For those who do get married, make sure you keep some options open. Death or infidelity can make you a single parent sooner than you could have ever imagined.
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doxieluvr
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Post by doxieluvr on Nov 8, 2012 21:15:10 GMT -5
This is what they want you to think. Be stuck in the child support system, with an account showing $38k in arrears, then see how the system works. Reality of having wages garnished and jail time is really quite uncommon. Those people do get arrested. They are rolling the dice. Feds routinely meet planes and arrest them returning to the US. Nothing is guaranteed but they are gambling and might run out of luck. WV will suspend your driver's license if you are behind on child support. Not in MD. I have several friends that do not get child support and their ex is still driving and working. My one friend is really owed $38k. He works full time. She has located him multiple times, turned the info into enforcement and still has not gotten money. Her son is 18 now. His support amount is less than $100 a month. What are you saying they have to first fly international then return to the us?
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swamp
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Post by swamp on Nov 8, 2012 21:16:05 GMT -5
I would like to marry for money. If I could marry someone with about the same as I have, we would both be a lot better off financially. Is it wrong to think about getting married just for the finances? I think marrying just for money isnt a good ispdea, but it should be a consideration.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2012 21:58:54 GMT -5
I'm reading Coming Apart. It takes a look at the divergence in family lives. One of the problems is that uneducated women, or single moms, don't often have the best pool of partners to choose from. So even if they want to get married it wouldn't necessarily improve their financial lives. Educated people are increasingly marrying each other because they meet at college, or at their workplace, or through friends. So if you're college educated, got married before you had kids, and had kids after you were thirty your odds of divorce are pretty low, like around 10-20%. People with a high school education on the other hand are likely to never marry and if they do, are more likely to get divorced. It's led to some funny situations. Like the educated/workplace elite in this country who are supportive of all family formations are actually the most likely to live in a traditional nuclear family. The author's solution was for these people to preach what they live, and for the other side to live what they preach. Another factor is the war on drugs. There's a big called the New Jim Crow, which I keep meaning on reading, but according to BIL it's about how our drug laws disproportionately hit the poor and minorities, especially blacks, and that their time in jail and crimes on their records are leading to a new segregation and plays a part in the destruction of the black family unit. If you have a felony on your record it's hard to get a job, and without a job it's hard to keep a wife and support your family.
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Phoenix84
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Post by Phoenix84 on Nov 8, 2012 22:08:20 GMT -5
Can you marry out of poverty? Yes, some people do it. But I don't think it's a reliable way out. Most people marry relatively close to the economic and educational level.
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Phoenix84
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Post by Phoenix84 on Nov 8, 2012 22:13:22 GMT -5
"Another factor is the war on drugs. There's a big called the New Jim Crow, which I keep meaning on reading, but according to BIL it's about how our drug laws disproportionately hit the poor and minorities, especially blacks, and that their time in jail and crimes on their records are leading to a new segregation and plays a part in the destruction of the black family unit."
Here's an idea then, don't do drugs.
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susanb
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Post by susanb on Nov 8, 2012 22:35:36 GMT -5
I would like to marry for money. If I could marry someone with about the same as I have, we would both be a lot better off financially. Is it wrong to think about getting married just for the finances? I don't think it is wrong, but I think it would be the hardest money you ever made. Being married to someone I love, like and respect , who also makes a better living than I do, is pretty tough sometimes. As a childless person, if I didn't love, like and respect DH, his income wouldn't be enough to make me want to be around him all the time. If I had kids it might be different
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jaya3300
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Post by jaya3300 on Nov 8, 2012 23:00:04 GMT -5
marrying can be a route out of poverty if the woman chooses wisely (marry a rich guy, marry a man who is not oppose to work, or marry a man who will support her education and career goals) How do you choose so your husband doesn't leave you? There's no guarantee that your husband won't leave you but hopefully if you choose wisely, he'll be fair in the divorce settlement
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cronewitch
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Post by cronewitch on Nov 9, 2012 2:29:43 GMT -5
In my family many women are old fashioned and believe a woman is in second place fiancially to her husband. I for example stayed home the first few years of marriage because he didn't want me to work. Then when I worked it was because I wanted to not because we needed the money. I didn't make a real effort to have a career as much as a job. I didn't want to go to college 4 years so only did two years. If I had children I might never have worked. Many women become the one the family wants to have stay home to care for both sets of parents and children and grandchildren sometimes.
