hmm.. I don't think capping a CEO's pay at 20 to 25 times of the lowest paid employee would accomplish anything besides making that lowest paid employee feel bad. There are also lots of ways to get around a capped salary. For example, Steve Jobs & Google CEOs technically do not draw a huge salary (I think Jobs has a $1 salary or something), but they have a buttload of stock options to pad their pockets.
As to fairness, I think these pay packages are a product of free enterprise so there is no point in crying foul. Each person's job has a pricetag and people get paid what others are willing to pay for them. Technically CEO compensation is supposed to be approved by a company's board. So there is some voting that is done behind doors, but most employees do not get to participate. Most corporations are not democracies, nor should they be because if too many people get involved in making decisions then nothing gets done. Hell, just look at the United States government. The role of a CEO is to be a dictator, and as is with everything, there are good CEOs and bad CEOs. The good ones are amazing and provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of people and create wealth greater than nations (e.g. Bill Gates & the Johnson family of Johnson & Johnson). The bad ones fail and get ousted. That's life in a capitalistic society.
As to David's comment about putting a cap on every income and deciding how many kids people can have. That happened in China. I am an only child because of the policy there and everyone had the same assigned housing in the same condo complex where my parents worked. So as I said in my article about rich being evil, "the last thing we want is a society where everyone is forced at gunpoint to be equal on every level."
Since this is still America, i think that it isnt your business how much company's charge for goods and services or how much they pay their employees. Their company, their money, their decision.
Why dont we put a cap on all salaries? Why dont we all just get paid the same, live in houses with the same square footage, wait in line for bread?
Hey, maybe we could decide how many kids they can have too!
Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I would like to reiterate based on the continued discussion that staying home even without kids isn't necessarily a free pass. There are many contributions that can be made (shopping for decent real estate investments, light freelance income, keeping things financially balanced at home, etc.) Certainly the point of calculating this with higher incomes versus lower is incredibly valid. If both incomes are high enough, then even a personal assistant and support staff become affordable if you delegate the right tasks. And of course, health care benefits need to be considered.
OK, yes. If things get stressfull I can always take a day off and get a grip. However, I also am the first one to pull an all nighter or rush home across the globe to help out with ill family members when the need arises.
But I still say staying at home is what you make of it. We value the extra support and balance within our home that comes from having one of us (and yes, in the beginning it was always me) have total flexibility with our schedule. And since investing and researching those investments isn't something I planned ever to make a career of, it takes me a little longer than a trained professional to make sure I'm picking the correct option for us. One thing people might not think of is putting work into a house. If you build the right amount of equity and cash out at the allowed residential time limit, you can take that cash and upgrade your lifestyle / investments accordingly. This was the case with our last house. (the one before the flood, not the one that got wiped out with it) There was no way I could have banked the same amount of my gross salary for five years straight if I had worked traditionally for that amount in the classroom. But staying at home and making sure we pinched every penny for savings / mortgage / and taking my time starting a business ensured we made those payments and the savings totals we strove for. Then we cashed out and I feel like I got my salary retroactively and in full. Not everyone's comfortable liquidating a home every few years and keeping their life in limbo until it's a great time to buy again. But compared to working for an evil boss, it's a choice that's at the top of my list. Again, everyone is making good points here, just tossing my hat into the ring with what's worked at our house.
The real problem is that CEO's of large corporations have zero vested interest in actually doing anything. I work for a small company, my boss has his entire life tied up in the company. If it fails, he is going to be in a world of hurt. He works harder than most people and is far fairer to his employees than most people I know.
CEO's should always have a financial vested interest in seeing the company do well. Here's a perfectly reasonable idea - make the CEO stake 1/2 his net worth on the company, if the companies stock declines, he pays for it out of pocket up until 1/2 his net worth. If it does well, then he can take some sort of consumerate pay out of the company.
The other problem is that the stock market is no longer driven by real economics, but this whole numbers chasing games. If a stock is "expected" to profit 23 cents/share, and it actually only manages 22 cents/share that quarter, does that instantly mean the company should be worth 22 billion less dollars (to use an extreme number). No, the company should have a market cap that is in line with realistic intrinsic values, if they don't do quite as well, the stock should decline a bit, and if they do slightly better than average it should rise a bit. But nowadays stock prices can slash serious bits of market cap off or add to it just on the most benign news - silly.
