optimized living

Laura Rowley a columnist at Yahoo! Finance has an article about how married people are almost twice as wealthy as single/divorced. Here are a couple statistics from the article:

• Married are 93% more wealthy than single/divorced
• Divorced saw wealth string by 77%
• Married have 4% boost in wealth each year just from marriage
• Two-person family only spends 1.8 times a single person

I’m honestly surprised at the difference in wealth for married people. My guess would have been about 25% greater, where the research currently says 93%. There are certainly clear financial benefits to a good marriage. Take the common recurring household tasks, for example grocery shopping. It’s certainly more effiicient to have a single shopper for two people or a family. If you take all of these tasks that are now load-balanced among a couple, it creates additional time that can either be used to generate more earning power or as a time to recover and operate more effectively during regular work hours. Also, this leads to outsourcing fewer household tasks such as hiring someone to clean the house or take care of the lawn.