Female Breadwinners: Putting Our Husbands Through School
In the sanitized, cookie-cutter world of 1950s America, the wife was obligated to stay home all day cooking, cleaning, and wrangling a large brood of children. No longer.
These days, it’s not uncommon for the wife to be the main breadwinner, either temporarily or permanently. Additionally, more and more people are returning to school for higher education, so there are also more wives nowadays who are working hard to support their husbands through school.
I am one of those wives who is supporting my husband financially as he returns to school for his Bachelor’s degree. Are there many of us around? Apparently, yes. I found out that two my own fellow bloggers Cat Alford and Hannah Rounds are more or less in the same position as I am.
Though our journeys have taken different roads, we find ourselves at the same place — wives putting their husbands through school.
I met my husband in Alaska. I was in school, and he was in the Army. After he got out of the Army, he went into construction while I finished up grad school. He wanted to move into a management position, so we moved to Colorado so he could study construction management.
Cat was in graduate school when her husband got accepted to medical school in the Caribbean. She stayed back a year working full time, saving money, before moving to the Caribbean. She soon started her freelance writing career there and also taught English to local kids, while her husband was at medical school. Cat tells me that he was recently accepted into a residency program.
Hannah and her husband met at an Ultimate Frisbee game, and started dating in less than a year. Relatively free of student debts, it was later that Hannah took on the extra responsibility of covering for her husband’s education.
Though we had moved to Colorado, there was no job I could find that would pay all the bills. I had to get creative and I’m now working at night and on weekends as a freelance writer while keeping a full-time job. By reducing/keeping track of our expenses and increasing my income, we’re making it work.
Cat has a similar strategy, but says budgeting is her big focus. What began as a side hustle, writing personal finance blogs, is now a full-time career. She says, “We budget, watch our spending, and have monthly meetings to discuss our finances.”
Hannah who says that she is “technically working one and a half jobs”, is also big on budgeting. She says, “I honestly wish we would have started budgeting when we were first married. Not because I regret not saving more money but because being on the same page financially is so important.”
Hannah is relatively in a comfortable place as her husband’s schooling is largely covered by scholarships and a small salary as a research assistant. Come March and baby No.2, however, she is switching to part-time freelance career. “We’re in a position to do this thanks to some great real estate investments,” she says.
I can’t say the same about me. My husband’s tuition is covered partially through scholarships, tuition waivers, and student loans. He receives some money through his GI bill, and he also works two part-time jobs to help pay for some of our living expenses.
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