If you’ve been reading this blog for a while (and if you haven’t, what’s wrong with you!?) you know that I have always been the main breadwinner in our household. This changed dramatically when I left my nicely paid investment job to launch this here, Work It, Mom!, but until that point I had always made a multiple of my husband’s salary. As I’ve written before, while I am proud to have been able to support our family I’ve often felt resentment at having so much pressure and my husband and I have had more than one “heated discussion” (why does this sound better than a fight?) about our situation. Read the rest of this entry »

I had a completely different post planned for today, but after glancing through the Elle/MSNBC Reader Survey about money I couldn’t resist this topic. (I should also use this opportunity to brag about my awesome husband, who bought me a copy of Elle, my guilty pleasure magazine to which I’ve forgotten to renew my subscription but which does a great job of putting my stress on the back burner for a few minutes.)

Anyway, back to the money survey. There are some fun bits on there — like the fact that 1 in 3 women said that they feel less pressure to have sex with the guy if they pay for their share of the date (which implies that 2 out of 3 do?) — but what caught my eye were the stats about women who make more than their partners. Here are a few:

• 1 out of 3 breadwinners resent paying for shared expenses

• 16% of breadwinners think that men should always be primary earners

• Breadwinners are more likely than other women to think that the primary earner should have more power in the relationship

• 1 in 4 female breadwinners keep strictly separate bank accounts Read the rest of this entry »