The Ultimate Indulgence

Within the early retirement ethos, the act of spending money on an incidental item can take on an almost religious significance.

After all the central lesson of the new frugality as I perceive it is this: spending money is spending freedom. So each dollar frittered away represents an hour or an afternoon or a day of financial freedom lost.

Which is not to say that freedom is more valuable than anything else. After all the homeless guy pushing his shopping cart filled with crushed cans and damp blankets, and cigarette butts could be said to be free. He has no clock to punch, and no boss to please. And no external demands on his schedule.

But he also has no roof over his head, and nowhere to sleep, and no security, and no sanctuary from the outside world.

There’s more to life than freedom…

Which is why none of us would trade places with him for anything.

So let’s file food and shelter and transportation and clothing under essentials. But that still leaves us with a lot of incidentals.

I’ve already copped to the crimes of blowing my money on luxury foods (like fancy olive oils pressed with lemons) and a poofy hypoallergenic Siberian cat to sit on my lap.

And beyond admitting my spend-thriftiness, I’ve confessed that I would make those purchases all over again and in an instant.

For these purchases have brought me more happiness than the equivalent aliquots of freedom that the money they required could’ve purchased. In other words they were value investments. Happiness on sale.

But the ultimate luxury is this. My wife does not have a paying job. (Though she works very, very hard every day over long, long hours.)

And this is a luxury that most people truly cannot afford. This is our biggest, big-time blessing.

And it has bought us an awful lot of happiness as a family.

Because she works for the family and not for an external business all of her considerable energy and intelligence are focused inwards at the kids and on the family.

We never have to balance our schedules to make sure someone is home for the kids at the end of the school day.

Importantly, the kids live in the security of the assumption that there is always a parent at home ready to take care of them.

And we never have to wheel and deal at our jobs to make sure that homebase is covered.

And when our kids get sick we can take care of them efficiently and without reshuffling our decks. We are rarely pulled in 2 directions.

And we almost always eat breakfast and dinner together as a family.

Which is not to say that two working parents can’t also have ideal family lives. It just requires some extra effort. It’s less efficient. Something’s got to give.

And this efficiency, and luxury that we enjoy, actually ends up being a pretty damn good deal financially as well.  (Which is a happy coincidence.)

In this piece by the White Coat Investor he lays out the advantages of having a single income versus a dual income family:

• The first point he makes, and this is the most important point, is that both spouses should be aiming to do exactly what makes them happiest. In other words even if a spousal job turns out to be a financial dud, if it gives that spouse a sense of meaning in their life and is a net positive personally, then that has real value to the individual and to the family aside from the monetary benefits.
• He then points out that being married comes with some serious tax benefits including the lowering of the tax bracket for a high income earner, the claiming of an extra dependent tax deduction, as well as avoiding paying a second set of FICA taxes. (All points to think about when considering the merits of the equal protection granted by gay marriage legalization.)
• He then points out that the working spouse is able to bring economic benefit to the family by filling the role of several otherwise crucial employees. (childcare workers, food-service workers, housecleaning workers.) These are all tough jobs and they require big investments if the family chooses to outsource them.
• Finally he points out that working itself has associated costs that are never recouped, such as travel, work equipment, etc.

Which is all to say that having one stay at home spouse is a big-time luxury, even if it doesn’t end up costing much economically.

So it’s not only the ultimate indulgence. It is the ultimate bargain.

What’s your take?  Aside from nostalgia for the nuclear family, do you think that the single income family is a value added proposition?