The undead Ramsey family
Over there Boxer notes:
“Children are expensive. When you date a wimminz who has little kids, you will not only be paying more money, but you’ll also be expected to part with more of your time. You can work smarter to make up for the first, but the amount of moments in your life is finite, and there’s no way to turn back the hour-hand in your life.”
Children can be expensive, but if a man chooses to marry a single mother, the State helps mitigate this by favoring married families. Your time is finite. Ultimately it is for you to decide if being a father to a single mom’s kids is valuable. Ideally in this evaluation, you will worry less about the money and more about vetting those relationship choices. Depending on how much he makes and how many kids he is responsible for, he might even save money by marrying.
The 2018 tax year incorporates changes to the standard deduction and the way children are deducted. This means lower taxes for most people with children and relatively higher taxes for those without children and those who pay a lot in state and local income and property taxes. In short, if you are a typical family man living in state with low taxes you will benefit most.
For a married couple, a single child is worth a credit of $2000. The federal income tax is a progressive tax, so the tax bracket increases from 10% to 12% to 22% with greater income. The credit, for each child, corresponds to the tax income of $20000, $16667, and $9090 (respectively). The following chart shows the tax benefits of children for a married couple:
For example, a married 2-child family making $60000 will pay nothing in federal income taxes. If the couple has 3 children, that number increases to $77000. They’ll still pay FICA taxes (6.2% Social Security; 1.45% Medicare), but they avoid those 10%, 12%, and 22% tax rates until they make a comfortable combined wage:
Regardless of the number of children, the typical married man will not be taxed above a 12% rate until family income is in the six-figures.
Over at Finances for Marriage-minded Men, I described the plan for married men. Men should aim for a sensible career with an expected income in the range of $50,000 to $100,000. They should live in areas with low taxes. If they choose to have 2 or 3 children, typical of many American families, they can live comfortably (even with a stay-at-home-mom) and benefit from the current tax code.
From the stories I’ve heard, the problem with wifing up a single mother isn’t the money. It’s that she and her kids won’t accept you as the father. No money in the world can compensate for a lack of respect.
Captain Save-A-Hos keep thinking she’ll be grateful. She should be. She rarely is.
@Gunner Q
This is tricky. If you could legally adopt her kids, then they would have to accept you as their father. But if you did that, you’d be on the hook for child support payments if the marriage went south. But let’s explore this, shall we?
Any single mother worth marrying has full custody of the children and a biological father who wants nothing to do with his children. Such a father would happily give his children up for adoption to you. This would also prove that he’s a real loser and that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t wrong to divorce him.
However, if the biological father still wants the children, then you should run. Do not get involved between a father, his children, and the mother of his children. Not only does the man love his children, but it indicates that she either frivorced him or has major issues of her own. You don’t want to touch that.
If you want to be Captain Save-A-Ho and the father to her children, don’t marry her unless you also become the legal adoptive father of her children. This puts you at greater financial risk, of course, but as my two posts on finances show, you can mitigate this risk.
Well for most men over the age of 30……just join a church, serve and embrace “there is no marriage in heaven” because its pretty much over for them. Most women are single moms or have no problem being one….but don’t ever, ever have sex because that is a sin……..but if you have urges, that’s your own fault because you didn’t marry a woman at 21 and were financially secure.
Impossible standards and situations young men are in………and at my age, I have to still endure sexual dreams (which at times I actually feel guilt for having them) or that reoccuring dream that I am running behind a child on a bicycle, and he is saying “Im doing it dad! I’m riding all by myself!”
Most of it in the end will have to blamed on “me” I suppose. That part though I had zero control over……..???? The parts where I just had to keep a brave face, and “keep trying” or “not letting it bother me, someday I would meet a decent enough woman for a wife?”
I was a fools fool. I should have not taken no for an answer. I should have been that “a-hole” to women. I should have used foul language to and at them. I should have “done as I pleased” and been not confident, but arrogant as the day is long. At least then I would have had a better shot at meeting a woman, or getting a wife.
@Ramsey
>If you could legally adopt her kids, then they would have to accept you as their father. But if you did that, you.d be on the hook for child support payments if the marriage went south.
In most cases, all the state could do is claim that you’ve been there and the children are yours in the event of child support. They just look for the nearest man that’s around, it doesn’t matter whether the kids are adopted or not, at least how I’ve understood it.
Besides, the legal adoption wouldn’t reflect how the wife or the kids see you. Often with single mother marriages that I read, the household goes on just the same as before. So ultimately any acceptance or respect is dependent on the wife shifting her priorities from the children to you. Most (99% of the time) this won’t happen, simply because of what you describe, coupled with the typical feminist attitudes out there.
