<p>Warren Buffet and his wife never divorced, though they led separate lives for decades and he has a “companion” for years (whom he married after his wife’s death). I suspect it would seriously disrupt BH if the Buffets divorced. </p>
<p>We leveraged fairly heavily, otherwise we are pretty conservative in our strategies. My h has been planning for retirement since he started working. It didn’t happen at 50, his target date. Not even at 55, though very close. He’s semi-retired now, and he does not know what to do with his time, and he waits on his kids and gets underfoot all the time to his wife. Sometimes, retirement is not all it cracked up to be.</p>
<p>If you look at the statistics, retirement is a poor plan for a man, given that most men die within a few years of retirement. I actually think that maybe men have some kind of biological programming that when they stop working, the body disposes of itself!</p>
<p>“I know a woman who stopped her education at 18 and never worked outside of the home, and raised her kids. This was very convenient for her husband. But now that the kids are grown, the husband has become vicious, abusive (burned her with an iron recently), and constantly threatens to divorce her because she is “fat” (always has been) and “does nothing”. And all she can think about is how to make him love her again. She has been told time and again “You need to get a GED, you need to start looking out for yourself, he’s done to my damage”, but she is paralyzed with fear and won’t do anything.”</p>
<p>I don’t condone the abusive part, but I agree that the woman should at least get her GED. She should have more pride in herself. Also, I think it is stupid for somebody to stop their education to have kids.</p>
<p>I believe that everyone should wait to get married or have children until after college. </p>
<p>So many people who have kids when they are young say that they will go to college when their child starts school, then it is when they are in high school. You get my point. It never happens.</p>
<p>“If you look at the statistics, retirement is a poor plan for a man, given that most men die within a few years of retirement. I actually think that maybe men have some kind of biological programming that when they stop working, the body disposes of itself!”</p>
<p>Well you are very wrong about that. The life expectancy of a man in the U.S. is 75.29 years. In 2002, the average retirement age was 62 years old.</p>
<p>So it would be very, very foolish for a man to not plan for retirement.</p>
<p>I don’t know about the division of property laws where this woman lives, but in places I had lived, she would be entitled to half of all his assets and also spousal support for a good number of years. It’s so sad that she is so beaten down by the husband she does not want to have a separate life from him. Can someone besides herself report him for assault ? Hearing stuff like this make me so angry and sad.</p>
<p>This woman is a very close friend of my sister, and I’ve known her in that capacity for almost 20 years. It’s unreal how her life has disintegrated, I never would have imagined it. </p>
<p>And yes, NY is an equitable distribution state, and if she said “Enough is enough”, she would definitely get half of the assets. She might even get lifetime maintenance because he married her right out of high school and he benefitted from her sacrificing college/a career to care for their two children and the home. </p>
<p>Their sons are teens, and what is worse is that they are now “pitching in” with the abuse. Not too long ago, she reprimanded their son, and the husband smacked her in the mouth for it. Her husband tells her constantly that when their youngest son graduates this year, he’s “out of here” with the boys to Florida. He also openly talks to his high school sweetheart that he reunited with at his recent reunion.</p>
<p>She just keeps babysitting kids, hoping that things will get better. Even suggested that if maybe she has a baby, he’ll have to stay with her and love her like he used to. It’s pretty hopeless – he uses her “lack of motivation” to do anything as an excuse for his abuse, but if she suddenly developed some self-preservation and motivation, I don’t see how she could forgive him for what he’s done. My sister would never call on him based on what her friend says because she’s afraid that her friend would defend him and then never confide in her again.</p>
<p>She’s been told to go to a local battered women’s shelter, and either she will do it when she is ready, or he’ll leave her first.</p>
<p>Well, insomniatic, I agree that college is a desireable goal (or I wouldn’t be here), but by the same token, what if the person has to go into debt to go to college? Should they wait until that’s paid off before having kids? And what if the woman is then infertile from waiting so long?</p>
<p>That is pretty wierd that the sons are involved in the abuse. I assume that they are only involved in the verbal abuse.</p>
<p>I don’t want to stir anything up, but it sounds fishy that the woman is not divorced by now. If I would get 1/2 of everything, I would be out of there in a heartbeat.</p>
<p>“Well, insomniatic, I agree that college is a desireable goal (or I wouldn’t be here), but by the same token, what if the person has to go into debt to go to college? Should they wait until that’s paid off before having kids? And what if the woman is then infertile from waiting so long?”</p>
<p>I believe that people should have kids only when they are financial ready. If they still have college loans, but can get by fine while factoring in the expenses for the child, then they are ready to have kids.</p>
<p>This directly from Yahoo:
"A woman is most fertile in her late 20s. After age 35, fertility decreases and the risk of miscarriage goes up. </p>
