Money Crashers: How Much Does a Divorce Cost? – Types & Ways to Save

Here's a new Money Crashers post on a topic that has, sadly, been deemed COVID-adjacent: divorce. According to the New York Post, attorneys in New York City — the epicenter of the COVID outbreak in America – are being "flooded" with calls from couples who have decided, after weeks of being cooped up together 24/7, that they just can't stand each other anymore. And ABC says divorce attorneys anticipate a similar surge nationwide.

Getting a divorce may or may not be the right choice for all these couples, but they've already made one expensive mistake: hiring a lawyer to handle it. According to a 2019 Nolo survey, people who used lawyers to handle their divorces in 2019 paid an average of $13,000, or a median of $7,500. That's a significant sum to lose at a time when you’re preparing to split your assets in half and take on the expense of living on your own again — particularly in the middle of a recession.

Fortunately, there are cheaper alternatives. The key to saving money on a divorce is to use lawyers as little as possible, and in particular, to keep it out of court if you can. If you and your partner agree on all the major issues, you can potentially save thousands with an uncontested divorce (average cost $4,100) or a DIY divorce (possibly as little as $500). If you still have some issues to work through, hiring a mediator (average cost $970) can cost much less than battling it out with lawyers (average cost $11,300). And if you absolutely need a lawyer, you can save by paying them only for the jobs that really require legal expertise and not for routine tasks like phone and email correspondence (average cost $4,600).

Here's hoping that none of you readers need information about divorce any time soon. But if you do, here's hoping for the next best thing: a quick, easy, and relatively inexpensive route to a fresh start.

How Much Does a Divorce Cost? – Types & Ways to Save

Money Crashers: Two Valentine pieces

Four years ago, I wrote a piece for Money Crashers on affordable gifts and activities for Valentine's Day. This year, the editors decided it was time to update it — but instead of just revising the old piece, they asked me to split it into two, one on affordable dates and one on affordable gifts. The first of these was published three weeks ago, and the second was all ready for publication when the editor suddenly got back to me with a request to split it yet again, this time into a piece on gifts "for her" and one on gifts "for him."

I didn't quite see the point of this, since (a) I'd already done a pair of gender-specific gift guides for Christmas, and (b) with society these days moving toward a more fluid idea of gender, there's no real reason to draw a rigid line between girl gifts and guy gifts. But according to my editor, there's still a lot of search traffic out there for Valentine's day gifts "for him" and "for her," and we have to give people what they want to stay competitive.

So, with some reluctance, I've produced the requisite two pieces on romantic, budget-friendly gifts: 7 Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for Her (on a Budget) and 9 Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for Him (on a Budget). I've done my best, at least, to avoid extreme gender stereotypes; I didn't want my piece for men to red like so many other gendered gift guides, which one of our editors summed up as "He Frank. Frank like meat. Frank like beer. Frank live in mancave." I've tried to go for a more nuanced approach ("Frank study art history. Frank have blog to share his haiku") and avoid making any assumptions about the gender of the reader. If I've done my job right, ladies seeking gifts for their wives, or men for their husbands, should find these pieces just as useful as heterosexual couples.

Money Crashers: 4 new articles

In the past two days, a whole bunch of my backlogged articles that have been sitting on Money Crashers' back burner have popped to the front. Here's a quick rundown of what you can now find on the site to inform and entertain you:

12 Best Financial Podcasts About Money, Business & Investing in 2020

Money Crashers already had articles about the best personal finance books and TV shows, but none about the most modern medium for learning about financial topics, podcasts. This piece remedies that, providing a roundup of the 12 most useful podcasts for learning about a variety of topics: general personal finance, business, investing, and FIRE (for Financial Independence Retire Early).

Podcasts are handy because you can listen to them hands-free while you're doing something else, like driving or doing laundry. I personally like to turn one on every day while I shower. When I started this piece, I didn't have one for every day of the week, so I took advantage of the research process to explore several and discovered two new favorites, "Planet Money" and its shorter sister podcast, "The Indicator," which are now part of my regular rotation. (I liked the one episode of the Tim Ferris Podcast I listened to as well, but it's far too long for me to tune in every week.)