The idea Lucille mentions as part of the compensation picture in Sweden strikes me as right, fair, equitable, and just plain sensible. CAP a CEO's pay at no more than 20-25 times the pay of the lowest or even average worker at that company. If you're going to give incentive bonuses to the bosses, give them to the workers too... who do those bosses think puts that money in their pocket!
I think it is Sweden that has a cap on CEO pay where they can't make more than 20 times the wage of the lowest paid employee. That sounds reasonable to me. For all of the excuses I have heard why CEOs should get some of the insane pay packages I have yet to see one that holds water. Hours, skill, risk? Most CEO's put in on average about the same amount of hours as some of the mid level management that gets overworked to save the company money. Skill is relative, many CEO's ruin a company yet get picked up in weeks by another one and given another big compensation package. MBA programs are churning people out in large numbers every year, it is not like there is a shortage of aspiring CEO's out there. Risk is pretty much nil unless they get caught red handed being involved in illegal activity. Most of the time someone lower on the food chain gets blamed and goes to prison while the CEO claims to have not known it was going on. Since the compensation packages more recently involve no financial risk and almost always a sweet golden parachute there really is zero risk even if your a total screw up or a crook.
Many people keep touting the free market even in the face of how out of wack this is. Companies keep cutting employee pay and raising prices, you rarely see a CEO take a pay cut. So in a way we are all paying for this through higher prices and eroding wages. It has become so out of hand and so systemic we really have to set some rules because just about every large company is operating under this model, there are no other options to pick from.
"The idea that an average family has more money with a dual-income then a single-income is a myth. Of course there are always exceptions, but if you run the numbers with all the expenses - a single-income families actually has the edge."
I think this is only true in some situations. If the 2nd spouse can earn more than 50% of the primary breadwinner, this just doesn't play out. Trust me, I have run the numbers and the fact that my wife could easily make 50% of my high 5 figure salary which means we would be much better off financially even after all of the extras are included (daycare, dining out, outsourced home tasks, work attire, etc). We CHOOSE to have my wife stay home to raise our children. It is indeed a luxury and we are thankful for it (probably not often enough, though) :) Now, if we didn't have kids, she would take no pride in staying at home when she could be helping secure our future. After all, she is just as smart, educated and motivated as me. Should she take a free pass because she is a woman? She has too much self respect for that.
The issue of two incomes possibly earning less depends on income and expenses related to the second person going to work. You take into account the difference in food costs due to possibly more convenience food or takeout than you would eat if one person was home dealing with cooking. You also take into account extra gas for getting to work and either additional mileage or need to upgrade a car due to work. Then additional wardrobe, meals out at work, childcare and anything else your paying to have done because the second person is working. You subtract all those additional expenses from the second wage earner's income.
20/20 did a story on this a long time ago. There was a couple with two small kids and both worked. They both had jobs that didn't pay really great. They looked at the wife's office job and after subtracting all the expenses related to her working and they were actually losing money by her working. They were also running themselves ragged trying to work, commute, be parents and run a house. I think the equation is less valid if one or both can make larger incomes from either job since the expenses eat a smaller portion of the wages.
My wife is currently in school getting her MBA and I work full time so we're currently living without the benefits of either a working mom or a stay at home mom.
My salary is good enough to support us, but childcare for two takes a large (~$400/month) chunk of that and our house doesn't stay as clean as we'd like it to without her home.
The two things I miss most about having her be a stay at home mom are 1) It's hard to find a baby sitter who is good and who is affordable. They all seem to want to just stick the kids in front of movies all day. 2) Coming home to fresh home cooked dinners. Since we're both done at about 5 or 6:00 each night we eat a lot of frozen pizza, and make and freeze a lot of meals.
The key issue is not the amount of money, but what the CEO is being paid for. CEOs in their current form have no accountability. At most, they are paid based on short-term goals that aren't in line with the company's long-term success. And in the average case, the board just throws truckloads of money at them no matter what they do.
In a slightly better world, their pay should have a large risk/reward element to it, just like an investor. Worker bees like us are paid <100k mostly to show up and do what we are told. Executives are paid--or should be paid, in theory--based on tangible results.
