Tuesday, Oct 8, 2019 • 29min
Equal Partners, Unequal Paychecks
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Women are working more than ever. They’re putting in more hours and getting paid more. But they’re still doing most of the housework. Today’s guest makes half as much as her husband, so she’s decided to compensate by doing all of the chores and having dinner on the table seven days a week. Whether you’re the one who earns more – or the one who does most of the grunt work –feelings of inequality will eventually lead to resentment. Strike a balance, with these expert-approved tips.
Expert: Stefanie O'Connell
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Samantha Barry
Stefanie O'Connell
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Samantha Barry
00:31
She Makes Money Moves is a production of
Glamour
and I IHeart Radio
.Share
00:39
I definitely felt like I need to have a hot meal on the table, I needed to have our place clean, I needed to take care of the bills, and I needed to take care of the errands, and I needed to do all these extra things.
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Samantha Barry
00:49
I'm
Samantha Barry
, the editor in chief of Glamour
, and this is She Makes Money Moves.Share
00:57
Women are working more than ever. They're putting in more hours and getting paid more. When they live with a partner that means they're contributing more to the household income, but they're still doing most of the housework.
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01:11
Today's guest earns less than half of what her husband makes. As a couple, they're financially stable. He doesn't push her to make more money and he encourages her to think of his salary plus her income as the family's money, not mine versus yours. But because she makes less money, she feels the need to compensate by doing all of the housework, even after working a full day.
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01:35
She wants them to be equal partners but the balance is off in more ways than one. This is her story.
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01:43
My name is Eileen Carter-Right, I am 33 years old and I'm currently based in
Quincy
, Massachusetts
, about 20 minutes outside of Boston
. I run a travel blog called purewander. com and I also freelance full time in content marketing and copyrighting.Share
Samantha Barry
01:59
Eileen graduated from college in 2008 with a degree in Journalism and Mass Communications. She planned to pursue a career in media, but jobs were scarce. So when she got an offer from a content marketing firm, she took it. She was happy that she got to write, but every day was a grind.
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02:18
The hours were really long. I at the time wrote 20 articles a day, up to 4000 words. It was really grueling.
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Samantha Barry
02:26
She was writing about travel, which she loved, but she was so busy with work that she didn't have time to actually travel. Eileen eventually realized that she could book the same kind of marketing work on her own. As a freelancer, she'd lose her health insurance, but she'd be in control of her workload. She could also make travel a priority. And so, with enough money in the bank to cover six months of living expenses, she quit.
Share
02:53
I definitely was eating a lot more ramen the first couple of months.
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Samantha Barry
02:58
But she slowly built up her client base and started making a steady income. Since her work was in the travel space, the perks included all expenses paid trips. Her boyfriend, who's now her husband, sometimes got to join. But regardless of the perks, he was totally supportive.
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03:15
When I decided to quit my full-time job and go freelancing, he was a huge factor in deciding if I was going to do this.
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Samantha Barry
03:22
A couple of years later they got engaged.
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03:24
I was really transparent with him, you know? We opened up a bank account together when we were just engaged. I started getting those feelings of feeling a little bit like a freeloader. I said, you know, I'm cool with this lifestyle, but like, are you cool with this lifestyle?
Share
03:38
When we started talking about our finances and how they were going to blend together and how he was going to maybe have to pick up some of the slack because I was making a significant amount less than him, I definitely felt a little bit of embarrassment about it, because I had prided myself in being fairly independent.
Share
03:57
I personally didn't want that element of our relationship to be strained or be weird. I liked feeling like an equal, you know? I felt intellectually equal and emotionally equal, I really didn't want him to have to take care of me.
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Samantha Barry
04:10
Today, Eileen's been freelance for the past seven years and married for the past five. Both she and her husband work full time, but because his salary is double hers, she feels compelled to take on more of the work at home.
Share
04:24
With freelancing, with my inconsistent income, I felt pressure to overcompensate in other ways. I definitely felt like I need to have a hot meal on the table, I needed to have our place clean, I needed to take care of the bills, and I needed to take care of the errands, and I needed to do all these extra things.