10 Inexpensive Yet Romantic Valentine’s Day Date Ideas

Money Crashers has evidently learned its lesson since the time it published one of my holiday articles a mere three days before Christmas, when Hanukkah was already over. It's now fast-tracking all pieces that are time-sensitive, which means this roundup of tips for inexpensive Valentine's Day dates is actually out in plenty of time for Valentine's Day. It counters the advertisers' messages about what a romantic date "should" be (a lavish dinner at a four-star restaurant, a weekend getaway at a charming B&B, a hot-air balloon ride) with budget-friendly options for dining and entertainment, whether you're looking for a night out on the town or a cozy evening at home.

10 Ways to Enjoy a Romantic Weekend Getaway for Less

Continuing in the romantic vein, this article on romantic weekend getaways had been in the pipeline since last August, but the impending arrival of Valentine's Day finally gave Money Crashers and incentive to push it out of the "to edit" folder where it had been languishing for months. So if you've been thinking this year's Valentine's Day weekend would be a nice opportunity for a romantic getaway with your partner, but you just don't think you can afford it, this article comes right on time for you. It explains how you can plan the weekend getaway of your dreams on a tighter budget by thinking outside the box about where you go, how you get there, and what you do while you’re away.

Estate & Inheritance Tax – Threshold, Rates & Calculating How Much You Owe

And now for something completely unromantic: estate and inheritance taxes. As the old saying goes, nothing's certain except death and taxes, and nobody likes either one. However, the combination of the two — estate and inheritance taxes — is easier to avoid than most people realize. Both the federal estate tax and state inheritance and estate taxes (in the states that have them) are steeply progressive, hitting only the richest of the rich. And even for them, it's possible to minimize the tax with careful planning. Here, I explain in detail how the federal estate tax works, what is and isn't included, the difference between an estate tax and an inheritance tax, which states have each kind, and how to plan ahead so that taxes will hit your heirs as lightly as possible. (Personally, I'm on board with the 50 percent of Americans who think the estate tax has already been cut too much and we really need to push it back up a bit — but I'm willing to concede that until the government gets around to doing that, there's no reason to make your heirs pay more than they actually have to.)

Money Crashers: Financial Benefits of Marriage vs. Being Single

Back in 2011, I made two posts here exploring the idea of how marriage affects your finances. In the first, I questioned the idea that it's easier for young, single people to save than it is for couples with kids. Drawing on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I showed that while most people under 25 (who tend to be childless) have lower expenditures, they also have lower incomes, and consequently lower savings, than householders with kids.

In the second post, I discussed a study I'd seen that found couples in lasting marriages tend to accumulate wealth faster than single people. I then explored the reasons why it might be easier for couples to save, many of which have to do with the fact that they typically share one household rather than maintaining two, and speculated that two single people sharing a home might have the best of both worlds

This two articles together became the inspiration for my latest Money Crashers post, which explores the financial pros and cons of being married as opposed to being single. First, I take a detailed look at the costs and benefits of marriage—from wedding expenses to taxes and benefits to the risk of divorce. Then, I consider how having children changes the picture for both single and married people, and how the benefits of sharing a home apply to both. I wrap the whole thing up with some savings tips for both groups, including the importance of communicating with your partner about money for married couples and some frugal dating tips for singles. Here's the full article: Financial Benefits of Marriage vs. Being Single – What’s Better?

Do I need a paycheck?

Regular readers of this blog have no doubt noticed that I've been posting a lot more frequently for the past few months. That's a positive side effect of a negative event: my biggest client, ConsumerSearch, laid off all its freelancers in June. I've tried contacting other clients, searching the freelance want ads at MediaBistro and FreelanceWriting.com, and offering my services to interesting sites like Wise Bread, The Billfold, and Money Talks News, but nothing has turned up. So I've tried to put my time to somewhat productive use by posting more often here, writing a couple of articles for HubPages, and setting up a little mini recording booth in the hopes of eventually getting some audiobook recording gigs. (More about that in a future post.)