Marriage in the end is a losing deal, and marriage with a single mother is even more so.
@seventiesjason
>Well for most men over the age of 30..its pretty much over for them. because you didn.t marry a woman at 21 and were financially secure.
I’d even go younger than that. 21-25 was the magic age around here. Of course, the women expect you to have it financially together and be rich, look good, and have it all together. Even the parents get into the act, because they want their daughter to be supported “in the life they are accustomed to”. I’ve read that marriage is increasingly for the rich alone. I’m very inclined with reading Ramsey’s commentary to say he’s only parroting that.
If you’re not independently wealthy, not to mention look like a Hollywood hunk, just forget marriage as no woman will ever find you good enough.
That said, my concern is more forgetting about women and stopping my desire for them than I am for preparing for marriage with one. In the current environment, given what the State and women are, the only way I can categorize it for myself is as a foolish mistake.
This is incorrect. From a divorce rate perspective, the optimal family income range is between the 25th percentile ($30,000) and 75th percentile ($110,000). The very rich and the very poor have relatively higher divorce rates.
Consider the hypothetical couple: teenagers, not virgins, and no college education. This couple has a 50% ? 10% chance of divorce. If I know nothing else about them, should I recommend they get married? No, because more likely than not, it will end in heartbreak. But if they wait until their early twenties, have a career plan (possibly some college), and wait to have children for year after marrying, their odds of divorce drop to 25% ? 5% . If you and your bride are virgins on your wedding day and you both have bachelor’s degrees, your odds are 20% (or lower).
I am describing, not prescribing, reality. Why would I advise a man to get married if he makes so little income (< $30,000) that he cannot adequately provide for his family? Sure, 4 in 10 of those men will make it work, and for those men they were right to get married. But for the 6 in 10 who get divorced? What do we say to them? It would be irresponsible to give blanket advice to marry. You'll have to find someone else do that.
Do not read my advice as demands to be followed rotely as if it they religious precepts.
Derek you are forgetting too that most men today are not “worthy” of marrying by the opinion of women. By the opinion of the media. By the opinion of the church. It is still assumed that a young woman who goes to church is ready to be a wife, a mother, has it all figured out is *beautiful* and way above average in looks when she is like most people………hopelessly average. Men are the ones who don’t have a plan, are covered in Cheeto dust, play Dungeons & Dragons and live at home in a basement. Dare you even question one aspect of this….you are a man who is bitter, a loser, hates women, that is why you are single.
Even men my age.
About a month ago there was a silly Op-Ed in the local rag here in the North Bay “Santa Rosa Press Democrat” about all these grown, single men in their 40’s and 50’s who are little boys, creepy, ugly, don’t have a plan, and of course cannot handle a “strong, driven, single mother, who knows-what-she-wants-and-expects” in a real man. Of course all these women are professional, have ‘amazing’ careers, never made a poor choice, are just so beautiful……and no man can just step up to a real challenge, just improve himself and be the man he is supposed to be. In the church….even the *conservative* ones use the phrase “be the man God called you to be”
And like that Charlize Theron post Boxer made a day or two ago……..all she wants is a man to “grow some nads” and “ask her out” and “be a real man”
We know the reality.
The flip side of this is “well, we just have to teach men Game and Frame”
This recent study that everyone is clamoring about lately about “30% of men 18-32” did not have sex last year came as no surprise to me. Many women are “those men are losers anyway”. Just about all in the Christian ‘sphere are either mocking these men as “chumps” who just need to learn Game and Frame, they need to read Rollo’s book…because you know……women can easily be told what to do, and controlled. Women find that *hot* evidently.
Deep Strenght talks about being able to bench press so much, be physically good looking….but looks don’t matter to women at all. AT ALL!!!! Oh and by the way and don’t have sex if you are a CHristian and not married, but shakes his head at the study, upset by it……….
Here in California I am seeing young men…….better looking than I was at 23, 25, and 28…….and dateless! They are into porn at home…….doing things like growing their careers, or mountain biking, hiking, and doing something productive with the lack of female attention. Good for them. I slid into drink and drugs hard at that age because I was so self-hating that I could not get a girlfriend, find a wife, and be a father. I should have had this mentality.