Share
04:41
And that's where I would compensate for the lack of income, especially when it came to months where maybe I lost a big client or not as much money was coming in. I felt jeez, I really got to make sure that that I'm pulling my weight in these different ways. And sometimes I would get so frustrated that I would call him and say, "Oh, like, I just lost another big client, I don't know what happened. I need to just go get a 20 hour week job at
Starbucks
because I need something consistent, this is crazy".Share
Samantha Barry
05:12
Eileen's husband has never asked her to carry more of the weight financially.
Share
05:16
When I would start to doubt the freelancing and feel like maybe I just needed to get something, even a barista job to just come, like, to fill out the gaps with the inconsistent income, my husband was very much like "I'd rather you put in hours, just continue to build out your website, to build out your brand. That's where you should be putting the time in, and I know you're not making what you want right now, but it has to be a long term time investment, and I want you to try to do that".
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Samantha Barry
05:45
Even before they were married, Eileen says her husband had a "we're in this together" attitude about money. What's mine is yours. For the sake of her business. Eileen keeps track of her personal income in monthly spreadsheets. She eventually started adding her travel perks, those all-expenses paid trips to the spreadsheets and assigning each trip a dollar amount.
Share
06:08
I realized that maybe because I was feeling like, a little bad about not making as much money, I should definitely be factoring in these perks. And even though obviously we didn't get that money, I could say, "Well, you know, we got $27,000 in travel perks, with flights and hotels and tours and everything else. That's significant".
Share
06:28
Not that he put pressure on me, but it was something else tangible that I could kind of present uh in my annual income or annual report, if you will.
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Samantha Barry
06:37
For Eileen, including the free trips as part of her income was a black and white way to increase the value she was bringing to their relationship, even if it didn't come in the form of a twice a month corporate paycheck.
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06:50
I wish that there wasn't so much emphasis on dollar salaries when it comes to worth in your career. So I feel like, with me and my husband especially, I feel like I know, I know in my heart that I bring in some money, I bring us great travel opportunities and I like to think that I keep a nice tidy home and cook good meals and kind of try to do a little bit of everything.
Share
07:23
However, I feel like that's not valued. I mean, obviously, like nobody's writing me a paycheck for providing seven meals a week. So I feel like, yeah, maybe I do feel a bit like I wish, I wish there was another way to gauge our success or gauge our contribution to our marriage than just money.
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Samantha Barry
07:45
We'll be back after a quick break.
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Break
Samantha Barry
08:20
I'm
Samantha Barry,
welcome back to She Makes Money Moves.Share
08:24
While her husband has encouraged Eileen to focus on her freelance business instead of getting a part-time job to pad their savings account, he's also let her take on most of the work at home.
Share
08:34
So, I appreciate so much that my husband is always my best cheerleader and he's so great about saying do whatever you need to do and do what you love and I'll take care of the mortgage, don't worry about it, and we're in this together. I definitely do wish that it would translate into a little more physical help.
Share
08:51
You know, I am putting in 8-10 hour days alongside somebody else who's working in corporate. So yeah, I would still like to have help and sometimes I feel like maybe I don't have that kind of help.
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Samantha Barry
09:06
In addition to taking on the housework, Eileen also compensates for her lower income by spending less.
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09:13
I definitely I think that because I make significantly less income than my husband that I am way more conservative with money. Then I might be otherwise, which is a good and a bad thing, because it's a good thing, because you know, obviously I save a lot more, I'm able to take the money that I freelance and invest it.
Share
09:33
However, it's a bad thing because I feel like I do deprive myself a little bit of the things that I might want to get or might want to do. You know, although, again, he doesn't make me feel guilty about it, I think, well, how can I justify this purse even though collectively we're making a decent amount of money? I still, a lot of the times think of it just as me and just as my income and if it was just me and my income, I definitely wouldn't buy that purse.
