Backstory: I’ve been a freelance writer/editor my whole career—master’s in print and multimedia; writer for magazines and newspapers; run a content creation consultancy where I write, edit and photograph for clients—yet part of being an artist (for most of us) means trading a lesser income for the privilege of doing our work. In my personal life, it’s meant that while working as close to full-time hours as possible, I’ve compensated for my lesser income by absorbing duties other fams might choose to pay for. The juggle-struggle is real; but to me, it’s the only way I can come close to “equally contributing” to running our home considering the income disparity between my love and me and the enormous hours he puts in outside our front door. ⠀ ⠀ Thankfully, my love doesn’t make me feel “less than” because of my career. I still feel “less than” as a result of self-inflicted insecurity about not providing enough (...whatever *that* means). But he understands the financial ups and downs that come with clients that come and go. And that means everything. ⠀ ⠀ We hit adulthood imprinted with an approach to earning money. Some come at it from a perspective of abundance: “I’ll always have what I need and even some of what I want.” Some operate from a scarcity mentality—“I have no idea how I’m gonna make ends meet.” And sometimes, life circumstances have us fluctuate ‘tween the two. ⠀ ⠀ As half of a pair that is responsible for our financial whole, speaking openly about a topic that is often emotionally turbo-charged is critical. Around here we try to have open money talks even though they can sometimes make me cringe. Frankly, at Cohabimates, that’s precisely what we try to do on the regular: invite cringeworthy questioning, and it eventually, it gets easier.
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