I was gonna title this post "Calculating the Cost of Sex" but I decided to take a more gentle approach to this whole subject matter.
Being 54 years of age, it gives me some precedent to look back on the successes and failures of life and gain some insight.
One of the things I am struggling to deal with is the continuation of the lifestyle I have chosen which is living in Santa Fe NM and working part time as an independent contractor supporting the petrochemical industry mostly back in Texas where I came from.
I've done some pretty detailed cash flow calculations recently to determine if / when I can retire and how much I have to work in between now and then to make a reasonable retirement possible.
One of the key elements of this calculation is the amount of money I have managed to save to this point in my life.
In reviewing that amount, I realize it should be a lot more than it is. There were many decisions, events and issues that contributed to the fact that I don't have as much as I should.
In addition, I am having to face the reality of keeping a very tight budget and knowing how much I am spending each month and where it is going.
This year's income is way below what it has been over the past 5 years and while I realize the independent contracting business has its ups and downs, I also realize that with less income must come less spending.
Especially on discretionary items like going out and especially money spent supporting relationships.
Oh yes - there is a cost to dating.
In fact, for me I know how much it costs when I am dating a woman on a "regular" basis vs "bach'g it".
It's about $600 / month = $7200 / year.
Where is that money spent?
Pretty simple - More and better food that I cook for my date, eating out, entertainment and drinks at dance clubs / bars, gifts for birthdays, Christmas, Valentine's Day, etc. - that pretty much sums it up.
In addition, I went back and looked at my 2 failed marriages.
In my first divorce, I had to pay out half of the value of my 401k and pay child support for my daughter for 14 years.
And before you go off saying, Oh - the mother is entitled to that because she's taking care of the kid and spending money raising the kid, hear me out.
I had visitation that amounted to equal time shared between parents with my daughter, meaning I was supporting her half the time. I bought clothes for her that stayed at my house, groceries, other supplies, took her on vacations, etc. and my ex-wife never gave me a dime to support our daughter while I had her on visitation but I damn sure had to pay $826.95 / month for 14 years which amounts to $138.927.60 in after tax dollars.
Yeah - that's right - let me say that again - after tax dollars which means it amounts to $187,552.26 in actual income assuming 25% income tax and 7% social security and 2.2% medicare paid.
So, let's round off just the child support present value to $250,000 to take into account a very modest inflation rate.
I'm not gonna reveal what the value of my Rollover IRA would be had I not given my first wife half of it back in 1997 but suffice it to say it amounts to hundreds of thousands of dollars difference in today's money.
I also won't reveal how much I paid out to my 2nd wife in that divorce settlement but I will total it up off line for the purpose of actually calculating the cost of love....
Actually, I will give you the total amount - the sum total of the present value of money paid out for 2 failed marriages is pretty close to $1,000,000.
Now, I don't know exactly how many times I had sex with my 2 wives but I can probably make a pretty good guess.
Forced to come up with a number, I would say the sum total of sexual activity between the 2 marriages was somewhere around 1000.
So let's see, the math is pretty easy on that one....
$1,000,000 / 1000 times of sex =
$1000 for each love making.
Which interestingly enough, is about the same cost of sex during my most recent dating periods.
Hmmm....
And while I must say I have never had bad sex and quite a few of the sexual sessions with my 2 ex-wives were pretty memorable, I still have to say...
That's pretty expensive.
And people wonder why I don't date that much.
I hate to say it but I've got to the point where I just can't afford....
The Rising Cost of Loving.
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