Being Single Is Making You Poor

By Kristin Iversen

• Not only is this young woman sad and alone and by a window, but also, she is probably poor.

So, you just learned that love is dead and that you will probably be single and lonely forever, and now comes the news that not only will you die alone, but also that you will die poor and alone, which might just be the very worst way to die. Or, actually, that would be a perfectly fine way to die. Because, who cares, you’re dead. But it would be a horrible way to live. And that’s what this is all about, right? Living. Life. Seizing the day and not being poor. Nothing is worse than being poor.

The Atlantic has a piece explaining how an unmarried woman who can’t find anyone to love her or take her on a real date will spend “more than a million dollars just for being single” over the course of 40 years as compared to her married counterpart. Now, let me break that down for you. That’s a lot of fucking money. Like, a lot. The article, titled “The High Price of Being Single In America”, was written by two women—Lisa Arnold and Christina Campbell—who are unmarried and plan to stay that way. So, they decided to sift through what is, to me, a prohibitively large amount of numbers and statistics in order to determine what exactly the financial benefits are to being married and what that really means.

What they found was not exactly surprising because, well, of course it’s more expensive to shoulder every financial responsibility by yourself rather than share the costs with someone else. But the huge disparity is disheartening in its comprehensiveness. I mean, sure, it’s more expensive to live alone than to live with someone else—that’s why roommates are such an integral part of the New York City living experience. But also, married women reap financial benefits when filing income taxes, when receiving Social Security, when collecting benefits from an IRA, and on healthcare expenses. So, even if you never had any fairytale dreams of a wedding and marital happily-ever-after, probably you should just suck it up and find someone to share your life with or whatever because it will make everything so much more affordable.