It is worse than I’ve said.
Between my wife and I, we have 3 divorces, a custody battle…
I was married for 15 years to a lady that did not work. When we divorced, the initial alimony numbers floated about were in the $1500-1600 a month for 7 years range. By giving her the house, what little was left in my 401(k) after the tech wreck (whole other story of MCI/Worldcom there) and all the stuff, and taking on about $10K marital debt plus about $7K lawyer fees (mine and hers) I was able to get this reduced to “only” $800 alimony for 5 years + $900 child support for 7 years. I also had to cover medical insurance and 2/3rds of the kids medical expenses.
All-in-all, I sent her over $125K in 7 years.
Unfortunately, the divorce was in 2002 in the wake of the tech wreck. My alimony and child support were based on peak earnings, but I took a 10% pay cut just to get work in the aftermath of the crash.
I had money for basic expenses, but any extraordinary expenses went on credit cards.
While paying on that first ex, I had a 15-month rebound marriage disaster. It cost me about $5K to make her go away.
My current wife also had a messy divorce in the early 2K0s that included a pretty ugly custody battle a couple years after the initial divorce. She was a non-traditional student earning her bachelors at 33 and her masters at 35.
Then, soon after we met 6.5 years ago, she had about $30K in medical expenses that were not covered by insurance.
So, when we got married 4.5 years ago, combined we had about $40K credit card debt ($30k me, $10K her), $50K student loans (her), $140K mortgage, $40K second mortgage (used to pay medical bills and lawyer for custody fight), and owed about $5K on a vehicle.
Before the housing crash, we refied the house to $186K for 15 years at 5%-ish.
4 years later, the mortgage is down to $150K. 11 years to go and will be paid off when we are 55/53. CC debt is about $30K. Student loans have not budged much since we are making minimal payments (lowest interest rates and tax deductible). Unfortunately, we now owe more on vehicles. Bought a used car 1.5 years ago when son turned 16, and another used car last summer after he wrapped my pickup around a power pole.
Our mid-late-30s were a very, very bad time with multiple divorces, heavily alimony and child support, and some very expensive extra-ordinary expenses. Our 40s is a time of trying to dig out.
You can say I’m in bad shape, but I think I’m well above average. Our total debt is less than 2x our income of $150K a year. We’re only $40K upside down on the house, coming down at $11K a year. $150K in 401(k) is about 3x the average for our age group.
We’ve managed to not have any unemployment during this recession.
Were the divorces good financially? Of course not. Yeah, I’ve made some really bad mistakes in the spouse selection department. My bad.
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