Unfortunately, none of these activities actually brings in any money in the short term. Sure, learning to do voice-overs might get me some gigs eventually, but according to my friend Steve, who's involved in this business, it really isn't any easier than getting writing jobs; both fields are now overcrowded with amateurs willing to work for peanuts. Posting here and on Hubpages will bring in a tiny trickle of Google Ads revenue, but we're talking literally pennies a month; I might be able to increase it if I build up my readership, but that's an iffy proposition. And while it's theoretically possible that this blog will one day attract enough attention to land me a book deal, I'm not holding my breath.

So basically, I've been feeling kind of down lately about the fact that I'm not making any money. And it was only today that it occurred to me to ask myself why.

After all, it's not like we really need the money to live on. Brian and I have always been able to pay all our bills with his salary alone, so mine was just gravy. Having that extra padding in our budget was very useful, of course; it's the main reason we were able to pay off our mortgage as fast as we did. But now that it's all paid off, our expenses have dropped to the point that we actually have plenty of cash to spare even without my income. We can live quite comfortably on what Brian brings home and still have extra cash to put toward our new goal of reaching financial independence.

Yet even though we're doing just fine without my income, I still feel guilty somehow that I'm not contributing my fair share. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense, really, since my income was never anywhere near as high as Brian's, and so my "share," as measured in dollars, was never close to his even when I was working steadily. And Brian has made it clear that he doesn't mind at all being the sole breadwinner for as long as necessary. As he put it, he knows I'm not just sitting around the house watching soap operas and eating bonbons; I'm actually doing and learning useful things, whether they bring in money or not. So what exactly is it that's bothering me? In what way is my current lack of income a problem for us?

Once I actually put the question into words, I realized that what was worrying me wasn't that Brian is currently supporting me; it's that, so long as I remain out of work, I'll never be able to support him.

See, on the Excel sheet where I keep track of all our household finances, I've added a few lines at the bottom to keep track of our progress toward financial independence. I worked out (very roughly) how much additional savings we'd need to provide us with enough income to live on, and then I calculated how long it would take us to save up that sum of money. But below that, I added a few extra lines to track our progress toward partial financial independence: the point at which we'd be able to live on my income alone, so Brian could quit his job if he wanted to. And up until a few months ago, my estimate was that we'd get there in a little over three years. But now, with my income holding steady at zero, this goal is exactly as far away as full financial independence. Until we have enough money in the bank to pay our bills, I won't be able to make up the difference—which means Brian can't quit his job.

Being able to put my finger on the problem this way helps me, at least somewhat, to put it into perspective. After all, it's not like Brian had any intention, or even any wish, to retire next week. Even if I were still working steadily, it would still be a long-term goal. So maybe what I need to do is to focus on the long term for myself as well. Instead of worrying about how I can bring in money right now, I should be thinking about how to improve my prospects in the long term. My efforts to branch out into recording work, for instance, even if they don't yield any results right away, will certainly add to my skill set and make me more desirable as an employee. I can also consider ideas like using my recording setup to add a podcast to this blog, which may help boost its popularity and eventually turn it into a money-maker. I could even take a stab at something completely new, like interior redecorating.

Of course, none of this means that I should stop my current efforts to find new clients or seek work from old ones. It just means that I can stop beating myself up if it doesn't get me anywhere.

Live the Wage Challenge: wrap-up

DAY 7 (Thursday):
Rite Aid: $2.94
Total spent: $2.94
Total remaining: $21.49

So, as you can see, I made it through the Live the Wage challenge with money to spare. My only expense was the bottle of vitamins I decided to go ahead and buy at the Rite Aid after initially hesitating over the purchase on Tuesday. And as it turned out, they cost me only $3 rather than $5, because I had a two-dollar reward that I'd forgotten about ready-loaded onto my Wellness Plus card (the Rite Aid store loyalty card). So in the end, I had nearly one-seventh of my $154 budget for the week left over, and I didn't refrain from buying a single thing that I would have bought under normal circumstances.

Our experience on the Live the Wage challenge was clearly not typical. Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois says she "didn't quite make it" through the week when she tried the challenge, and she concluded that it was "impossible" to survive on $7.25 an hour. Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio ran out of money on day 5 with the purchase of a bag of trail mix. And former Ohio governor Ted Strickland ran out on Thursday evening, despite having made such sacrifices as walking to a meeting a mile from his home and eating from the McDonald's dollar menu.