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Samantha Barry
10:00
Eileen is hoping to learn how to see her income plus her husband's salary as their money, not his and hers. She wants to know how she can feel like an equal in spite of their unequal incomes.
Share
10:13
How I can embrace that I'm lucky enough that he gives me the freedom to be able to continue to build my business and trust me enough to be able to let me do that at the pace I can do it at, even when it doesn't seem like it's translating and success with the income.
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Samantha Barry
10:31
She'd also like to know how to start difficult money conversations.
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10:35
Although me and my husband have had these conversations a lot, sometimes I still don't know how to approach them. If there is some way to approach that to make it as seamless as possible, to make sure everyone feels heard, and I just like to know a bit more about how you can breach some of those more difficult conversations.
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Samantha Barry
10:54
And she'd like to know how to plan for these conversations instead of having them when she's upset.
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10:60
Most of the time these conversations will happen when something significant has happened with me personally, maybe even like a comp trip has fallen through at the last minute and then I feel like a jerk, and we can't go on it, or maybe I've lost a client or I've just had a really bad month or two.
Share
11:18
I usually, it's at that point where I start moaning a bit, like, "I don't know why this isn't working right now" and I'm getting frustrated. And I even apologize, I'll say, "Jeez, I'm sorry I didn't bring in what I thought I was going to bring in this month". And that's kind of where those conversations start.
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Samantha Barry
11:34
Today's expert has built her career in part around teaching women how to have difficult conversations about money.
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Stefanie O'Connell
11:49
Hi, I'm Stefanie O'Connell, the author of The Broken Beautiful Life, and I write about women, worth and money.
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Samantha Barry
11:58
So Stefanie, it feels to me like Eileen has been given herself a little bit of a hard time, right?
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Stefanie O'Connell
12:03
Yeah. So, when one partner earns more or less of the money, they might feel more or less entitled to spend it, and I think that's what Eileen is dealing with a little bit here. She doesn't feel a sense of ownership over the full household income. And they are married, they're not just living together, so it really is their money.
Share
12:25
And I think in her mind she's still kind of parsing it out and feeling like "I'm not contributing as much financially, so I need to compensate by providing a lot of unpaid labor", but that seems to be creating a lot of stress. And I think this is a big mindset issue of her reframing the idea of what the income is as ours as opposed to his versus mine.
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Samantha Barry
12:48
Do you think this is a conversation people should be having before they get married?
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Stefanie O'Connell
12:51
Oh, absolutely. And I think that when it does happen, it can get a little tricky, and then people back away from it because it's uncomfortable. But I can't think of a more important conversation to have before you get married than talking about your finances, your perspective on your finances, your value system around your finances. Maybe your fears and insecurities and how you grew up seeing money handled, because all of that is going to play out in your marriage.
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Samantha Barry
13:18
For people listening who are ready to have that conversation, how can they make sure it's constructive? What points do they need to hit?
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Stefanie O'Connell
13:25
So, you really want to talk to them about three things. One is their values. So, what is it that they want their money to afford them both big picture and on a day-to-day basis? So for one person that might be, you know, having five children, and for one person that might be traveling full-time.
Share
13:46
Money touches everything, so it's going to be indicative of whether your value systems are aligned for the future and it can point to red flags if you come up with totally different answers for how you want to spend your money. So values is first and foremost.
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13:60
The second thing you want to talk about are your expectations. And this is something like, "Well, I expect that we will split our household expenses evenly" or "I expect that we will pool all of our income", or "I expect that we will each contribute X amount to savings or split proportionally our savings contributions based on our income".
Share
14:22
And then the third and final thing you want to think about is what rules you're going to have around money. We don't charge to credit cards what we can't afford to pay off immediately. We don't spend money above $500 without talking to each other first. So rules, expectations and values are the three things you need to get aligned with your partner on, hopefully before you get married.
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Samantha Barry
14:42
What if you are on completely different ends of the spectrum? What if you have that conversation and you don't agree on anything?