I don't see a problem with paying a CEO for good long-term results, so long as he is proportionally penalized for bad results.
Under the current model, a CEO's compensation has no motivational downside. Even if he is forced out in shame, he still gets away with several million.
My husband and I both work - technically we could live on just my salary but we would have less that 1k leftover after bills to pay for non-bill things (like food, chicken feed, vet visits, etc). Plus I wouldn't want to be the single wage earner - I would feel an enormous amount of pressure if I was. My cousin is (her husband is freelance) and she feels a constant fear and pressure that she is and always will be the one who has to support their family.
Reading all the posts though has inspired me to try to put the majority of what my husband makes into savings and to try and live on just the extra that I make and a bit from his salary. Will be interesting to see if we can do it.
#24 - OMG, I had totally forgotten about flavored popcorn! We used to pop regular microwave popcorn at work and then toss toasted Indian spices all over it, like garam masala or Kitchen King. Oh, that was such a heavenly treat. We started using it as post-drunk food as well.
"The idea that an average family has more money with a dual-income then a single-income is a myth. Of course there are always exceptions, but if you run the numbers with all the expenses - a single-income families actually has the edge."
I also disagree. Do you think the millions of dual income struggling families haven't run the numbers? It MAY become true once kids are involved, but I can't see how it is possibly true, almost EVER, before kids are involved.
That being said there are other reasons to stay at home. Just don't tell me it is the optimal financial choice (esp when no kids are involved).
I especially appreciate the last comment on Social Security. I would also recommend that if one parent is a stay-at-home, they have some very good life insurance!
I really don't. I guess I'm just appalled at how we easily generalize both the rich and poor.
I think it's not about rich or poor making someone evil; it's a person's own actions and attitudes regardless of economic status that decide that.
I mean, I know lots of rich people who pay their bills. Yes, there are those who don't but that doesn't mean all rich people don't pay their bills. Even if those same rich people who didn't pay their bills were poor, they probably still wouldn't pay their bills. So their selfishness doesn't come from being rich.
And I disagree with the idea that every fortune was unethically gained. I concede that it is occasionally harder to gain money ethically, but it can be done. Someone I know well got rich because he worked an average of 20-hour days, seven days a week for almost twenty years. He saved the money, started and expanded a business, and paid his employees fairly. Now, he helps small entrepreneurs start up business ideas and supports local farmers and charities. With someone like that, how can every fortune be unethically gained?
I really hope that class warfare disappears altogether one day. It's painful to see how it affects so many good people --- whether rich, poor, or in between --- the wrong way.
Thanks for this great article, as its a very interesting topic... keep writing more and more! Time management is a big issue, and one that all managers must keep working at!
Not being selfish here, I would really like this post to get more attention for that very reason. It's probably the most important story I've ever covered.
Unfortunately, when she became sick a few years after her divorce, she did not have enough work credits to be eligible for Social Security disability.
It usually takes 20 credits over the last 10 years to remain eligible - and each credit (up to 4 a year) is earned by making $1,050 in earned income (in 2008).
Surely even a stay at home spouse can find enough part-time work to generate $2,100 in earned income over the course of a year?
One BIG benefit of qualifying for SS disability is that the disabled individual becomes eligible for Medicare within 24 months (sooner for some diseases)
It would have helped enormously had my mom been able to get SS disability (over 10 years from diagnosis until her death)
"The idea that an average family has more money with a dual-income then a single-income is a myth. Of course there are always exceptions, but if you run the numbers with all the expenses - a single-income families actually has the edge."
I disagree. My wife brings home about $2000 to $2500 per month from her job. Our only extra expenses are child care (about $425 per month for 2 days/week) and gas (about $50), so our net gain from my wifes job is quite a bit.
We split the house and yard work, so that doesn't cost any extra.
I have almost always lived on one income, married or not, and don't think it strange. My ex-hubby was a stay at home boy-toy, and an excellent cook. It was nice to come home to a hot home cooked meal and a nicely weeded garden :) I'd do it again in a minute :) I didn't consider it a luxury tho - he was unemployed and looking for work, which eventually he found.