Current generation of nieces between 30-42 has 3 out of 4 who have been housewives most of the marriage. One of those just is getting divorced at 40 having quit working to raise the kids. She now has taken a low paid job and will get child support for 5 years for the youngest less than two for the oldest. She did get half the assets so is fine but if they didn't have assets she would be poor. Her degree is in photography but that was 15 years ago and never used. The other two housewife are still married and seem happy but are raising huge families. One has no education and the other got an online degree. The one who always worked raised her son alone, after age 10. She was young when he was born, a high school drop out. She just married a father of 3 who is in college not working. Hopefully when he is working they will move from dirt poor to poor. No decent skills for either of them and kids to raise, they are trying for custody of his boys since they have a worthless mother and the boys spend most of the time with them.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 9, 2012 4:02:54 GMT -5
I guess I married out of poverty, but I didn't really know that at the time. He was a broke ass college student who was going to school to be a teacher. I was going to school to be a social worker. I married for love.
16 years later he makes a very good income in the military. I am thankful to have married a man who was not only a hard worker, but also loyal and in love with me. He does what needs to be done to make sure we are taken care of and he would never leave us in poverty if we did get a divorce. I know because he always took care of his DD from his first marriage.
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skubikky
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Post by skubikky on Nov 9, 2012 7:28:53 GMT -5
My mom grew up in horrible conditions and probably wasn't a great judge of character, but she sure gave it a shot. That's just it, you make the best decision with what you know at the time. There's never a guarantee. Most anything of value has some risk associated with it.
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Nov 9, 2012 8:05:00 GMT -5
Although I didn't major in what I would have liked to, I'm glad my parents insisted on me getting a marketable degree. Even though I worked in a bank the first few years out of college, I finally got a teaching job. I was able to take care of myself and two kids and even get them through college. A smart woman takes care of herself and any kids she may have. A smarter one marries someone on the same page that ADDS to her life not SUBTRACTS from it. My grandmother worked in the fields picking crops and in the factories canning until she wised up and got her real estate license. THAT was the path out of lower middle class and into solid middle class. Her daughters learned from her. My mom would have had a useless degree but was smart enough to marry my dad, just married poorly after he died, and he made her life hell until she died. My other two aunts were nurses and teacher so they always were capable of being on their own. My last aunt married the love of her life but remained barely making it until my grandparents died and her husbands mother. Now they are set for the rest of their lives. To me, that is stupid, but for them, it paid off.
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Apple
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Post by Apple on Nov 9, 2012 11:21:33 GMT -5
"Another factor is the war on drugs. There's a big called the New Jim Crow, which I keep meaning on reading, but according to BIL it's about how our drug laws disproportionately hit the poor and minorities, especially blacks, and that their time in jail and crimes on their records are leading to a new segregation and plays a part in the destruction of the black family unit." Here's an idea then, don't do drugs. Yesterday at 7:14pm, steve wrote: I don't know, but I've done the math and figured out if I married a guy who made even $20k and didn't blow it all, I could take lots more awesome vacations ;D I think a lot of the difference between single moms and single dads IS because, statistically, women usually have custody (I've worked with several men who fight for and get full custody, or the mother has just walked away, so ever case is different). So, she may feel like she has less time to pursue a better career (although, I see this as a choice, something still in her control. My ex left when DS was three and I still pursued a good career. It was hard, but I did it, and I make more money than the majority of guys at work now). More women than men also tend to choose fields that are just paid less money (look at skilled labor--very few women, although they can make it if they are smart enough/mechanical enough, they just don't choose to do those jobs as often. You don't even have to be "strong enough" in a lot of the jobs if you are "crafty" enough to figure out how to use tools, leverage, etc to make up for your physical weakness--although yes, there are jobs that just require brute strength). We had a lady in the office complain that we make "so much money" and she'd try to compare what we made to what she made. I pointed out to her that her job hazard was a papercut. Our jobs could easily get us or a coworker killed if we make a single mistake. We have others who have a lot of education compared to our couple years in college or trade school, or just on-the-job training, but they chose the field that paid less, male or female.
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formerroomate99
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Post by formerroomate99 on Nov 9, 2012 11:29:47 GMT -5
The answer to this question is a no brainer. Two people can earn twice as much money as one. And since running one household is easier and cheaper than running multiple ones, teaming up, whether it be a married couple or other family units, is a good way to pool resources and get out of poverty. One reason that recent immigrants do so much better than our own native poor folks is because they take this to the Nth degree, with all kinds of extended family living in one house.
If you want to help poverty rates among unmarried women, then stopping the policy of paying poor women to have babies and penalizing them for getting married would be a good start.
