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My past writing on HD and numerous comments have made it clear my retirement is unique in that I have a good pension that together with our combined Social Security exceeds my working base salary the day before I retired. It also has been noted that my pension has given us a financial advantage by not being solely dependent on investments income. It’s all true.
But I have noticed that many people on HD are from couples with working spouses, two incomes, two sources of saving, two SS benefits, one possibly higher that a spouses 50% benefit. The opportunity in some cases to live on one income and save the other.
Money wise what Connie and I have after 56 years of marriage was the result of one income from July 1970 forward when our first child was born. Of course, that was our choice. Actually it wasn’t even that, Connie working after we had children was never discussed. We both assumed it would not happen. (Connie did work very part time in a doctors office for a short period – her doctor asked her to help out – when our children were grown.)
By default, our lifestyle was determined and limited by one income, an income that grew gradually over fifty years.
We eventually reached our financial and retirement retirement goals. Our advantage is a pension.
Was your advantage two incomes? How did (does) two incomes impact your financial situation? Necessity or advantage?
Both me and my wife started our career 40 years ago working for Texas State Government. At that point we have to contribute 3% of our income to retirement system. It is kind of force upon us, since we do not have any idea about retirement. I left the state after 12 years, when I turn 60 a few years ago, I got a monthly check around $1,600/month for life plus I will be qualified for state health insurance when I am on Medicare at 65. My wife worked with the State for 25 years, then retired from the State at 52 with a monthly pension of $4,500/month plus full medical benefits for life. She came back to work for Texas county last 12 years, any now qualify for county retirement of $3,000/month. So, in a year or two, we have 3 pensions and social security plus free health care. So I can say double incomes and pensions are the best for us, just pure lucky. We also stay in our current house for 25 years, the one before for 10 years, that I think save us a lot of money. Noted that the State/County only pay 70-80% of private companies.
Dual incomes? They’ve become important because the economy has responded to essentially doubling the labor force by seeing wages stagnate.
I suspect if you examined younger people, if they don’t have one exceptionally large income, they need the 2 to get close to a life style they want.
Perhaps the key word is “want.” I know during the first 30 or so years of marriage we didn’t have the lifestyle we wanted, we had the one we could afford.
what I can’t understand is how are house prices rising from their already staggering heights if nobody can afford to buy them. Prices can’t rise or be sustained if there are no buyers.
For us it wasn’t either/or. We benefitted from both a pension and 2 incomes. My pension was frozen after about 30 years, so I did miss out on service and salary credit for 5 of my highest earning years. My pension ended up being about 35% of my final year’s salary. Having two incomes in our highest earnings years helped us pay for college and max out retirement savings in the last dozen years prior to retirement.
We had our 2 sons in the first 3 years of marriage. I worked full-time, while finishing my engineering degree at night. My oldest son was 2.5 when he attended my graduation. My wife is a nurse and was able to work a variety of part-time and shift positions when our children were young. This allowed her to be heavily involved in the boys lives, as well as grow her work experience. Her income in these early years of our marriage was critical. It wasn’t always easy, and we had to juggle man