And I wouldn't mind being the stay at home person either :)
I'd say it's very much a luxury compared to friends who have to work two full-time jobs to pay all the bills. It takes my wife being a doctor for us to do it. I definitely lose a few man-points, but it's worth it. It's not ideal. More ideal would be us both working half time, earning the same amount of money. As a teacher, I'd have to work full-time to let her work 3/4 time, and then we'd just break even. Not the best trade-off.
I'd say if one were to plan a perfectly balanced financial/home existence in our current society, you'd somehow manage to get through college without debts (rich parents?) become a high-paid professional, marry another high-paid professional, then both work half-time or less.
This is hilarious. He said Ghetto Pizza. That's a fun post right there that Jabulani Leffall - go to his blog please- wishes he would have done.
But question, if you're really smashed, S'mores and a Gyro from the Projects, why would you want to fumble through the kitchen when you can spin time leaving your beer goggles on with tonight's mistake?
LOL:) Great post but I have to agree with the guest above me. A large 7-Eleven Big-gulp cup of H20, some Asprin and a quick shot of room temperature Guinness Food Stuff to pad you're stomach before or after you've taken off those goggles is the best snack.
My husband and I both work full-time and I do freelance on the side. With both of our incomes, we are barely scraping by, and I mean barely. We have no kids, two cars that are 5 & 11 years old, and just purchased a house a few years ago. I have student loans and we have credit card debt. Every month we have to juggle things just to get our bills paid. I feel lucky if we can manage to make a dent in any of the debt, let alone save. I've actually had to pull money out of the savings for 3 months in a row now.
I would love to be a stay-at-home mom, making still working some freelance. But there is just no way we could make it work financially. We are very frugal. We hardly eat out, I clip coupons and shop the sales. We don't go see movies or buy new books, we rent and go to the library. Our big luxury is the AC b/c hubby works outside all day and can't stand the heat when he gets home.
I envy those that can do it. I hope to be able to some day, but I just don't know how we could. I would definitely consider it a luxury b/c you do have the safety net and a more supportive home life.
hmm.. I don't think capping a CEO's pay at 20 to 25 times of the lowest paid employee would accomplish anything besides making that lowest paid employee feel bad. There are also lots of ways to get around a capped salary. For example, Steve Jobs & Google CEOs technically do not draw a huge salary (I think Jobs has a $1 salary or something), but they have a buttload of stock options to pad their pockets.
As to fairness, I think these pay packages are a product of free enterprise so there is no point in crying foul. Each person's job has a pricetag and people get paid what others are willing to pay for them. Technically CEO compensation is supposed to be approved by a company's board. So there is some voting that is done behind doors, but most employees do not get to participate. Most corporations are not democracies, nor should they be because if too many people get involved in making decisions then nothing gets done. Hell, just look at the United States government. The role of a CEO is to be a dictator, and as is with everything, there are good CEOs and bad CEOs. The good ones are amazing and provide jobs for hundreds of thousands of people and create wealth greater than nations (e.g. Bill Gates & the Johnson family of Johnson & Johnson). The bad ones fail and get ousted. That's life in a capitalistic society.
As to David's comment about putting a cap on every income and deciding how many kids people can have. That happened in China. I am an only child because of the policy there and everyone had the same assigned housing in the same condo complex where my parents worked. So as I said in my article about rich being evil, "the last thing we want is a society where everyone is forced at gunpoint to be equal on every level."
Since this is still America, i think that it isnt your business how much company's charge for goods and services or how much they pay their employees. Their company, their money, their decision.
Why dont we put a cap on all salaries? Why dont we all just get paid the same, live in houses with the same square footage, wait in line for bread?
Hey, maybe we could decide how many kids they can have too!
Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I would like to reiterate based on the continued discussion that staying home even without kids isn't necessarily a free pass. There are many contributions that can be made (shopping for decent real estate investments, light freelance income, keeping things financially balanced at home, etc.) Certainly the point of calculating this with higher incomes versus lower is incredibly valid. If both incomes are high enough, then even a personal assistant and support staff become affordable if you delegate the right tasks. And of course, health care benefits need to be considered.
OK, yes. If things get stressfull I can always take a day off and get a grip. However, I also am the first one to pull an all nighter or rush home across the globe to help out with ill family members when the need arises.