So why was this challenge so easy for us when it's so hard for most people? I think one major reason is quite obvious: we're a married couple with no kids. That meant we had $77 for each person in the household, which gave us a lot more wiggle room in our budget than Strickland (who had only $77 for himself) or Ryan (who had to support a family of five on a $154 budget). As I've observed before, it may not be true that two can live as cheaply as one, but it's certainly the case that two people together, sharing the cost of housing, food, and all sorts of incidentals, can live a lot more cheaply than two people apart. Yet having kids can easily eat up all that extra income and then some; Ryan's biggest budget-busters during the challenge were $25 worth of "vitamin D drops and other incidentals" for his newborn child and "summer camp for his 10-year-old daughter."

Clearly, though, being a childless couple wasn't our only advantage. Schakowsky was in exactly the same situation, with $154 to support herself and her husband, and she still exceeded her budget for the week by $4.47. CBS also quotes her as saying that on a budget this strict, "There’s no way that you can stop into a Starbucks"—even though Brian and I did exactly that on Sunday. So what did we do that Schakowsky didn't?

Her account of her experience gives a couple of clues. First of all, she notes that one of her biggest expenses was "Driving 140 miles round trip to my granddaughter’s birthday party," even though she counted only the cost of gas and tolls and not car maintenance or insurance. Brian and I, by contrast, drove our car only once during the whole week, when we made our big grocery-shopping trip on Friday. The rest of the week, the car sat in the driveway as Brian took his bike to work. Admittedly, this is an unusually small amount of driving even for us. Our usual Thursday-night dance practice was canceled due to low attendance, so we didn't have to make a trip down to Princeton for that. We also didn't drive up to Morristown for the Minstrel concert on Friday night, which we typically do at least once or twice a month, and we were fortunate enough to have a whole week of sunny weather, so Brian didn't have to drive to work even once. But even if we'd done our usual amount of driving, it's unlikely we would have had to buy any gas, since we'd just filled up the tank on the 20th, and a full tank usually keeps us going for around two weeks. And even if by some chance we'd started the challenge with a nearly empty tank, we could still have gotten by with only a few gallons—about $13 worth—to get us through the week. That wouldn't have broken our budget.

Schakowsky also observes in her account that "pets are luxury," saying "Our family dog Lucky is disabled and his needs quite expensive." Well, we also have a pet, but we didn't need to purchase anything for her during the week. A big bag of her favorite dry food costs only $25 from the PetSmart and lasts her for months; a bag of her new cat litter (which I'll tell you about sometime) is around $20 and is also good for several months. If we had to take her to the vet for some reason, that would be a significant expense that would almost certainly put us over our $77-per-person budget, but typically, all she needs is a yearly checkup, which is an expense we can plan for. Adding up all the costs of caring for our cat over the course of a year, I find they come to around $1,086, which works out to $20.88 per week. So if the Live the Wage challenge were spread across a whole year rather than compressed into one week, the cost of pet care would definitely be manageable. Of course, our pet isn't disabled like Schakowsky's, so it's not surprising that her needs are less expensive, but I think an equally big factor is that she's a cat, and as these figures from the ASPCA show, cats are cheaper to own than dogs in general.

Finally, Schakowsky notes that on the Live the Wage challenge, "We didn’t have enough money to pick up our dry cleaning, nor could we do our laundry in the coin operated washer and dryer in our D.C. apartment building." We, by contrast, did two loads of laundry in our very own washer and hung them on the line (though one of them ended up getting caught in an unexpected shower and had to go in the dryer after all). The cost of both loads, factoring in detergent, water, electricity, and gas, was almost certainly under a dollar, and most of that is covered under utilities anyway, which aren't part of the $77 budget. As for dry cleaning, in general, we just don't do it. I think the only garment we actually own right now that requires dry cleaning is Brian's good suit, which hasn't been worn in over a year.