<p>If you are younger than 35, you may want to give yourself more time to get pregnant."</p>
<p>So let’s say somebody graduates college at 24. They will have more than enough time to have a child.</p>
<p>Half of a blue collar security guard’s wage and of a house in a dumpy neighborhood isn’t much at all. </p>
<p>And it doesn’t change the fact that this has been her family and life for 20+ years. He changed, she didn’t. After the life I’ve had, I can understand and empathize with a woman who probably feels as if she rather be dead than divorced from her husband. He probably has a point in being aggravated that she shows no interest in self-improvement, but he liked her just fine when she was raising the kids, and his actions are cruel. </p>
<p>The sons do not hit their mother, but they “report” problems with their mother to the father, which ultimately ends up with her abused by him.</p>
<p>It’s not really that easy to go from graduation date. Doctors take longer. And say that the graduate works for others. In professional fields, say law and medicine, a new graduate often has to work 50-70 hours a week to “pay their dues”. Perhaps loans get paid down, but when you bring in kids, you are talking a huge bill. You either sacrifice a huge chunk to stay home with kids, or you sacrifice a huge chunk paying a nanny to do it for you. </p>
<p>If you wish to be your own boss, it takes even longer. Take what the say about restaurants for example – that most go under in 5 years, if you last, you’ll probably make it. So hypothetically, a new restaurant owner has no business having kids for at least 5 years.</p>
<p>Then you factor in cancer like my husband had, the “young man’s cancer” that often strikes in teens and 20’s, robbing fertility. We are very lucky we had our son at 28. And there are women who go through early menopause. And there is also the fact that some women wait until their 30’s, counting on their fertility being there, and so by the time they discover a fertility problem, they are racing against time. </p>
<p>And I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m 37, and I’m tired. I don’t know how the heck people are having babies at my age. Maybe it’s because I started young…</p>
<p>No, the guy used to work in a factory doing manual labor. Just this year, he applied for and was hired to work as a security guard or corrections officer, one of the two.</p>
<p>I’m laughing now. Come on, how did they survive?! Lots of people survive on very little. They lived in a bad neighborhood, their house is a double, so they rented out half of it to help pay the mortgage. She babysat kids to supplement.</p>
<p>“I’m laughing now. Come on, how did they survive?! Lots of people survive on very little. They lived in a bad neighborhood, their house is a double, so they rented out half of it to help pay the mortgage. She babysat kids to supplement.”</p>
<p>I was basing my comment on a security guard’s salary.</p>
<p>There are some people who don’t think about consequences before they have children, but in a way the government bails them out.</p>
<p>My aunt and uncle rent out a hud house. The woman in the house is 23, dropped out of school at 16, and has 4 kids.</p>
<p>She has a free house and free food. Now what if the government didn’t give these people free housing and food? I would think she would have stopped having kids after the 1st child.</p>
<p>Hud tenants require Hud property owners. Hud property owners get a huge break when buying the property. What if your aunt and uncle didn’t rent out a hud house and had to rent out higher income properties? Maybe then they couldn’t afford to be the owner rather than the owned?</p>
<p>insomniatic, you realize that you are currently, right now, living beyond your means, yes? If you aren’t paying rent, don’t pay for your portion of the food and utilities bills, and aren’t paying for your own clothes and your own college tuition/bills/fees out of money you’ve earned, you are living beyond your means.</p>
<p>“Hud tenants require Hud property owners. Hud property owners get a huge break when buying the property. What if your aunt and uncle didn’t rent out a hud house and had to rent out higher income properties? Maybe then they couldn’t afford to be the owner rather than the owned?”</p>
<p>My aunt and uncle bought the property not thinking it would be Hud house. They signed up for Hud a few months after they bought the house. The only reason they signed up for Hud is because they will get a definate check every month. They wouldn’t have to worry about a tenant not paying.</p>
<p>“Hud tenants require Hud property owners. Hud property owners get a huge break when buying the property. What if your aunt and uncle didn’t rent out a hud house and had to rent out higher income properties? Maybe then they couldn’t afford to be the owner rather than the owned?”</p>
<p>While I agree with this statement it does not take away from insomniatics point which is a very strong one. People are not accountable these days for what they do…have babies, take out loans they can’t afford, the list goes on and on. And why is that? Because they have the government to bail them out. Don’t for one minute think there are not some members of our society that have more kids just to INCREASE their free hand outs.</p>
<p>“insomniatic, you realize that you are currently, right now, living beyond your means, yes? If you aren’t paying rent, don’t pay for your portion of the food bill, and aren’t paying for your own clothes and your own college tuition/bills/fees out of money you’ve earned, you are living beyond your means.”</p>
<p>I guess you don’t know what living beyond your means is. Living beyond your means means that your expenses are greater than your income.</p>
<p>Right now, I don’t have to worry about many expenses. My expenses aren’t greater than my income.</p>