But I still say staying at home is what you make of it. We value the extra support and balance within our home that comes from having one of us (and yes, in the beginning it was always me) have total flexibility with our schedule. And since investing and researching those investments isn't something I planned ever to make a career of, it takes me a little longer than a trained professional to make sure I'm picking the correct option for us. One thing people might not think of is putting work into a house. If you build the right amount of equity and cash out at the allowed residential time limit, you can take that cash and upgrade your lifestyle / investments accordingly. This was the case with our last house. (the one before the flood, not the one that got wiped out with it) There was no way I could have banked the same amount of my gross salary for five years straight if I had worked traditionally for that amount in the classroom. But staying at home and making sure we pinched every penny for savings / mortgage / and taking my time starting a business ensured we made those payments and the savings totals we strove for. Then we cashed out and I feel like I got my salary retroactively and in full. Not everyone's comfortable liquidating a home every few years and keeping their life in limbo until it's a great time to buy again. But compared to working for an evil boss, it's a choice that's at the top of my list. Again, everyone is making good points here, just tossing my hat into the ring with what's worked at our house.
The real problem is that CEO's of large corporations have zero vested interest in actually doing anything. I work for a small company, my boss has his entire life tied up in the company. If it fails, he is going to be in a world of hurt. He works harder than most people and is far fairer to his employees than most people I know.
CEO's should always have a financial vested interest in seeing the company do well. Here's a perfectly reasonable idea - make the CEO stake 1/2 his net worth on the company, if the companies stock declines, he pays for it out of pocket up until 1/2 his net worth. If it does well, then he can take some sort of consumerate pay out of the company.
The other problem is that the stock market is no longer driven by real economics, but this whole numbers chasing games. If a stock is "expected" to profit 23 cents/share, and it actually only manages 22 cents/share that quarter, does that instantly mean the company should be worth 22 billion less dollars (to use an extreme number). No, the company should have a market cap that is in line with realistic intrinsic values, if they don't do quite as well, the stock should decline a bit, and if they do slightly better than average it should rise a bit. But nowadays stock prices can slash serious bits of market cap off or add to it just on the most benign news - silly.
The idea Lucille mentions as part of the compensation picture in Sweden strikes me as right, fair, equitable, and just plain sensible. CAP a CEO's pay at no more than 20-25 times the pay of the lowest or even average worker at that company. If you're going to give incentive bonuses to the bosses, give them to the workers too... who do those bosses think puts that money in their pocket!
I think it is Sweden that has a cap on CEO pay where they can't make more than 20 times the wage of the lowest paid employee. That sounds reasonable to me. For all of the excuses I have heard why CEOs should get some of the insane pay packages I have yet to see one that holds water. Hours, skill, risk? Most CEO's put in on average about the same amount of hours as some of the mid level management that gets overworked to save the company money. Skill is relative, many CEO's ruin a company yet get picked up in weeks by another one and given another big compensation package. MBA programs are churning people out in large numbers every year, it is not like there is a shortage of aspiring CEO's out there. Risk is pretty much nil unless they get caught red handed being involved in illegal activity. Most of the time someone lower on the food chain gets blamed and goes to prison while the CEO claims to have not known it was going on. Since the compensation packages more recently involve no financial risk and almost always a sweet golden parachute there really is zero risk even if your a total screw up or a crook.
Many people keep touting the free market even in the face of how out of wack this is. Companies keep cutting employee pay and raising prices, you rarely see a CEO take a pay cut. So in a way we are all paying for this through higher prices and eroding wages. It has become so out of hand and so systemic we really have to set some rules because just about every large company is operating under this model, there are no other options to pick from.
"The idea that an average family has more money with a dual-income then a single-income is a myth. Of course there are always exceptions, but if you run the numbers with all the expenses - a single-income families actually has the edge."
I think this is only true in some situations. If the 2nd spouse can earn more than 50% of the primary breadwinner, this just doesn't play out. Trust me, I have run the numbers and the fact that my wife could easily make 50% of my high 5 figure salary which means we would be much better off financially even after all of the extras are included (daycare, dining out, outsourced home tasks, work attire, etc). We CHOOSE to have my wife stay home to raise our children. It is indeed a luxury and we are thankful for it (probably not often enough, though) :) Now, if we didn't have kids, she would take no pride in staying at home when she could be helping secure our future. After all, she is just as smart, educated and motivated as me. Should she take a free pass because she is a woman? She has too much self respect for that.