So, to sum up, here are my rules for making it through the Live the Wage Challenge, along with some ideas for how they could be applied to real people trying to survive long-term on the real minimum wage:

• Challenge Rule #1: If at all possible, do the challenge as part of a couple. That way, you can split the costs not just of housing (which isn't counted in the budget) but also food, Internet service, medicines, household goods, and to some extent, transportation (since you only need to make one trip to the grocery store rather than two separate trips). What this means in real life is that, if you're a single person living on minimum wage, your ideal living situation is to either live with family or have a roommate and share your living expenses as much as possible. (This piece in the New York Times tells the stories of minimum-wage workers who live with their parents, share a home with a significant other, or rent a room in a friend's house to save money.)
• Challenge Rule #2: If you drive, have an efficient car that's cheap to maintain—and then don't drive it that much. It's best to avoid making a 140-mile round trip if possible, but if you have to, you're definitely better off making it in a car that will take 3.5 gallons of gas to go that distance than one that will take 7. Biking to work, as Brian does, will help if you're in an area that allows it; so will carpooling, if you can find someone to ride with. And in real life, if you live in an area with a good mass transit system, you might be better off not owning a car at all (though as I noted in this post, if you already have a car, you won't save much, if anything, by using transit instead).
• Challenge Rule #3: If you have pets, stick to smaller ones. Obviously, if you already have a dog (or several), you're not going to get rid of it for the sake of a one-week challenge. You probably won't even want to get rid of it if you're suddenly forced to live on minimum wage in real life (though you may be forced to eventually). But if you're only thinking about getting a pet, it's worth giving some thought to how much it will cost, not just to buy but to care for on a year-round basis. Cats are cheaper than dogs, and smaller pets, like a mouse, bird, or fish, are cheaper still. If you're trying to get by on a low wage, this is definitely a big consideration.
• Challenge Rule #4: Wear low-maintenance clothes. Avoid anything that requires dry cleaning; you'll be doing the environment a favor, as well as your wallet. If you work at a job that requires you to wear a suit every day, then you're almost certainly doing this challenge for one week only, and not as a way of life; you can probably manage to get by for the space of one week wearing the same jacket every day, or going with a more business-casual look. And if you're a real-life low-wage worker, then wash-and-wear clothes are probably the most practical for you anyway. Of course, if you're an apartment dweller, then even washable clothes can be a bit costly to care for; according to my records, when we were living in an apartment, we used to spend between $6 and $23 at the laundry every month. But this is another area in which sharing with others will help keep your costs down. Two people do not produce twice as many loads of laundry as one; more likely, they'll just do two large loads per week rather than two small loads (whites and colors). At a laundromat, where smaller loads may cost just as much as larger ones, sharing your laundry could cut the cost in half.

And finally, here's one rule that doesn't work for a one-week challenge, but does work in real life: plan ahead. The politicians who took the Live the Wage challenge talk about being derailed by "unexpected" expenses, such as health care. When you only have $77 to get through the week, having a big lump of that go for a doctor visit or medicines can break your budget. But in real life, you know that you're bound to get hit by this kind of expense at some point, so you can plan for it. You can budget a certain amount each week for health care, knowing that most weeks you won't use it, but when you do, you'll go through several weeks' worth at once. If you set the money aside as you go, it'll be there when you need it. This is a strategy that nearly every budgeting expert recommends, yet it's one that you can't reasonably follow during a one-week challenge, when it's largely a matter of luck whether you get hit with an unexpected expense or not.

This just brings me back, full-circle, to my biggest gripe about the Live the Wage challenge: doing it for one week simply isn't realistic. In one way, it's too easy, because you know it'll only be a week, so you can just put off large, expected expenses like the cable bill (or pay for them ahead of time). Yet in another way, it's too hard, because you can also get hit by large, unexpected expenses, and you don't have any time to plan ahead for them. As a test of your ability to live on the minimum wage, I think the simulator at NYTimes.com is actually much more useful.

The high cost of living apart

Back around Valentine's Day, I wrote a post about the ways in which it's cheaper to live as part of a couple. I noted that couples can also have some expenses that singles don't (gifts and "romantic dinners," for instance), but they pale in comparison to the cost of maintaining two separate households instead of one. Now, a recent article in the New Brunswick Star-Ledger speculates that this may actually be one reason why good old New Joysey has the lowest divorce rate in the nation: "because up here, well, it's just too expensive to break up."