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Stefanie O'Connell
14:48
So, you don't have to agree about everything to come to an agreement. You can't argue necessarily about what's important to somebody, you know? If somebody cares about video games that you can't say "You shouldn't care about video games". What you can decide is how do we make sure that what's a priority for you isn't detracting from what our goals are as a team?
Share
15:07
Because when you're in a marriage, you're in this as a team. And so you really want to come back to like, what is it we're working towards? And then how can we make sure that there's still room within our day-to-day budgeting plan within that to fund what's important to you and what's important to me.
Share
15:22
And I think, you know, in Eileen's case, if she thought more about this in terms of our household goals are this, and our household expenses are this, and then we each personally have you know, $500 a month we get to spend freely, that might kind of give help her come to terms with this idea of this is our money instead of if this is his and this is mine, and we're working on this together and we're in it together.
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Samantha Barry
15:52
So they should have their family money, but they should also have some of their money separate too.
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Stefanie O'Connell
15:57
I think everyone should also have their own money in a relationship. You just have to have a financial support system in place for yourself, your own emergency fund, your own credit. I also am a big fan of prenuptial agreements, I'll throw that one in there. So I think both partners-
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Samantha Barry
16:12
You'd be a big advocate of going into any relationship with the prenup?
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Stefanie O'Connell
16:16
Any marriage I would go into a prenuptial agreement with. Because honestly everybody has one, it's just whether you wrote your own or the state is going to dictate yours to you. One of the things that's really valuable about going through the process of a prenup is it forces you to have full financial disclosure with your partner if you haven't already.
Share
16:33
So this is this person's debt, this is the liabilities the're coming into the relationship with, these are the assets they're coming into the relationship with. We are going to have an agreement about how those things are going to be handled should our marriage and.
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Samantha Barry
16:46
So after couples have the prenup discussion, that can't be the last time that they talk about money. How often do they need to have these conversations? Eileen said that she and her husband talked about money every six months or so.
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Stefanie O'Connell
16:58
I think she should talk about her feelings around the financials more often than every six months, I'm a big advocate of monthly money dates. I call them dates because a check-in is so boring, first of all. And second of all, you know, you know what you want to make it an opportunity for you really to be intimate with your partner and talk about things more than just the numbers.
Share
17:18
But also the feelings, also the insecurities, what's working, what isn't, and you want to set yourself up for success. So the first thing to do is to pick a place and then pick a time that's really conducive to having that kind of calm conversation. A lot of couples are only talking about money when somebody gets upset.
Share
17:37
Or a bill comes up that was unexpected, or an emergency. You're not going to have a productive conversation in that environment, which is why it's great that they're doing the monthly check, they're doing the check-ins. But I think they should make that a more comprehensive and a monthly conversation.
Share
17:51
The second thing you want to do is get away from this idea of shaming or blaming anybody for their financial choices or for judging them. It's a little bit tough, but it comes back to this idea around framing what we're working towards making the conversation about that rather than saying, oh your, whatever, your figurine collection is stupid.
Share
18:12
No, it's about I want to make sure that we have enough savings that if we have an accident, we can cover. Or we could send our kids to college, or we can retire and not have to work forever. What do we need to make sure that we're doing to afford that instead of about being like, oh this is stupid and I'm judging your spending?
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18:32
More on She Makes Money Moves right after this quick break.
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Samantha Barry
18:36
I'm
Samantha Barry
, Welcome back to She Makes Money Moves.Share
18:42
Here's something else Eileen said that concerned me. It seems like her husband is totally supportive of her career, but because she's making less money, she's putting pressure on herself to do chores.
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Stefanie O'Connell
18:53
She seems to be connecting her self-worth to her income. And because she makes half of what her husband makes, I think that's creating this need to quantify everything else she does. And I think it's putting a lot of pressure and stress on her and I think she needs to detach this idea. What you're paid is not what you are worth. You as a human being are worth very, very much more than whatever is on your paycheck.
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Samantha Barry
19:18
Because it's probably more unusual for people to be bringing in exactly the same thing into a relationship in terms of income, right?
