Single life, financially better off?

Forever And Ever

PucaMama wrote: »

End of 'Disposable cash'

You did say 'yeah because women spend all the money'...

No one said that!

You spend the 'majority' of it

PucaMama

Forever And Ever wrote: »

End of 'Disposable cash'

You did say 'yeah because women spend all the money'...

No one said that!

You spend the 'majority' of it

oops did i forward you my bank statement this month? i dont think so. i dont spend a lot. whats said in the op is irritating. and sad too, that someone would stay alone all their lives just to avoid spending money. (or to have more to themselves)

Pat Mustard

Wibbs wrote: »

It also depends on the individual. Some are more codependent than others. If you're not the codependent type(male or female, though maybe more male as women have more base level oxytocin going on), then marriage may not be for you, or not for you until much later in life. If you're the codependent type then being single is gonna be crappy. Unmarried men on average have more wealth. That tends to affect happiness. Unmarried women on average have more wealth too and their longevity stats are the same as their married sisters.

When I read that first, what I saw was oxycontin.

Experts say that because the drug is more potent and more addictive than heroin, the potential for misuse is almost limitless. The small white tablets can be swallowed whole, crushed and snorted or mixed with water and injected. Each tablet costs £5 to £20 depending on its strength. The most expensive are at least 10 times more powerful than anything else on the market.

Please carry on.:D

October Swimmer

Rubylolz

This is actually funny, staying single so that ya can have more money!!! Will ya cop on, Spend it! ya cant bring it to the grave!....

ciarak7511

I did a degree in sociology and read many studies showing women are better off single and men are better off married when it comes to suicide rates and depression. so it's something you want to consider apart from the financial. Kids on the other hand, cost loads!

The Big Smoke

ciarak7511 wrote: »

I did a degree in sociology and read many studies showing women are better off single and men are better off married when it comes to suicide rates and depression. so it's something you want to consider apart from the financial. Kids on the other hand, cost loads!

I did a degree in life experience and concluded I'm financially better off single.:D

Gehad_JoyRider

ciarak7511 wrote: »

I did a degree in sociology and read many studies showing women are better off single and men are better off married when it comes to suicide rates and depression. so it's something you want to consider apart from the financial. Kids on the other hand, cost loads!

Single or married with kids you can still have depression it just requires a lot of hard work to keep your head on shoulders...

Dickie10

Rubylolz wrote: »

This is actually funny, staying single so that ya can have more money!!! Will ya cop on, Spend it! ya cant bring it to the grave!....

eh I do that's my point! 3 holidays a year! marriage doent cost much but kids bloody hell!

I can do 3 good holidays a year on the dole, it's not difficult :pac:

ongarboy

Just curious as to the ultimate answer the OP is looking for. Is it that he thinks financial well being rates above happiness in all other aspects of life? I'd rather have just enough money to get by and derive my happiness from all other aspects of my life (partner, kids, satisfying job, genuine friends, health etc) then being single, loaded and lacking in other aspects of life (loneliness, stressful job, uncertainty about the validity of friendships etc). Of course some people are happier being single and I don't belittle that but if they chose singledom purely for financial reasons, it rings a very hollow bell in my opinion.

As someone posted earlier, planning your life's well being via a form of profit and loss statement is a very misguided approach to happiness and makes you miss out or overlook what's important. Give me an average industrial wage, kids and partner that will you love and they love you back unconditionally any day to a lottery win (and the sudden influx of interested parties that surround you knowing your wealth).

Emme

Deleted User wrote: »

I can do 3 good holidays a year on the dole, it's not difficult :pac:

Really? I hope that Enda Kenny or Micheal Noonan isn't reading this. Otherwise the dole might be for the chop in the budget.

I know this is off topic but how do you manage 3 good holidays a year on the dole? I'm working full time and I couldn't afford one holiday this year. Not even a weekend away to Ballygobackwards. I know other people working full time who couldn't afford one either because we're squeezed with bills, mortgage, taxes etc. And we're single.

Rubylolz

Deleted User wrote: »

I can do 3 good holidays a year on the dole, it's not difficult :pac:

Likewise I'm interested to know how you manage this??? Feel like a mug, same as pervious poster I can hardly manage one holiday a year an thats working full time!

Frank Black

My wife earns quite a bit more than me, so marrying her was one of the more prudent financial decisions I've made.

drumswan

Emme wrote: »

I know other people working full time who couldn't afford one either because we're squeezed with bills, mortgage, taxes etc.

Theres your problem. Plenty of people go off travelling for months and years on end with peanuts in their pockets, its easy enough if you dont get caught up in the rat race.