There are other factors involved, of course. The article mentions several: couples in the Northeast are likely to wait longer to marry than Southerners, for instance, and they're more likely to live together before marriage (reducing the chances of a hasty decision). But the financial factor appears to be a significant one. One interviewee says the "half a house" he now rents in Somerville, NJ costs $500 more per month than the mortgage on his old house in Atlanta—meaning that the cost of maintaining two homes adds up to "thousands of dollars a month." The fact that average incomes are higher also adds up to "more money to fight about." A lawyer quoted in the article says that when she tells clients how much they're likely to end up paying in alimony, "their faces turn stone white and they look at me as if it's the second coming."

So I'd like to offer this addendum to my original post: while it may indeed be cheaper to live as a couple, getting married in order to save money is definitely not a good idea. Marrying in haste is a good recipe for a short marriage and an expensive divorce, and that's far costlier than staying single in the first place.

Savings and costs for couples

Today I came across an article on Bankrate.com that supports my argument in last Wednesday's post that couples with shared income can save money more easily than singles. This article, "Marrying for Richer Rather than Poorer," notes that in a 15-year study of married and single people, singles were able to save about $11,000 of wealth over the 15 years, while "people who got married, and stayed married, accumulated about $43,000 in 10 years of marriage." The article then goes on to point out some of the reasons why married people may find it easier to save. For instance, while it isn't strictly true that "two can live as cheaply as one," it certainly is cheaper to maintain one household than two. You can save on food by buying in larger quantities, and you're less likely to pay someone else to do outside jobs (such as housecleaning) when there are two of you to share the burden.

Tax breaks and other financial perks are a significant issue as well. While some people make a big deal about the "marriage penalty," the fact is that this penalty only applies to couples whose two incomes are roughly equal; if one partner makes more than the other, then filing as a married couple will most likely mean paying less in taxes. Moreover, there are certain tax breaks that are available only to married couples. And in addition to paying less in taxes, married couples can also inherit each other's retirement assets and collect on each other's Social Security. (In fact, given the various ways the government discriminates in favor of married couples, it's hard to swallow the argument that it isn't discrimination to prevent same-sex couples from marrying—but that's a whole article in itself.)

Now, lest you single folks start fretting about how much you could be saving by tying the knot, I should point out that another Bankrate article points out the costs of couplehood. A romantic dinner for two at Delmonico's, for example, costs about $300. A dozen red roses runs anywhere from $35 to $90 (including delivery), and an engagement ring can run into the thousands. And while this article doesn't go into the costs of an actual wedding, the popular wedding site TheKnot.com puts the average cost at an eye-popping $27,800. (Needless to say, frugal individuals can avoid a lot of these costs, or cut them considerably. It is quite possible to eat out for $30 rather than $300, and I can safely say that you can have a perfectly nice, if not lavish, wedding for $2780 rather than $27,800.)

In some ways, it seems like the way to have the best of both worlds—at least in financial terms—is to share a household, but not with a romantic partner. By living with a friend or a sibling, you can share household expenses and chores without being expected to bring flowers on Valentine's Day. True, you don't get the tax perks, but then, you also don't have to explain away the lipstick on your collar (unless your roommate is the one who does the laundry).

Who saves the most?

Today, while cruising the Dollar Stretcher forums, I ran across a link to an interesting article: "How to Save a Third of Your Income." It's an interview with Kimberly Palmer, the author of a book called “Generation Earn: The Young Professional’s Guide to Spending, Investing, and Giving Back.” She says that she saved a third of her income throughout her twenties, mostly because she and her husband "continued living like college students" throughout that period. Now that they have a house and a baby, she says they're only saving about half as much, though she hopes to return to saving a third of their income when their child is older.

One response to the article said, "I think it's an interesting realization that it it is so much easier to save when you are young and don't have liabilities." I'd heard this argument before: Amy Dacyczyn, author of the Tightwad Gazette newsletter and books, claims that of all the money she and her husband managed to save up for a down payment on a house, the largest portion was saved during the first year of their marriage, before they had kids.

I thought this over, and my reaction was "It is an interesting argument...but I'm not sure I buy it." I know for a fact that my husband and I save a much larger percentage of our joint income now than I did when I was young and single, and the reason is obvious: I was making barely enough to live on. After college, it took me 6 months to land my first job, and my starting salary was around $18,000. It took me another six months just to find an apartment that I could afford on that. Once I was out on my own (with two roommates), I always managed to make ends meet, but I didn't save anywhere close to a third of my income. I actually thought I was doing quite well to be saving anything at all.

