Life After Divorce Needs a Lot of Patience
And maybe some alcohol.
The biggest shock after divorce (other than the emotional gut punch of destroying your children’s lives) is the financial loss. It’s significant.
Like, really significant.
Without my ex-husband’s income, I’m down around $175k a year. That’s not a few grand. Why did I behave so frugally before? We could have traveled and bought a shit ton of stuff.
In reality, my ex-husband was a hoarder, which requires money to fund. And because his industry is fickle, I dumped everything into a ginormous emergency fund (which I used as a down payment for my current house). I wasn’t Scrooge McDuck laughing while climbing on my piles of money.
I was naïve in thinking this would be that bad financially. Sure, I’d have to tighten the waistband, but I’m a simple chick. I don’t buy new clothes, new purses, or go on trips. My kids would enjoy experiences to compensate for the lack of space for new toys.
For the latter, I didn’t expect that experiences with kids would cost so much. I divorced during the pandemic and forgot how expensive things are to do. I’m constantly scouring for free events but let’s be real; you get what you pay for. I’ve dragged my kids to many events that lead to them crying and me wondering why I even wasted the cost of gas.
The biggest hurdle I’m facing is the necessary home expenses. Admittedly, on two full-time incomes, if something needed repairing I didn’t think twice about calling a handyman to fix the problem. Maintaining the large house we shared wasn’t hard.
When I bought my current house which is less than half the size of my marital home, I thought that meant a downsize in maintenance costs.
I was wrong.
What was I thinking? The cost to repair a washing machine doesn’t change when downsizing a home. The cost to fix a water leak is the same. The cost of new appliances is the same. Replacing a toilet costs the same.
While my take-home income was drastically slashed, my expenses (even my mortgage) stayed the same.
A few weeks ago I dealt with a water leak. To stay ahead of the potential damage, I bit the bullet and re-piped the house (I can’t tell you how often I wanted to light the house on fire and run). That cost a small fortune and I still need to hire painters to re-paint parts that I can’t reach on my own.
Last night, Jeremy came over and fixed my wonky washing machine. He also improved something with my dryer. I’ve never dated a guy who is so damn handy when it comes to home repairs. I’d go broke if I had to pay for the quality of life improvements he’s helped me with.
I woke up feeling good, knowing that I didn’t pay to repair my washing machine. I may even be able to afford a gardener to tackle some of the craziness in my backyard which is overtaken by brown widow spiders.
And then I learned my fridge broke. With Jeremy at work and the complexity of the job, I didn’t bother asking him. I found a repairman who was able to come out asap.
It’s a French door-style refrigerator and the freezer’s bottom fan is burnt out. I threw a small fortune’s worth of thawed food. The repair guy told me the part isn’t available anywhere and is a special order.
That special order is two to four weeks. Weeks.
I pay the service call fee, which is thankfully applied to the cost of installing the new part, and white-knuckled my rage as I walked him out the door.
It’s something. It’s always something.
I’m tired of flopping down on the same spot on my couch after something goes disastrously wrong, fighting the tears and failing. This is the same position I was in last month with the leaking water pipe. And before that, a leaking from an air conditioner part. I’ll go berserk if I keep recalling malfunctions further back in time.
As usual, I try to think with a Growth Mindset. I got a free washing machine repair. I have a chest freezer in the garage (sadly it’s packed so it couldn’t save the food I tossed) not full of ready-to-eat meals but at least the ingredients to cook again. The fridge part of the unit still works so I won’t have to worry about not having milk for the kids. The cost to repair is under four hundred dollars, which is a bargain compared to the other expenses I’ve incurred. I have a job that allows me to be on a Zoom meeting while simultaneously opening the door to a repairman.
I’m blessed. It could be worse. It could be so much worse.
Lather, rinse, and repeat that mantra in my mind. It could be worse.
But what if this is worse? What if in the multiverse, there’s a version of me that thinks what I’m experiencing now is her nightmare? On the flip side, there’s another version of me dealing with more extreme scenarios.
Am I homeless? No, I can still pay my bills. I haven’t lived paycheck-to-paycheck since my ex-husband was laid off over a decade ago and even then, we had his unemployment income. Before that, I was 23.
It’s been over twenty years since I’ve lived paycheck-to-paycheck and this time, I’ve got kids. The stakes are higher. The bills are higher. My quality of life is lower.
I keep thinking there’ll be a reprieve. This is all par for the course in the first year of divorce and moving out. Everything will go haywire. This was expected.
Except it wasn’t. Not to this extent. I misjudged my property tax bill (completely my fault, admittedly I did the math wrong) and it’s not four thousand dollars, it’s nine thousand dollars. My expenses aren’t twenty bucks here or there. This post-divorced life is costing me thousands.
This is the price of freedom. Its price tag is annually one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. That’s the price of how much I loathed my marriage and needed freedom from my ex-husband.
If you’re contemplating divorce, consider the cost you’d pay to never live with your spouse again. I’ve sold my soul to the devil, to the tune of $175k.