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formerroomate99
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Post by formerroomate99 on Nov 9, 2012 11:37:26 GMT -5
Can you marry out of poverty? Yes, some people do it. But I don't think it's a reliable way out. Most people marry relatively close to the economic and educational level. Again, two people can earn twice as much money as one and running two housholds is more expensive and time consuming than running one. Marrying is a very reliable way to get out of poverty if you work as a team and don't have kids until you are ready. Marrying, staying married, and working as a team is exactly how my family (and a lot of others) went from white trash to college educated professionals in one generation. But of course, this calculation is skewed by the fact that we have a welfare system that encourages out of wedlock births and penalizes marriage.
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Nov 9, 2012 11:39:46 GMT -5
I think saying that I get financial benefit from being married is very, very different from assuming I will be in poverty if I was not married. If my husband disappeared tomorrow, I would still be in our house, and have a car, and be able to put groceries on the table, etc. Many families live on far less than my income. However, my husband's income covers his few expenses - but everything after that is just fun money (and savings.) So, yes, a huge benefit - but it isn't the difference between poverty and middle class.
Many reasons why women live in poverty include: (1) having babies before they are able to support themselves, (2) chosing jobs and careers that don't pay well and (3) expected a husband to be a paycheck.
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Phoenix84
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Post by Phoenix84 on Nov 9, 2012 11:49:05 GMT -5
I think it's wrong to marry soley for finances, but marriage can really help your income.
I myself was just fatasizing yesterday about this. I thought "man, if I was married to another GS 12, we'd have a combined income of over 150k, that would be sweet." But I know that finding the right person is more important, and that I'm way better single than married to the wrong woman.
I think finances should play some role in selecting a partner. I don't think that person has to work or necessarily make a lot of money, but they have to be able to be responsible with money and add to your life and not subtract.
It's hard to say why women have a higher rate of poverty. I think women more often ending up with kids plays a role. As well as the same reasons women earn less in general than men, they don't ask for raises, choose lower paying jobs for more fexibility, and go into high paying fields less.
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Phoenix84
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Post by Phoenix84 on Nov 9, 2012 11:52:37 GMT -5
There's also the simple law of economics, two people running one house hold is easier two people running one houe hold.
A lot of expenses overlap. When I heat my apartment, it doesn't matter if there are 2 or 20 people in here benefiting from that, the cost is the same. Adding one other person doesn't necessarily double your living expenses, in many ways only increases them slightly.
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happyhoix
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Post by happyhoix on Nov 9, 2012 12:30:24 GMT -5
My mom went to college to find a suitable husband and dropped out to get married before she got her degree. Back in the day (the 50's) this wasn't uncommon.
She went on to be a SAHM her whole life, and she was extremely fortunate our dad didn't die or divorce her, because she had no job skills to land a job that would have given her a lifestyle close to what she had as a married woman, plus she had two kids to support.
Unless I had inherited enough to live on, I would have a hard time giving up my job to become completely dependent on DH. I don't think he would leave me (not after 28 years) but a disease or accident might make me the sole provider. I look at my SIL, who has always been a SAHM - her DH is ten years older than she is, in a stressful job, and if something happened to him she has a teenage son and a house payment to take care of. A house they use as a piggy bank, taking out the equity pretty frequently. Overnight she could be reduced to poverty - it's scary.
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susanb
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Post by susanb on Nov 9, 2012 12:35:04 GMT -5
I hear you, Happy. I respect SAHPs, but the idea of being one terrifies me. Even if you have an education and job experience, re-entering the labor market seems to be a big struggle.
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Nov 9, 2012 12:38:06 GMT -5
It is, but I've known enough people that do, that I'm not as freaked out by the idea as I used to be. If you want a job bad enough (or need one bad enough) you will make it happen. It is when you start getting picky about your way back into the market that you become "unemployable."
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zibazinski
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Post by zibazinski on Nov 9, 2012 12:40:00 GMT -5
For sure. My ex SIL was smart enough to see the family full of divorces and her with no real job skills. She went to school to be some kind of x ray tech and she has a great job that pays decent and she loves it. If her husband ever leaves her, she isn't going to go on welfare or starve. So she wised up after marriage even. Just because you're a SAHMS doesn't mean you can't go to school while being one and get a skill. Men die, men leave, men get sick, you need to be able to CYA and maybe his.
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Plain Old Petunia
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Post by Plain Old Petunia on Nov 9, 2012 12:57:44 GMT -5
I would like to marry for money. If I could marry someone with about the same as I have, we would both be a lot better off financially. Is it wrong to think about getting married just for the finances? I think there is no wrong reason to get married, just so long as both parties are up front and honest.