But today, my husband and I have two incomes, and our expenses, while they're certainly higher than one single person's, are nowhere near as much as two single people would spend living separately. Despite my unpredictable freelance income (a couple of years, I've actually made less money than I did at that first job), we've always been able to live comfortably and still save well over one-third of our combined income. Even with a mortgage and a house to maintain, we still have much more slack in our budget than I had during those early years.

Of course, I had to admit that our situation might not be typical. Our combined income is probably above average, and unlike many couples, we have no kids. (Not as many as you might think, though; as of the 2000 Census, there were more married couples without children than with them. On the other hand, this refers only to children under 18, so the figure also includes empty-nesters whose kids have moved out. Still, it's clear that couples without children are not as rare as some people imagine. But I digress.) So I decided to try and dig up some statistics to answer the question: how do the income and expenses of the average single 20-something compare to those of the average married 30-something with children?

After a little poking around, I found what I wanted at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These statistics are all from the 2009 Consumer Expenditure Survey, Table 3: "Age of reference person: Average annual expenditures and characteristics." This table compares the expenses of "consumer units" (which translates roughly to "households") based on the age of a "reference person" (that is, one of the heads of the household). In households where the "reference person" is under 25 years old, the average number of children under 18 is 0.4. Since you can't have a fraction of a child, this means that most of the young folks in this group are childless. In these households, the average annual income is $25,695 ($25,522 after taxes), but the average annual expenditures are $28,119. So the average savings for this group is actually negative; the average person in this group lives beyond his/her income.

Contrast this with the average household of 25-to-34-year-olds. These folks have, on average, 1.1 children, and their expenditures are naturally higher: $46,494 a year, on average. But their average income is also much higher: $58,946 before taxes, or $57,239 after taxes. So this household can save an average of $10,745 a year—about 19 percent of their after-tax income. Move up to the 35-to-44-year-old age group, and things look even brighter. The average household in this group has 1.3 children, and their expenditures have gone up to $57,301. But their income is now $77,005 before taxes, or $74,900 after taxes. So they are saving $17,599 a year, or 23 percent of after-tax income.

Now, I'm not trying to argue that any of these "average" households is representative of how much it's possible to save. My own experience, as well as Kimberly Palmer's, shows that some people are able to save much more than these averages, both in their youth and into middle age. But if we look to these statistics for an idea of what's typical, I would have to conclude that while it may be possible to save money as a single person in your early 20s, it's definitely easier when you're older and part of a two-income household—kids or no kids.

Thrift Week, day seven: Lust

And so we come to the end of our Thrift Week celebration, which concludes with the always interesting topic of lust. There's no shortage of examples in which lust, in its most literal sense, can be costly: we can see plenty of cases in the news of men in high places being brought down by sex scandals, but even among ordinary folk it's clear that the inability to control sexual impulses can lead to costly affairs, costly divorces, and in some cases, costly habits such as prostitution or pornography. For young women, the consequences can be even more serious, since they're the ones who generally bear the financial burden of unintended pregnancy. Early childbirth can mean abandoning college—perhaps even not finishing high school—and being stuck on welfare or in dead-end jobs. It's hard to think of any other mistake a girl could make that's so likely to trap her in poverty. And, of course, people of both sexes can be financially harmed by lust—or even love—when it leads them into an imprudent marriage with a partner who has expensive tastes or wasteful habits.

To me, however, it's still more intriguing to consider a less literal interpretation of the word lust. As I noted in the first post of this series, the sin now known as lust or lechery was identified in the original Latin as luxuria, a term more literally translated as "extravagance." The author of the TipHero piece on the seven deadly sins also took this angle on lust, talking about how often people "fall in love" with some luxury item and just have to have it, regardless of the cost. This figurative form of lechery—what we might call "consumer lust"—bears a strong similarity to the more literal kind. Think about how often people talk about "falling in love" with a house, for instance, so that they're willing to go completely out of their price range to satisfy their longing. Or consider how cars, another big-ticket item, are often discussed in sexual terms. The fabled "new-car smell," in particular, seems to be a more potent aphrodisiac than any perfume. (In fact, if they could find a way of bottling that elusive scent, a woman could probably make herself more irresistible to men with it than with any fragrance now on the market.)