It's handy enough when ya don't have a social life. :P I'm in my last year of college and live with my parents so I could do what everyone else does and piss what I have up against a wall or have experiences I'll remember forever. Over the summer I had basically nothing to live on and finished up owing out a lot of money. Also the holidays involve camping and staying on friends' sofas/floors and the like. If I was seeing someone and had to go halves on a hotel stay on a "proper" holiday a weekend a year would be all I could afford.

OnTheCouch

To answer the question very simply: yes. Every time I have had a girlfriend and bear in mind I would always go for ladies who offered to pay their own way, I found that I would end up spending more.

I think it is simply down to doing more things together, attending parties (often people hold dinner parties for other couples more so than singletons), eating out, cinema, trips to various places and so on. Even splitting the difference means you're going to be spending a lot more than if you were single and spent a lot of the time at home with no one to go places with.

The Corinthian

Firstly the amount of judgemental projection here is a bit breathtaking. Not everyone needs a relationship to be somehow fulfilled. Many are quite happy, if not more so, remaining single. Others, as Wibbs suggested, do 'need' to be in relationships and are happier settling down. Also, on a lesser note, there's been a propensity in posts to equate settling down into a relationship with marriage; the two are not synonymous.

So there appears to be a lot of judgement rather than analysis here where it comes to the subject, fuelled by how people have been programmed to believe what is expected of us.

Secondly, the opening thesis of this thread is flawed. Single life does not make you financially better off. Single parents are typically not 'better off'. A childless, married couple, both earning salaries, are financially better off than as two single people with the same salaries (due to the tax breaks associated with marriage). Actually, even a cohabiting couple, again with both earning salaries, are also financially better off as they pool their resources - there's not one but two paying the rent or mortgage, for example.

So it's not down to being single or not, but down to any dependants in the prospective relationship.

Once anyone has dependants, they become a financial drain and naturally will affect one's financial situation. It could be a child, a stay-at-home-mother/father, an unemployed husband/wife; all require that the previously 'single' person starts bankrolling for someone other than themselves. So ultimately, it's not down to being single or in a relationship, but the type of relationship you're in.

Finally, there's another, historically well-known, case that disproves the notion that being single is financially more advantageous, and that is 'marrying up'. If someone on a lower income, enters a relationship with someone on a higher income, then very often (proportional to the difference between their incomes) they will see their financial situation improve as a result of the relationship.

So as a caveat to the above point about dependants being the determining factor, whether your financial situation is affected positively or negatively is generally effected by whether you are the dependant or not and whether, even as a dependant, you too have dependants.

iptba

The Corinthian wrote: »

Finally, there's another, historically well-known, case that disproves the notion that being single is financially more advantageous, and that is 'marrying up'. If someone on a lower income, enters a relationship with someone on a higher income, then very often (proportional to the difference between their incomes) they will see their financial situation improve as a result of the relationship.

More women marry up than men do. Hypergamy is one word used to describe this.

Similarly when break-ups occur, last time I heard, 99% of those paying maintenance to their ex-spouses are men. Some of this can be to do with children but not all.

pwurple

Deleted User wrote: »

It's handy enough when ya don't have a social life. :P I'm in my last year of college and live with my parents.

Since when did full time students living with their parents qualify for the dole?

iptba wrote: »

last time I heard, 99% of those paying maintenance to their ex-spouses are men. Some of this can be to do with children but not all.

Last I heard 99% of statistics are made up on the spot. Spousal maintenance and child support are two different things.

The economies of scale happen when you live with someone else. Whatever gender that other person happens to be is irrelevant.

The Corinthian

iptba wrote: »

More women marry up than men do. Hypergamy is one word used to describe this.

Similarly when break-ups occur, last time I heard, 99% of those paying maintenance to their ex-spouses are men. Some of this can be to do with children but not all.

That may well be the case, and may also explain why the responses here do appear, at first glance, to run on gender lines to an extent, but I was responding to the initial thesis as presented by the OP, which was gender neutral.

Basically, the financial benefit or dis-benefit to a relationship is very much linked to whether someone is a dependant, supporting a dependant or neither, in that relationship, and whether they have additional dependants of their own when they are dependants*, rather than anything intrinsically clinked to the relationship itself.

Just to add, the OP also mentioned people in relationships who are now in debt because together they bought property (which ignores all the single people who also bought property). Ironically, they did so because they were financially better off as a couple and thus had greater buying power and are now worse off, not because they were in a relationship but because the property bubble burst.