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Plain Old Petunia
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Post by Plain Old Petunia on Nov 9, 2012 13:06:07 GMT -5
True. Child support is also much easier to access. My biological father made the equivalent of 75k a year, or 200k in today's dollars. He paid less than $100 in child support one time. Today that wouldn't happen, but I don't know if he would be asked to shoulder his "share" of the burden. ETA: One of the problems with our current welfare system is that if an unmarried woman is on welfare and "turns in" the bio dad for support, the support amount is deducted from her cash assistance. This motivates women in this situation to avoid telling the state who the father is. She can then keep the cash assistance and tell the dad that she won't turn him in if he gives her a small amount each month. Another case where the system is set up to penalize behavior we should want to encourage (father's supporting their own children). Are you sure about this? I'm no expert, but I thought that if a dad is paying child support and the mom is on welfare, then the mom receives no more than $50 of the child support * and the rest goes to the county as reimbursement. * Edit for clarification
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telephus44
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Post by telephus44 on Nov 9, 2012 13:27:37 GMT -5
I think that marraige CAN be a way out of poverty. Not that it's the best way or the only way, though.
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susanb
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Post by susanb on Nov 9, 2012 14:15:03 GMT -5
True. Child support is also much easier to access. My biological father made the equivalent of 75k a year, or 200k in today's dollars. He paid less than $100 in child support one time. Today that wouldn't happen, but I don't know if he would be asked to shoulder his "share" of the burden. ETA: One of the problems with our current welfare system is that if an unmarried woman is on welfare and "turns in" the bio dad for support, the support amount is deducted from her cash assistance. This motivates women in this situation to avoid telling the state who the father is. She can then keep the cash assistance and tell the dad that she won't turn him in if he gives her a small amount each month. Another case where the system is set up to penalize behavior we should want to encourage (father's supporting their own children). Are you sure about this? I'm no expert, but I thought that if a dad is paying child support and the mom is on welfare, then the mom receives no more than $50 of the child support * and the rest goes to the county as reimbursement. * Edit for clarification We are saying the same thing, I just didn't state my point very clearly. In my state, if the mom is getting $500 a month in cash assistance and gets $200 in child support, the child support will go back to the state to reimburse the government for the cash assistance. The result for the mom is likely a net negative because, while she still gets $500 from the state, bio dad is less likely to give her $50 here and there since he is already paying support.
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haapai
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Post by haapai on Nov 9, 2012 17:50:15 GMT -5
The only women that I've seen marrying themselves out of poverty are immigrants with American husbands. They tend to be higher-wattage than their husbands and most of them work, very hard, and are quite successful, at least eventually. I don't know a single one who stays at home.
It would be interesting to know how much of this is due to a relentless streak of self-improvement and self-reliance and how much is due to the spouse putting his foot down regarding remittances. I suspect that in a lot of cases, a tremendous amount of the wife's income goes to her relatives and her contribution to the household is quite small, despite her paid employment outside of the home.
It's kinda ironic that what initially looks like the epitome of a modern, dual-income, companionate marriage also has so many characteristics of our grandmothers' housewife model.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2012 13:27:20 GMT -5
A couple of years after my grandmother died, my grandfather remarried. I found out many years later from my mother that step-grandma (SG) had been told by her adult children after she was widowed that if she wanted to live decently she was going to have to find herself a husband with money. My other grandmother, who had known SG since they were girls, told me that SG always pulled her corsets tighter than all the other girls. So, SG must have pulled in her corset stays, and caught Grandpa. While not rich, Grandpa had worked and saved all his life and was a bit on the miserly side in his first marriage. He lavished more money on SG which is still a very sore subject with my mother. It was a happy marriage, though, and they lived out their last years in a well-run continuing care community in FL. SG died first and when Grandpa died, it really gave my mother some closure to see him buried beside her mother in Ohio.
My story and DH's has a similar thread; we married just before DH retired from an advertising firm that was on its last legs. He was 65 and didn't have much saved because he'd been taking care of others all his life, most recently an elderly mother. If we hadn't met and amrried, he would have been OK- he had a good house in NJ and was eligible for SS- but with me he's got a lot more secure life. I'm happy to support him because of everything else he brings to the marriage. Money isn't everything.
But typically, the Cinderella story where a penniless single mother of 3 kids marries a wealthy man doesn't happen that often. People with money can be darn picky and most are pretty wary of people who fall in love iwth their money.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Nov 10, 2012 13:33:39 GMT -5
I divorced out of poverty. I am way better off financially single than I was married. My one income supports one person way better than it supported 2.
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