The issue of two incomes possibly earning less depends on income and expenses related to the second person going to work. You take into account the difference in food costs due to possibly more convenience food or takeout than you would eat if one person was home dealing with cooking. You also take into account extra gas for getting to work and either additional mileage or need to upgrade a car due to work. Then additional wardrobe, meals out at work, childcare and anything else your paying to have done because the second person is working. You subtract all those additional expenses from the second wage earner's income.
20/20 did a story on this a long time ago. There was a couple with two small kids and both worked. They both had jobs that didn't pay really great. They looked at the wife's office job and after subtracting all the expenses related to her working and they were actually losing money by her working. They were also running themselves ragged trying to work, commute, be parents and run a house. I think the equation is less valid if one or both can make larger incomes from either job since the expenses eat a smaller portion of the wages.
My wife is currently in school getting her MBA and I work full time so we're currently living without the benefits of either a working mom or a stay at home mom.
My salary is good enough to support us, but childcare for two takes a large (~$400/month) chunk of that and our house doesn't stay as clean as we'd like it to without her home.
The two things I miss most about having her be a stay at home mom are 1) It's hard to find a baby sitter who is good and who is affordable. They all seem to want to just stick the kids in front of movies all day. 2) Coming home to fresh home cooked dinners. Since we're both done at about 5 or 6:00 each night we eat a lot of frozen pizza, and make and freeze a lot of meals.
The key issue is not the amount of money, but what the CEO is being paid for. CEOs in their current form have no accountability. At most, they are paid based on short-term goals that aren't in line with the company's long-term success. And in the average case, the board just throws truckloads of money at them no matter what they do.
In a slightly better world, their pay should have a large risk/reward element to it, just like an investor. Worker bees like us are paid <100k mostly to show up and do what we are told. Executives are paid--or should be paid, in theory--based on tangible results.
I don't see a problem with paying a CEO for good long-term results, so long as he is proportionally penalized for bad results.
Under the current model, a CEO's compensation has no motivational downside. Even if he is forced out in shame, he still gets away with several million.
My husband and I both work - technically we could live on just my salary but we would have less that 1k leftover after bills to pay for non-bill things (like food, chicken feed, vet visits, etc). Plus I wouldn't want to be the single wage earner - I would feel an enormous amount of pressure if I was. My cousin is (her husband is freelance) and she feels a constant fear and pressure that she is and always will be the one who has to support their family.
Reading all the posts though has inspired me to try to put the majority of what my husband makes into savings and to try and live on just the extra that I make and a bit from his salary. Will be interesting to see if we can do it.
#24 - OMG, I had totally forgotten about flavored popcorn! We used to pop regular microwave popcorn at work and then toss toasted Indian spices all over it, like garam masala or Kitchen King. Oh, that was such a heavenly treat. We started using it as post-drunk food as well.
"The idea that an average family has more money with a dual-income then a single-income is a myth. Of course there are always exceptions, but if you run the numbers with all the expenses - a single-income families actually has the edge."
I also disagree. Do you think the millions of dual income struggling families haven't run the numbers? It MAY become true once kids are involved, but I can't see how it is possibly true, almost EVER, before kids are involved.
That being said there are other reasons to stay at home. Just don't tell me it is the optimal financial choice (esp when no kids are involved).
I especially appreciate the last comment on Social Security. I would also recommend that if one parent is a stay-at-home, they have some very good life insurance!
I really don't. I guess I'm just appalled at how we easily generalize both the rich and poor.
I think it's not about rich or poor making someone evil; it's a person's own actions and attitudes regardless of economic status that decide that.
I mean, I know lots of rich people who pay their bills. Yes, there are those who don't but that doesn't mean all rich people don't pay their bills. Even if those same rich people who didn't pay their bills were poor, they probably still wouldn't pay their bills. So their selfishness doesn't come from being rich.
And I disagree with the idea that every fortune was unethically gained. I concede that it is occasionally harder to gain money ethically, but it can be done. Someone I know well got rich because he worked an average of 20-hour days, seven days a week for almost twenty years. He saved the money, started and expanded a business, and paid his employees fairly. Now, he helps small entrepreneurs start up business ideas and supports local farmers and charities. With someone like that, how can every fortune be unethically gained?
