How to Work Out How Much Income You Should Have Before You Marry

How much income should you have before you marry? To this question there is no one single answer. It depends largely upon what you regard as "necessary." Taking families the world over, more than half of them must live on less than four dollars a week, and four-fifths of them on less than ten dollars a week. Our American standard, while very much higher, is decidedly less than many people suppose.

To begin with, do not judge your prospects by the last ten years. The years 1935-36, well above the depths of the depression but before the abnormal prosperity of the war years, were much more like what you should expect. These are also the most recent years in which a careful study of family income has been made. The figures quoted are for whole families, many of which included several children. At this time, if you received as much as $1,500 a year, you were in the top third for the country. Fifty dollars a week put you in the top eight percent, and $5,000 a year made you a wealthy plutocrat in the top three percent. Because of higher prices and higher income, we might have to double these figures to find an equivalent for today. Yet even now, fifty dollars a week is more than most American families receive.

These are general figures. Now let us consider your vocational and economic prospects.

What is your total prospective income? (Include that of the wife if she expects to work after the marriage.)
If you are now both employed, the answer to this question will be easy. If you are still in school or for other reasons have not yet secured employment, you will have to estimate your income as best you can. You can do this by finding out how much people in the kind of job you expect to have usually received. Be sure also to find out what your chances are of securing such a job.

If the wife continues to work after her marriage, what will you do with her income?
You have several possibilities. You can dump the incomes of both of you into a common pot and use it up as you go. You can use her earnings to buy furniture and the "extras" which go with establishing a household. Or you can save all she earns to take care of the extra expenses when baby comes. All questions of her earnings are necessarily bound up with the possibility of babies, which gives an interesting uncertainty to the whole matter, for the stork is a slippery bird. He often slides through the best-laid plans. So always figure on the possibility of unexpected offspring.

Here is how one couple figured it out:

His probable income to start: $3,000
Her probable income: $2,500
Total income to start: $5,500

‘If we use up all our income as we go and have a baby in two years, our income will be cut by $2,500 at the very time when our expenses have increased considerably. To avoid this we will live on his income, and save all hers for two years. By that time he should have had a raise and our situation will be:

His probable income: $3,500
Savings from her income: $5,000

Then, when we have our first baby we will draw on the savings to take care of all the extra expenses and we can go right on without having to drop our standard of living.’

This seems like good sense. It is for any couple who plan to marry.

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