I grew up with a single-earner parent. My mom took the occasional side job to help pay the bills but my parents were old-school; my dad was the only one who worked.
He had a lifelong government job that allowed him to retire with a cushy pension after my parents paid off their 15-year mortgage.
It’s a world that Gen X onwards down in age will never experience. This isn’t shocking news. There’s a reason “okay, Boomer” is a catchphrase and it’s centered around their inability to understand anything about how the world works today.
The closest level of security I’ve experienced was being in a two-income household. While my ex-husband’s career is fickle and I’ve had to support him at times, there is a sense of relief having a cushion on top of unemployment if there is a job loss.
What you gain in self-respect after divorce, you lose with financial security.
I took a gamble when asking for a divorce. I live in Southern California and if it’s not self-explanatory, it’s expensive as all hell here. It’s a two-income society. That’s how blindly miserable I was in my marriage: living homeless in a tent was more appealing than staying married to Joseph.
Once I bought my house and moved out, my financial reality kicked in. My only saving grace was a level of job security because my company is in hot water with sexual discrimination lawsuits. We can barely retain and hire employees, laying off a female who keeps her head down despite doing minimal work isn’t in their line of sight.
I planned to take six months to let the dust settle and then I would refresh my tech skills so that I could look for a better paying job or, at least, maintain my employability if disaster should strike. I’m rebuilding my 6-month emergency fund which will eventually turn into my 1-year emergency fund. While my parents had a cushy retirement planned, they still knew to teach me the value of planning for disasters.
In all of this planning, I never considered the second-worst option to me losing my job: if my ex-husband lost his job.
At this moment, we’re waiting to find out.
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Joseph switched gigs during the pandemic. He had an opportunity at my company but I advised him against it (ugh, regretting that now) because his potential boss was someone implicated in the sexual discrimination lawsuits. He chose a higher-paying job instead at a less-known company.
This morning, Joseph messaged me that his project is canceled. He is panicking. I don’t need to ask why; he already struggles to figure out finances living on his own. As I write this, he texted me that he threw up.
He won’t know until the end of the day if he can switch to another department to stay employed.
Joseph has never had to worry about the breadwinner. While he made more than I did, my career was always more stable. If I lose my job, I can still find something in my line of work, even if it’s not high-paying. His job options are all-or-nothing with skills that aren’t transferrable or used at most companies.
The last time he was unemployed, we had my son and found out he had a chromosome disorder. While I worked a job that I loathed but couldn’t quit, I spent evenings selling off Joseph’s random toy collectibles to make sure we never dipped into our savings. He had no job and somehow, I had two.
My resentment never went away from that experience. I begged him to start over in a new industry, even if it meant being a UPS driver. Anything that would keep him local to be with his family while still having better job security. Joseph looked me straight in the eye and told me he would sooner divorce me than ever leave his career.
I should have taken him up on that. That was 11 years ago.
If and when Joseph loses his job today, a lot will change. A lot.
Today, I’ll help him update his resume. The perks of knowing a writer is always having someone to spiff up your LinkedIn profile.
We’ll have to cancel afterschool childcare. I’ll have to pick the kids up earlier on my days and find affordable ways to keep them off iPads. Summer programs are off the table. At that point, iPads might be the only childcare option I’ll have.
I don’t know the legalities but we both know he’s not paying child support if/when he loses his job. In my case, that money went directly to my half of afterschool childcare so the net difference is the same financially.
It suddenly feels like the burden of two mortgages is on me. The divorce is only three months old. I still have a lot of my things at his house. It also still feels weird to call it “his house”. I’m not in a position to say, “that sounds like a you problem” if/when he loses his job and can’t pay his mortgage.
In his texts panicking, I told him to calm down. Worst case, I’ll move back there and rent my house out. The housing market is so damn expensive that I can easily rent my house out and have the costs covered. It’ll be a mental mind fuck for all involved but financially, it’s a worst-case option.
Joseph just texted me: he’s officially laid off.
Sigh.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Niklas Hamann on Unsplash