All the recent decying of this study, like its a tragedy…………that 30% of men…….many, MANY of them have jobs. Have degrees, are indeed ‘easy on the eyes’ and the ones who do live at home…………..factor California, New York City……he’s probably saving for a condo, or house. its just the fact again that most women today find most men really unattractive. This 30% of men, most are not losing ANY sleep over their sex life or lack thereof. Complaining makes them bitter on sites like DS and Dalrock. Doing nothing makes them a “chump” and “gay” according to to Roosh, Rollo, and those other putzs’. Doing something means now they are “desperate” and “needy”
What other choice is there????????????????? This is where MGTOW does get it right. The last thing most men have, their basic dignity as a man just turn their back on it. Most of this clamoring is by “modern women” and “the real traditional Christian manhood types”
A large portion of women today DON’T want marriage. They want a fantasy. They can have it, and Derek……..we are both at the age now where we just don’t understand “young people” today. If a man really wants to get married, he has to have it ALL figured out by 21 and he had BETTER be WAY above average in looks……..and that guy is having plenty of fun with 80% of women throwing themselves at him. Why WOULD he want to get married?????
Derek Ramsey @ 2019-04-08 at 21:46:
“If you could legally adopt her kids, then they would have to accept you as their father. … Any single mother worth marrying has full custody of the children and a biological father who wants nothing to do with his children.”
One, you tried to stack the deck with “worth marrying”. Two, the children belong to the father whether he wants them or not. And three, being the legally designated father has NOTHING to do with whether you get respect from your family.
Any single mother worth marrying would give her kids up for adoption in order to marry you. If she doesn’t want you that badly then you’re nothing to her but a new wallet. “Muh kids come first!” is not a path to respecting her new husband.
Disagree Gunner……seen first hand the “foster care” and “care homes” where these kids live. A single mother who wishes to remarry has a responsibility to her children. Her kids do come first, and IF she states such a thing, her actions will show it…….now I know most of that is just talk……….and after seeing COUNTLESS boys in my Scout Troop who really just wanted a dad………
After a camping trip……waiting for the boys to picked up by their mom, grandma, uncle, cousin…….one boy, about 11 hugged me, tears in his eyes “I wish I had a dad like you. Mine is in prison.”
I got down to his level told him straight “I am your Scoutmaster. We’re friends. We’re cool. I like you…..” then went to gently explain that I am not his father. We don’t pretend. We don’t talk about how cool it could be. I had to keep a gentle line with him.
Needless to say, when I got home…I wept. Wishing it could be true.
It hurts bad. So many boys…..and girls want a father. The courts punishing the dad? The baby momma running him out? The results and damage is HERE with the children. Throwing them back into a care system or foster system makes them worse and is frankly selfish of a woman, and selfish of a man who would demand such a thing.
@Gunner Q
Adoption cannot be revoked. An adopted father is the father for legal purposes. A biological father has no rights if he gives his child up for adoption, which is exactly what I’m saying should happen for you to take his children. If you cannot take his children by adoption, you should not take his (ex-)wife either. When you adopt them, they become yours fully and completely as if you fathered them yourself.
You misunderstood. No woman is worth marrying if you are a simp. You logically can’t be paterfamilias if you claim the woman but not the kids. They must go together or not at all. You must claim her completely. For this, the biological father must not (1) want his children or (2) desire reunification with his ex-wife.
Your implication is logically fallacious.
A mother who would give up her children for adoption (to someone else) in order to marry you is not someone worth marrying. Don’t marry a woman who would abandon her children for you. That’s the kind of woman who would abort a child.
If she gives her kids to her new husband, she is putting her husband first. This is the only path to respecting her new husband. If she still doesn’t respect you, that’s no different than any other wife disrespecting her husband (i.e. logically fallacious).
@Jason
Last month there was a discussion on adoption at Dalrock. They wanted to increase the pool of children available for adoption. This is misguided for so many reasons, not the least of which is our first goal should be to try to empty out the existing foster and adoption systems.
Now that my wife and I are done having biological children and done adopting, we have talked about fostering as the next step. We can’t pretend to be their parents, but we can do our part by loving and being there for the kids in need. Those single mothers may be trash, but those kids didn’t do a thing to deserve it. The man who takes a single mother’s kids has my deepest respect for taking that kind of risk to do good for kids and a woman who may never return the kindness.
Good luck trying to adopt. It’s a long process today…hence why so many couple go to Korea, or China and adopt….and the usual Dalrock / Christian thing of: People should adopt…..but, no not me….my wife and I want our OWN kids….you understand….”
It’s supposed to be for “someone else” to do, but they get to “feel good” about themselves making “solutions” to this problem. Let’s not even TOUCH the HUGE amount of children who have disabilities, challenges like my older brother who will never be adopted or even cared for proper in foster care.
When I was younger a pre-req for my wife was “she would be willing to adopt a special needs child” as well as having our own.