* A stay-at-home-parent may be a dependant on their employed partner, but they may have had to leave full-time employment to do so. In that scenario, both are worse off financially because the ultimate dependant is the child, not the stay-at-home-parent.

The Corinthian

pwurple wrote: »

Since when did full time students living with their parents qualify for the dole?

Pre-1998 or so, and only during the Summer, if I remember correctly. Pedantic point, I know.

Last I heard 99% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Well, there's actually truth behind that one, although not specifically to do with maintenance.

The economies of scale happen when you live with someone else. Whatever gender that other person happens to be is irrelevant.

TBH, that's not true. While either partner in a relationship can gain or lose out financially, statistically they do favour one gender over the other on several levels.

So while irrelevant for the purposes of assessing the OP's premise, it's not exactly irrelevant overall.

But that's another can of worms...

iptba

pwurple wrote: »

The economies of scale happen when you live with someone else. Whatever gender that other person happens to be is irrelevant.

If one of the couple want to spend a lot more money on something e.g. on decorating/re-decorating, items within the house, etc than the other person would if they lived alone, it can mean one can have less money by living with somebody.

pwurple

pwurple wrote: »

Since when did full time students living with their parents qualify for the dole?

BTEA I'm on, generally simpler to just say dole since it's the same rate.

iptba

The Corinthian wrote: »

That may well be the case, and may also explain why the responses here do appear, at first glance, to run on gender lines to an extent, but I was responding to the initial thesis as presented by the OP, which was gender neutral.

As this was posted in the Gentleman's Club, another way to see the question is whether men are financially better off single.

pwurple

iptba wrote: »

If one of the couple want to spend a lot more money on something e.g. on decorating/re-decorating, items within the house, etc than the other person would if they lived alone, it can mean one can have less money by living with somebody.

Yes, and conversely, if you live with someone more frugal than yourself, you can pick up that frugality or benefit from it.

Sharing meals, sharing heating, lighting etc usually works out cheaper than two separate living units.

iptba

pwurple wrote: »

iptba wrote:

If one of the couple want to spend a lot more money on something e.g. on decorating/re-decorating, items within the house, etc than the other person would if they lived alone, it can mean one can have less money by living with somebody.

Yes, and conversely, if you live with someone more frugal than yourself, you can pick up that frugality or benefit from it.

Behavioural changes can go either way - if the other person is a spendthrift, one could start spending more.

I was referring to spending money on types of things one otherwise spend less money on/wouldn't spending money on and this leaving you with less money.

The Corinthian

iptba wrote: »

I was referring to spending money on types of things one otherwise spend less money on/wouldn't spending money on and this leaving you with less money.

That alone doesn't really indicate anything though.

For example, two single people have two seperate apartments that they rent for €900 p.m. each. Together they share a slightly larger apartment for €1,200 p.m. - thus €600 p.m. each. And this is ignoring any other pooled resources, such as electricity, Internet, etc.

For either of them to be financially worse off, they would have to increase their previous spending habits by €300 p.m. (or a combined increase of €600 p.m. or €7,200 p.a.), which may well be possible, but by no means a given.

There's only so many times a year one can visit Ikea.

pwurple

iptba wrote: »

Behavioural changes can go either way - if the other person is a spendthrift, one could start spending more.

Exactly, it can go either way.

I was referring to spending money on types of things one otherwise spend less money on/wouldn't spending money on and this leaving you with less money.

Yes, but it's tricky to generalise without knowing the spendier person in a pair is. I assume you are implying those things could be scatter cushions, handbags, shoes and curtains, but they could just as easily be power tools, home-brewing equipment, cigars and motorbikes. You can live with someone more frugal, or more spendy than yourself. Usually you'd have some idea of their personality in advance of moving in and pooling funds.

iptba

The Corinthian wrote: »

That alone doesn't really indicate anything though.

For example, two single people have two seperate apartments that they rent for €900 p.m. each. Together they share a slightly larger apartment for €1,200 p.m. - thus €600 p.m. each. And this is ignoring any other pooled resources, such as electricity, Internet, etc.

For either of them to be financially worse off, they would have to increase their previous spending habits by €300 p.m. (or a combined increase of €600 p.m. or €7,200 p.a.), which may well be possible, but by no means a given.

There's only so many times a year one can visit Ikea.

People had previously mentioned economies of scale, but nobody had mentioned the otherside of the equation so thought it was worth highlighting.

Certainly with a house, a lot of money can be spent on decorating/re-decorating more frequently than one might otherwise do it, replacing furniture more frequently than one might otherwise, new kitchens more frequently than one would otherwise, other interior design-type spending, garden, etc. Perhaps less so with an apartment.