To think people without kids have more money?

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Than people with kids I mean. Twice this week I've had single child free friends tell me how
" lucky" I am that I have my husbands pension to " fall back on". I don't even know what that actually means, he has his pension, I have mine, we both work, 1 pension per person. Neither of us will be able to retire early. We have 2 kids. Kids cost a bloody fortune.
I sort of let it wash over me the first time, but the second remark ( different person) bugged me.
She said " Well I don't have my husbands pension to fall back on" so I said " You also don't have kids costing you a bloody fortune"
I don't care about other people's life choices, or how they spend their time or money, I honestly barely think about other people! Except today obviously 🤣
Both of these women obviously think I am financially better off than them. I've never thought about it, but how could I be??? ( we all work in the same industry btw, on similar wages)

Yeah kids are flipping expensive but it is a choice we make.
Most of us didn't exactly have children foisted on us without our consent.

I'm pretty sure that in some situations, for example when one of the couple are a SAHP, they also get the shit end of the stick where there's also one part of the couple who pays all bills, for 2 people on holiday etc etc.

YABU for the misleading thread title. Your post actually compares single people without child and couples with children. That's difficult to weigh up. The simpler comparison would be that couple are almost always better off than single people, or that people without kids are usually better off than people with kids.

The fact is that couples can support each other financially; if one loses their job the other may be able to cover the household expenses for a while, etc. Children are expensive but they do eventually become independent, and when they do, provided you are still with your partner you will continue to benefit financially from being in a couple rather than single.

(I am married with children btw, and I envy my single friends their freedom, but not the weight of bearing sole responsibility for supporting themselves financially.)

I think you're totally unreasonable.

You chose to have kids, and not everyone chooses to be single. Having a partner is a big safety net. There's not the same pressure as being 100% responsible for your entire income, even if you don't have kids. As others have pointed out, being half of a couple makes you better off in so many ways - a bigger tax allowance, each of you paying less council tax than a single person, food scales up, etc. As a single person, I worry that if I become too ill to work, I'm screwed. I have nobody to fall back on. If I want to go on holiday, I have to pay 100% of the hotel room price. Life is so much more expensive for me now than it was a year or two ago as half of a couple, and it's very stressful not having any safety net.

Maybe your friends find it irritating that you don't understand your relative privilege. I would.

Only conflated by you, really. Your thread title was about having children, but the body of your OP was about what single people said to you about your husband pension. So nothing to do with having our not having kids.

They commented on what marriage means to your finances compared with theirs, not parenting, so I'm not sure why you think it's about children.

Having children completely changed our income as a married couple. My wife reduced her hours and went part time ( so we lost hundreds of pounds per month ) and we pay a little bit in child care costs.
Raising children means you make financial sacrifices. Going on holiday as a family of four is more expensive than going on holiday just as a couple. Obviously.

But everyone’s situation is different. There are single working mothers who earn £200 k a year. Thats more than me or my wife will ever earn.

There are other single mothers on benefits.

You can’t really compare other people’s finances to others.

Better off, maybe not. More secure on the face of it, yes.

Single people have to be prepared to handle any financial shocks alone unless they have a very supportive family. They also tend to pay more for rent/mortgage, bills etc.

As a child free person, you do have a lot more financial flexibility when you don't need to pay for children.

That being said, it's different strokes for different folks. Not sure why the comparisons you describe need to be made.

For every idiot who thinks people with kids have more money there is an idiot who thinks single people have more money.

So it evens out.

What’s indisputable is that a working couple on the same salaries as a single person will have more money than the single person.

So couples who give their single relatives one present whilst expecting two presents should cop on.

I don't think people without kids have more money. How can they, if they are in similar jobs earning similar wages?
What they do have is more money to spend on themselves!

A big proportion of parents disposable income is spent on their children. So, the majority of parents do have less money to spend on themselves.

I think your friends who referred to your DH pension, could invest some of their disposable income to bump up their pension!

Of course having kids is more expensive than not having any. I’m still surprised that many people are surprised by this! The same with Single people without partners to share expenses.

I see it every day in real life and here… people shocked that couples without children have more disposable income. I mean it really is simple math, right?

