Do Stay-at-Home Moms Survive Financially?

I was foolish to never plan for an emergency

The world and my mother taught me to be responsible. To plan for adversity by having health insurance, car insurance, home insurance, and more.

I dutifully dotted my I’s and crossed my T’s.

I was prepared.

Until I wasn’t.

No one spoke of relationship emergencies.

Or how they can bankrupt you.

I was surrounded by pragmatic, logical adults. But when I became a stay-at-home mother no one said to plan for a rainy day. Let alone a flood that may wipe out my entire financial life.

It’s confusing.

The statistics were there.

Partnerships end. Even ones that begin with starry-eyed lovers, good intentions, and seemingly permanent vows.

But there was no forecasting this disaster and I’m not certain why.

Is the emotion of a relationship not as quantifiable as the damage inflicted upon personal property? Do ideals cloud love from stone-cold facts? What makes otherwise practical, organized people unprepared?

There was no warning.

No “Danger Will Robinson” moment.

If you stay home to raise your children, you could financially lose everything.

Worse, if you remain home too long, you will pass from highly marketable to somewhat marketable to barely marketable.

It will happen without notice. The first few years you are still independent. Dipping your toes back into the workforce will be effortless. In the next few years, you’ll still have a decent chance.

After that, time is a whirlwind.

You’ll realize you have parted with more than you initially understood.

When you made the choice to do what was best for your family, it was not necessarily best for you. You made a decision to become dependent on another person.

Sure, initially it seems like you’re a part of a team.

I certainly believed I was.

No looming threat.

Nothing could be more innocently denied by many women including myself.

But the risk is huge.

When we walk away from the ability to support ourselves, it creates an imbalance in a relationship. One person becomes powerful and the other powerless. Not necessarily at first, it’s a gradual build. And of course, there are healthy respectful marriages that avoid this outcome.

But many relationships falter under this substantial imbalance.

Divorce reveals this.

The powerful and the powerless.

The wealthy and the bankrupt.

I didn’t lose my entire life savings and retirement strictly because I stayed home to raise my beautiful children. I lost it because I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t prepare for the unexpected. I didn’t save for the proverbial rainy day.

I didn’t have insurance.

I trusted a person.

That was my entire safeguard.

As I say this, I recognize the absurdity.

Me, the planner, the goal-setter, and the business-minded. The one who paid for college and supported herself from a young age. The girl who built a business with supposedly the other member of her now-defunct team.

The same girl who was firmly risk-averse.

Had unknowingly risked it all.

And he took it. Every last cent of our savings and retirement.

And if that weren’t enough for him, he altered my persona. I was no longer the good mother. I was the lazy wife. I was no longer the woman who built a business with him. I was an ungrateful woman who had taken advantage of him while I lived a life of luxury.

He was a successful, affluent man.

I had zero safeguards.

He controlled the money. I was dependent on him. In many ways, it was better while I was married. Especially the years I paid the bills. I was still entirely immersed in our financial data.

But the problems arose, he wanted the bills back, and I was naive.

I surrendered what was left of the little independence I had.

Again, based on trust.

Not a warranty.

An insurance company would have treated me better than he did.

They would have been rational. They would have assessed the value in my years of work. There would have been a potentially fair outcome. Because they are in the business of discerning damage and reconciling.

But there is no relationship insurance.

This means walking away from our independence comes with a high-risk factor.

I married my college sweetheart. A guy I met at nineteen at a Catholic college. Someone I believed had the same values. A guy I mistakenly called my best friend not only the love of my life.

He became powerful while I became powerless.

There are some who won’t believe this will happen to them.

Based strictly on trust.

Not a warranty.