Keep in mind ridiculous house prices are only in a handful of cities. The rest of the country exists and is doing just fine, thank you very much.

I live in Houston and made $75k right out of school as an IT consultant. I lived in the cheapest apartment I could find in my favorite Houston neighborhood -- a place with a lot of art and nightlife. Despite it being a happening place, it only cost $700/mo in 2012.

I was a big fan of the finance blogger Mr. Money Mustache and lived cheaply, on about $30k/yr. The rest of my salary went towards paying off my relatively low school debt, then I funneled it all to my Roth IRA, 401(k), and ESPP. After maxing that out, I bought taxable investments too.

My goal was to retire in my mid-30s after making an average developer salary. From 2012-2015, my net worth went from -$30k to $150k. It's still rising, but not as quickly because my fiance doesn't have the same crazy ideas about money that I do.

I bought a 3-bedroom townhouse in a nice neighborhood right near downtown. I can easily afford it and I'm not even making 6 figures yet.

After the divorce, I have about $20K left after having to split it with my ex-wife, who had saved a grand total of $2.00 during our marriage.

I don't really have a point, except that some people are very good at saving, even from a young age, and some people will never save a penny. The key is starting young. As soon as you are able to contribute anything, even 1%, you get the advantage of compounding interest over time, which is the key.

Wow, that is brutal. I'm guessing common law state? Even then, shouldn't you have 50%? Was it attorney expenses?

Yes, I kept the house, which was my separate property with a community property interest, since it was purchased in my name only before we were married. I cannot afford the house, so I am trying to play the foreclosure avoidance game and give my kids a nice place to live that provides them with some continuity.

I also had $1700 in child support (this is two kids, with a 60/40 custody share) that I offered to give her more money in the settlement if she would agree to $1400 instead. She agreed to that, and then before that judgment had even been processed, had me back in court to get $1700 per month, which she did, since the court will use whatever Disso-Master spits out. She owns her own business, and of course her personal and business accounts are mingled, so there is no way to pinpoint what she actually makes, but it was at least $3,500 per month part time when we were married.

But none of that matters if you earned a lot more than your spouse. Divorce is no joke, especially if you are the high earner in the relationship. A lot of people are under the assumption that if you split custody, you don't pay support or the support is a nominal amount. This is absolutely not the case. The court (in CA, at least) looks to maintain the children's standard of living DURING THE MARRIAGE until the child is 18 or emancipated. This is the case even if your divorce left you in very different circumstances.

That's just child support, which is only one of the many costs associated with divorce.

(I want to make it clear that I have no problem with paying _reasonable_ child support, but I'm sorry, the current child support calculations can leave you with an egregious amount of support payments)

Why? Standard of livings can be preposterous and dependent on previous economic status (which might not be the same post divorce -- and in many cases it isn't).

The court doesn't care for the millions of kids who fall on standard of living without a divorce (or even while having been had out of wedlock), or who start and end on a low standard of living to begin with. Why should it care for the "same standard of living" in the case of divorce?

A decent standard of living (housing, food, etc) yes. But "maintain" the pre-divorce standard of living is BS.

"Should the guy have to pay that much as a result of a casual encounter? Wagner says emphatically yes: "The child had nothing to say about being born or the wisdom of a one-night stand. That child should be supported exactly as if those parties had married and stayed married forever." Is he worried about an incentive structure where a one-night stand is more lucrative than going to college and working? "A judge would slap you silly if you pointed out that a plaintiff would be earning more from child support than from attending college and working," Wagner says. "Put yourself in the diaper of the child. Public policy says that he or she has a human right to be raised in the lifestyle of the two parents. If you don't like that philosophy get the hell out of California." Wagner explains that the current law came about because "California was ranked 45th in nation in late 1980s in the amount of child support obtainable. The legislature was astounded and created the current system. It is public policy that California will always be ranked among the top 5 states [in potential profits from child support]."

[0]http://www.realworlddivorce.com

They might "slap you silly", but they would still be wrong. And not everybody "attends college" or works cushy enough jobs...

If you have RSUs, you get to go through the fun process of either giving some value to these RSUs and paying off the other party's community interest in that valuation, or you can try to argue that RSUs have a zero dollars value until granted. Good luck with RSUs and stock options either way, as it can become a complicated mess of laws and formulas.

You can try to do the same thing with stocks, where you pay when you vest or sell, or sell on behalf of the other party, but in my case, and I suspect many others, I wanted the cleanest break possible and I settled on a payout amount simply to reduce the amount of communication with my ex-wife that would be necessary to pull this off.

Edit: I'll give you a concrete example - let's say my ex-wife decides to marry the systems engineer she is dating, who is also a high-earner. In that case, she can sue for more child support because it will move her up a tax bracket.

This is just incredible. What a naive legal system!

Also, in my state you don't split assets people had before going into the marriage. Maybe that's just here though.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that I don't know if everyone realizes that if you are the only one in the household saving away for the future, that those savings are not "yours" if the marriage ends, even if your ex-spouse was absolutely frivolous with money, they will get half of anything you saved, and speaking from experience, that feeling absolutely sucks and was one that I am still trying to recover from years later.

She also makes far less than me because she wants to work in a field where she makes a difference. She could make twice as much, but she chooses not to. We're not going to have kids, and we split chores equally.

It seems messed up that the relationship is going to put me in worse state financially by subsidizing my partner, and on top of that the laws are structured to give her more money (even though she's fully capable of making more herself).

I love her a great deal and our relationship is otherwise healthy, but I'm scared for a hypothetical situation where things go south. Expect the best, prepare for the worst, right?