Though this form of lust is often treated as an exclusively female affliction, a moment's consideration makes it obvious that it isn't really anything of the kind. Women may be most vulnerable to the attractions of clothing, footwear, and furniture, but page through any electronics catalogue and you'll see in a minute that the newest and priciest items are being marketed as toys for boys (of the grown-up variety). In fact, according to this article, a five-year-old study done at Stanford shows that shopping addiction (which is now recognized as a genuine mental disorder), is nearly as prevalent among men as it is among women. And even when shopping isn't actually pathological, men are by no means immune to temptation. Another survey dating from around the same time shows that while women may spend more time shopping, men actually spend more money, at least during holiday sales.

And here's another, less obvious point: according to this article, referenced by Doug in response to Thursday's entry, sometimes consumer spending actually is linked to lust in its more literal form. According to this 2009 article, "men in the mating condition" are more inclined to spend money on "conspicuous luxuries" than men who aren't looking for a mate. The article went on to note that men seemed likely to spend in order to impress women only "when the potential mating situation is a short-term hook-up rather than a long-term relationship"—in other words, when lust rather than anything that might be called love is the driving factor. (Women, interestingly, don't seem as inclined to spend in order to attract a mate; they're more likely instead to engage in "conspicuous pro-social volunteering." In other words, men show off for women by spending money, while women show off for men by being active in the community. The article didn't say how well these strategies actually work; personally, I can't help wondering if trying to attract a mate through volunteerism is likely to do much good, especially with men who are looking mainly for "a short-term hook-up.")

So, to sum up, lust can drive spending in three ways:

1. spending money on people we're attracted to;
2. spending money on stuff we're attracted to; and
3. spending money on stuff in order to attract people.

And which of these is the most destructive? That will obviously depend on the people involved—as well as the stuff.

And with that, we conclude our Thrift Week series. Talking about sin all week, I have to say, hasn't been nearly as entertaining as I'd hoped. Maybe next year I'll come up with a juicer topic, like tax strategies.

The Frugal Suitor

Someone on the Dollar Stretcher forums posted a link to this article in last week's New York Times: "How to Be Frugal and Still Be Asked on Dates." The upshot of it seems to be that although saving money has become a lot more popular and socially acceptable in the past couple of years, it's still widely seen as a turn-off in the dating world. In a way, this makes sense, if you think of the way our society has traditionally been structured: women of earlier generations had to marry to achieve financial security, so a man hoping to attract a mate would flash around his money to prove that he had plenty of it. Unfortunately, this strategy is likely to backfire, since a spendthrift mate is actually less likely to have money in the bank with which to support a family. It also creates a problem for frugal folks seeking partners with similar inclinations. Spending lavishly on your partner, as seems to be expected during courtship, is a good way to attract a mate with expensive tastes—not someone who's prudent with money.

Amy Dacyczyn wrestled with this problem in the first Tightwad Gazette book. She pointed out that a marriage is more likely to work out if both partners have the same views about money. Unfortunately, it's hard to find a frugal partner when society expects you to spend extravagantly while dating. So her suggestion to tightwads seeking same was to resist this urge, which sends the wrong message to potential partners, and instead put out "frugal date bait." Her examples include home-grown flowers, home-cooked dinners, picnics in the park, and for the truly adventurous, "tightwad dates" like an afternoon of yard-saling. With this type of "bait," rather than expensive outings and gifts, you're more likely to attract a mate who doesn't value a romantic gesture based on how much it costs.

Speaking for myself, I can honestly say that frugal dates and gifts are my favorite kind. It's not that I don't appreciate the occasional fancy meal or expensive present—especially coming from my fellow-tightwad husband, who never spends extravagantly on himself. But the little things, in their way, mean even more. One of the first "dates" Brian and I ever had together was a visit to a big sort of gallery/flea market. I tried on a dress at one of the secondhand clothing booths, and he admired it so much that he bought it for me—for all of $15. It was such an impulsive, romantic gesture that I cherish that dress to this day, even though I haven't been that size in years.