It's not indisputable as the single person without children will have been able to save more when younger (as not spending on children) and pay more into a pension. I don't think it costs that much more to live if single than a couple by pension age either if a homeowner.

But it’s really not single people’s problem that parents have less money to spend on themselves.

So many threads on MN where parents expect their single relatives and friends to fund their child’s Christmas, birthday, house purchase or university life.

i suppose out of two couples earning the same the one without kids have more disposable income. That is a fact, regardless of the couple with kids having chosen to have them.
out of a couple and a single person, of course the couple is better off as they have two incomes. And I suppose in a morbid way you could say that a widow/er is going to be better off because the surviving spouse will get the pension payout, should the spouse have a pension.
still, not really a plan for retirement… they could divorce…
in any case, a very odd comment from friends

Why on earth does anyone know about your husbands pension? Maybe it's time to change the things you're talking about with them.

But being child free USUALLY enables you to work and get the higher income.

The Australian carer pension is more than unemployment benefits, although still low. Way better than what you would get in the UK.

What would happen to you if you stopped getting the carer pension?

You’d want to be pretty stupid to not realise that it isn’t as simple as “no kids means more money”. There are individual circumstances that obviously dictate whether that’s actually the case.

I worked for nearly forty years. None of my jobs were high income. Best I ever had was $32 000 twenty years ago. Working itself doesn't mean higher income - look at all the people stuck in minimum wage jobs. The carer pension I've been on isn't much less than what my last job paid. And getting work once you're over forty can be damn difficult.

If I'm no longer my mother's carer it will be the dole. It's seven years before I can get the age pension. The dole won't even cover the rent. I'll have to hope the Victorian government work program that targets getting particular groups into work (women over 45 in my case) will help.

I would say it is the people that have less money have more kids

Most older single people I know are not well off. Being in a couple and pooling resources makes a big difference.

Yes I can how post title was misleading, but I did mention in the op that I have a similar job/ financial set up as both women.
What we really needed was a fourth woman to join the conversation, one with a good job, pension, a husband, but no children.
I think I will revert to my original position of not comparing myself to other people at all.

Surely the difference in pensions is being married ir single, not kids. If they were married with no kids they would still be entitled to dome pension. Do they not have their own pensions? No one has ever said this to me. Very odd that 2 people have bemoaned this, especially as you have uour own pension and work!

I think it's daft for either side to comment personally, therefore you're not unreasonable at finding their comments unnecessary. Possibly unreasonable thinking it's cheaper to be single than to be in a couple with children.

I guess in terms of simplicity - the pension - by the time you get it the children will be adults. So - if you were both renting a £1000 property each - single person would be paying for it with their pension alone, whilst a couple would be paying with a combined pension.

Yes the real difference is being married or not, it was me who brought kids into it. 2 separate financial implications really as pp pointed out.
I actually think I was being unreasonable and they both had a point.
But as I said, I don't compare myself to others generally. A bit random for sure for it to come up twice in a week
We are all early 50s so perhaps all considering how much longer we will be dragging our arses into work.

End of the day if you are childfree and sine you are penalised for it your whole life and its expensive.

A simple example is council tax, lets take two households living next to each other:

House A has 2 adults both earning £35k
House B has 1 adult earning £35k
Council tax is £100 per month

House A - each adult pays £50
House B - adult pays £75 with single person discount

Both houses retire same time and require adult social care to be funded by council

Look who had paid in more..the single person yet its the 2 adult household that will require more money from the council and per person have paid in less.

This is just one example of why as a single children person you are always financially disadvantaged/ penalised for your lifestyle choice.

There has never been one single budget where a single childfree person has had a financial benefit given to them as a group, with rhe exception of the recent help we had paying our energy bill but everyone got that so it doesn't really count.

I welcome anyone to come and tell what specific help single childree get other than the disposable income we have left means we can spend it on ourselves. What advantages do we have? We don't even get 50% of council tax!!

You have more options but less money.

One of you loses your job, you have the other to fall back. Same with pensions. If you want a career change with temp reduction in salary, your partner can do overtime to make it up.

It’s so tiring when single people complain. Honestly, as parents we just get on with it.

Erm. Have you been on mumsnet before?!