I feel like the incompatibility we had in regards to savings, financial discipline, etc., should have been a much bigger red flag to me. If you are having these sorts of doubts, I would think long and hard before making the commitment that goes along with marriage. If you do get married, and it doesn't work out, just make sure you divorce before the 10 year mark, or you will have no set end to spousal support. If you divorce before 10 years, you will normally pay spousal support for half the length of the marriage (about 4 years in my case). If you have kids, all bets are off and you will likely be on the hook for spousal, child support,(plus half of medical expenses, extra-curricular activities, and child care costs while your ex-spouse works - this is on top of monthly child support), you will be required to maintain health insurance for the children, you may get your wages garnished, you may get Smith-Ostler riders for 12% of any bonus or unexpected income towards more child support, legal fees, therapist fees (very easy to have a therapy order in place for children and/or the parent(s)), etc.

That said, anything you have saved before marriage is yours to keep if you divorce, so there's that aspect to keep in mind.

I did the homemaker thing. The ex was career military, we had special needs kids and I had serious health problems. It was the right thing to do, but I am still trying to get on my feet financially post divorce.

We had a 1950s style marriage where he was the breadwinner. I come from a much more financially savvy and financially conservative family than he did. His idea of what to do with a pay raise: Finance more debt!

I found it completely crazy making.

I never want to be financially dependent on a man again. At some point, I decided the best thing I could do to make a damn difference in the world would be to leave behind my Pink Collar Ghetto aspirations and do any damn thing I want with my life instead of continuing to care about the world while the world doesn't give a flying fuck about me and my bills.

I sometimes wish I could talk some sense into other women. If you need to express some need to care, get a pet.

(No offense intended. I am trying to be sympathetic.)

If I may ask, were attorneys involved on either side in your case? I suspect that is the main differentiator between my experience and others that I have talked with that were able to settle on a sane number with their ex.

My ex-wife and I did the homemaker thing too. A lot of my peer group did. I don't think it works these days. No offense intended, but just like you never hope to be financially dependent on a man, I hope to never have a woman that is financially dependent on me again.

No, we had a DIY divorce.

I'm actually a rather skilled negotiator in some sense, though I don't usually say so because I think that gives people a completely different idea than what I really mean. I mean more like diplomat or like the guy in the movie The Negotiator. [1]

We kept lawyers out of it and that meant there was more pie to go around because we weren't giving tens of thousands of dollars to lawyers. That made it easier for both of us to give a little here and there.

My divorce was surprisingly amicable, more so than my marriage. We agreed ahead of time that we were not going to leave either party in a shithole of financial mess. (I sometimes joke that if we hated each other and wanted to make each other miserable, we could have just stayed together. :-P)

I have been to his house once post divorce and met his new wife. His life seems to be pretty okay these days.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120768/

Your story sounds like most I have heard where no lawyers got involved. Hell hath no fury like a partner scorned (with a retainer).

Glad to hear that you made it out without exercising Mutually Assured Destruction. :)

Related reading: http://realworlddivorce.com

Edit: To be clear, I mean that I suspect that there are a number of high-earning individuals on this forum that have assets like property, retirement accounts, stock options, RSUs, bonuses, etc., and that many in my situation would be paying similar amounts.

Keep in mind that I am talking about divorces involving lawyers on each side. I have no doubt that others make out much better if they have a sane ex-spouse that just wants to move on with their life.

The thing about divorce that I didn't realize is that making the decision to get divorced in the first place is the easiest and least painful of many choices you will need to make as a result.

Me and my long time girl friend have been really fortunate, no student loans and high paying jobs for the first 5 years out college. Our retirement portfolios are in a pretty good place right now.

Seems that at all levels of American society inequality is rampant.

I'm a young millenial in a low cost city in Texas with a retirement account balance over the average by quite a bit. If you have the money to max your accounts every year, its very easy. And I've already bought and sold a house while I maxed out my accounts.

Hearing the stories here makes me want to leave!

The biggest recommendations I can give for trying to save more money:

Make yourself work a bit – sock away more than what you would deem “comfortable” and live off the rest. You’ll be forced to really think about what’s worth spending on.

Get a roommate. I save probably $3,000 a year from this alone, and a big plus is that I get along just fine with him.

Spend frivolously on things that really let you have fun or relax – to a point. I like Mexican food, a good gym membership, and quality groceries. I don’t worry about what I spent on these items because I spend next-to-nothing elsewhere.

Start young. I opened my Roth when I was 17 and have maxed it out each year, in addition to maxing our my work retirement accounts the last few years.

A 32 year old has been working for about 10 years. S&P500 has been growing at 10.5% with dividends reinvested for the last 10 years. That means about $3500/yr in 401k contributions would get you to the average account balance. Take into account employer matches and that's honestly not as much as you expect it to be. Traditional wisdom is to put away 10% and employers have started to implement the auto-incrementing auto-enrollment features into their 401k plans that Richard Thaler has been promoting for the last several years.

We're actually gen x and have other retirement assets I'm ignoring here. But, this account illustrates real world performance that any number of tech workers could have reproduced in the same short time period. Not only that, but many are at an age where they could have been making contributions for 10-15 years now, rather than just 3-4...

Edit: apparently based of census data from 2014, so yeah he could be in there!

Pensions should be tax-exempt at withdrawal, or else be accessible. Otherwise what's the incentive, other than when pre-tax contributions are possible?

The pension tax deduction is also pretty poor and for every pound you earn above 100K you are losing your allowance which also infuriates me.

1:1 matching is almost unheard of now but was normal twenty years ago.

Contemporary jobs provide for "unlimited" (translation: uncompensated) vacation time...no 401k matching...sometimes even a huge copay for health insurance.

I am 30 and I have about $140k in 401k.

EDIT: Why the downvotes? I'm just affirming with a datapoint. There is an extreme inequality in America and I'm willingly acknowledging that.