Getting married and the fortunes of love
It’s that time of year when I get stuck doing a bunch of accounting. A time to start working on taxes; a time to figure out the budget. According to the numbers, I need to get me a wife:
It costs me $41,000/yr just to be alive (bills + mortgage + groceries). If I were married, only a few of the categories that make up that $41k would go up due to my beloved (groceries, gas for cars, another cellphone, etc). The total bill for the two of us would be $49,000/yr. That’s a savings of $16,500 per person!
Ergo, it’s more cost-effective to get married. Guess I should get hitched… <grin>
CNNMoney.com seems to agree:
The study, published in the Journal of Sociology by Ohio State University researcher Jay Zagorsky, revealed that individuals who get married and stay married have a net worth almost twice as great as their single or divorced counterparts.…
Married individuals fared better building wealth, according to Zagorsky, primarily because they share expenses and may have two incomes.
Comments
Well, single is one thing but remember that divorce=divide-by-two in most cases. Folk wisdom also is that married men live longer (I know, I know -- the old gag is that it just seems longer.)
Posted by: Ron | February 1, 2006 01:51 PM