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Stefanie O'Connell
19:25
Absolutely. I think the other thing that it's important for Eileen to communicate is that she does feel like she's taking on a lot of the household chores and a lot of the unpaid labor and that that is extremely overwhelming, it seems, for her right now. And it's okay to communicate that with her husband.
Share
19:42
Maybe what they need is someone to come help them clean their apartment once a month. Maybe what they need is somebody to come help grocery shop. Even if she makes less or even if she's working fewer hours, it doesn't mean that she has to shoulder anything, maybe he can contribute more. So just because he earns the higher income doesn't mean he can't contribute to the household.
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Samantha Barry
20:03
100%. If they're both working full time and she's doing all of the errands and housework, I mean, that would make me feel resentful. She mentioned that she's trying to put a dollar value on the trips that she gets through work, but she's not putting a dollar value on that housework that she's doing and it's a lot, right?
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Stefanie O'Connell
20:20
Absolutely. I mean, probably every single relationship has a different proportionality of income and that's going to change over time too, you know? Her husband could lose her job tomorrow and she becomes the sole breadwinner. So, you know, we have to make sure that we feel really secure in what we're bringing to the table, even if it's a different number on the paycheck.
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Samantha Barry
20:40
It sounds like on their next money date maybe they should make a list of all of the household tasks. I'm sure there's some things that it will make sense for her to keep doing. Like, let's say, it's probably easier for her to take the dog to the vet during the day. But maybe her husband can order groceries online on his way to work.
Share
20:58
If he doesn't have time to cook dinner during the week, maybe he picks up that short the weekends, or orders take away on a Wednesday, so she doesn't feel like a short-order cook.
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21:08
If they have a baby and both keep working, they will need to reevaluate every month, because there's going to be a lot more chores to allocate. What about for couples who are earlier in their relationship?
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Stefanie O'Connell
21:18
I always say this and I've said it today already, but I say money touches everything. So it's already a natural piece of the conversation. So if somebody comes up to you, a partner that you just started seeing and they say, you know, I'd really like to take a weekend away with you. That is an opportunity.
Share
21:34
That is an opportunity to say, you know what, I am working towards this financial goal of becoming debt-free, and I don't think I can afford to go away for a weekend right now. But what I do think is that I'd love to spend a day exploring the city with you, and get really aggressive about this debt repayment so that we can maybe celebrate with the weekend away once I do it.
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Samantha Barry
21:58
I love that. And what if you're the one who's okay financially and a new partner opens up about having a lot of debt. How does that conversation go?
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Stefanie O'Connell
22:06
I don't think you should rush to any judgment or break up with someone just because they said, you know, I have $100,000 in student loan debt. You want to understand the story behind it, right? If somebody says I have $100,000 in credit card debt because I got hit by a car, that's a different circumstance from somebody saying I'm $100,000 in debt from shoes. I don't really remember what I bought, I don't really care. Like, I'm not, they're not really thinking about it.
Share
22:33
So it's that, what's the reason behind it, what's the story behind it and also what are they doing about it? So is that person trying to make aggressive debt payments? Are they changing their lifestyle? Are they addressing it? And then also, are they willing to share it with you?
Share
22:49
You know, if somebody is like, don't worry about it, it's my business. You know, to be honest, early in a relationship it probably is their business. But you still want to be able to talk about the money in some capacity. I mean, I like to say, even on my first date, the thing I told my now fiancè was "I don't care where we go as long as it's somewhere cheap".
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23:08
But there's always a way to talk about the money at every stage in the relationship, and it's about making sure that person is willing to have that dialogue with you rather than shutting it down.
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Samantha Barry
23:23
Whether you're talking to your partner or your parents or your friends, the more you have these conversations about money, the easier they're going to get. If you're in a partnership, but you don't feel like an equal partner, speak up. Whether one person is making more or spending more or taking on more of the housework or childcare, feelings of inequality are going to lead to resentment.
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23:46
Relationships are complicated and money makes them more complicated. But if you work through the hard conversations, you'll both be happier.
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Samantha Barry
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