I really hope that class warfare disappears altogether one day. It's painful to see how it affects so many good people --- whether rich, poor, or in between --- the wrong way.
Thanks for this great article, as its a very interesting topic... keep writing more and more! Time management is a big issue, and one that all managers must keep working at!
Not being selfish here, I would really like this post to get more attention for that very reason. It's probably the most important story I've ever covered.
I had a stay at home mom for my childhood.
Unfortunately, when she became sick a few years after her divorce, she did not have enough work credits to be eligible for Social Security disability.
It usually takes 20 credits over the last 10 years to remain eligible - and each credit (up to 4 a year) is earned by making $1,050 in earned income (in 2008).
Surely even a stay at home spouse can find enough part-time work to generate $2,100 in earned income over the course of a year?
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/pubs/10072.html
One BIG benefit of qualifying for SS disability is that the disabled individual becomes eligible for Medicare within 24 months (sooner for some diseases)
It would have helped enormously had my mom been able to get SS disability (over 10 years from diagnosis until her death)
"The idea that an average family has more money with a dual-income then a single-income is a myth. Of course there are always exceptions, but if you run the numbers with all the expenses - a single-income families actually has the edge."
I disagree. My wife brings home about $2000 to $2500 per month from her job. Our only extra expenses are child care (about $425 per month for 2 days/week) and gas (about $50), so our net gain from my wifes job is quite a bit.
We split the house and yard work, so that doesn't cost any extra.
cheers,
Ken
I have almost always lived on one income, married or not, and don't think it strange. My ex-hubby was a stay at home boy-toy, and an excellent cook. It was nice to come home to a hot home cooked meal and a nicely weeded garden :) I'd do it again in a minute :) I didn't consider it a luxury tho - he was unemployed and looking for work, which eventually he found.
And I wouldn't mind being the stay at home person either :)
Thanks for the tip, I got a bunch of movies average cost for each $1.61!
I'd say it's very much a luxury compared to friends who have to work two full-time jobs to pay all the bills. It takes my wife being a doctor for us to do it. I definitely lose a few man-points, but it's worth it. It's not ideal. More ideal would be us both working half time, earning the same amount of money. As a teacher, I'd have to work full-time to let her work 3/4 time, and then we'd just break even. Not the best trade-off.
I'd say if one were to plan a perfectly balanced financial/home existence in our current society, you'd somehow manage to get through college without debts (rich parents?) become a high-paid professional, marry another high-paid professional, then both work half-time or less.
This is hilarious. He said Ghetto Pizza. That's a fun post right there that Jabulani Leffall - go to his blog please- wishes he would have done.
But question, if you're really smashed, S'mores and a Gyro from the Projects, why would you want to fumble through the kitchen when you can spin time leaving your beer goggles on with tonight's mistake?
LOL:) Great post but I have to agree with the guest above me. A large 7-Eleven Big-gulp cup of H20, some Asprin and a quick shot of room temperature Guinness Food Stuff to pad you're stomach before or after you've taken off those goggles is the best snack.
My husband and I both work full-time and I do freelance on the side. With both of our incomes, we are barely scraping by, and I mean barely. We have no kids, two cars that are 5 & 11 years old, and just purchased a house a few years ago. I have student loans and we have credit card debt. Every month we have to juggle things just to get our bills paid. I feel lucky if we can manage to make a dent in any of the debt, let alone save. I've actually had to pull money out of the savings for 3 months in a row now.
I would love to be a stay-at-home mom, making still working some freelance. But there is just no way we could make it work financially. We are very frugal. We hardly eat out, I clip coupons and shop the sales. We don't go see movies or buy new books, we rent and go to the library. Our big luxury is the AC b/c hubby works outside all day and can't stand the heat when he gets home.
I envy those that can do it. I hope to be able to some day, but I just don't know how we could. I would definitely consider it a luxury b/c you do have the safety net and a more supportive home life.
I've been a drunk for 40 years, take my advice this is what you want for late night.
2 Multi vitamins
2 Asprin
Wash it down with a warm beer. Night Night. In the morning Pancakes swimming in butter and syrup.