In my last post, I wrote about the follow-up costs of a marriage proposal, without even taking into account the fiscal calamity of divorce, alimony and child support. In this post, I want to outline how easy single guys have it in comparison.
Despite the recent cost-of-living increases, a single guy is in a pretty enviable position, assuming he is not entirely irresponsible with money. Of course there are money sinks like fancy designer clothes, expensive watches, or luxury cars. In particular if you are a bit younger, you are probably fine with a basic apartment. Perhaps not even the idea of sharing an apartment is tolerable for you.
On a normal income, you can get by really easily almost no matter where you want to live. You can probably save about half your after-tax income, yet not feel as if you are missing out on much. If you do this for one or two decades, you can seriously consider early retirement. This is a savings rate that almost every married man can only dream of. The biggest money sinks are arguably your car and your accommodation. If you rent, you remain flexible, which means that you can move around easily and take more promising job opportunities. This may not be to everyone’s liking, but it is quite viable, at least when the economy is doing okay. If you own expensive real estate, then your options may be a bit more limited. In addition, a car can cost you a lot of money. Yet, if you are fine with buying a used one, this is not nearly so bad.
To illustrate how easy it is to get out of the rat race, let us look at savings. I went over to bankrate.com, which has a simplistic savings calculator. Enter your initial amount, monthly contributions, duration, and interest. You may be surprised at the numbers that come up. Of course, inflation is ignored, but we also ignore salary increases, which should lead to a higher monthly contribution. Assuming a twenty-year horizon, a $2,000/month savings rate for a single guy with a decent-enough income, and an annual yield of 3.5%, which does not seem exaggerated if you put your money into a diversified stock portfolio, you end up with close to $700,000. This is probably enough financial security to enable a wide variety of lifestyles.
Of course, I am assuming full commitment to the single lifestyle. If you decide that you do want to have a wife and kids in your 30s or 40s, this nice nest egg may quickly shrink. All it takes is your sweetheart looking for her dream home and coming up with expensive plans for remodeling. Some of the expenses I have heard about can be eye-watering, like custom-made kitchens for $50k. If she knows how much money you have, there may also be other purchases she can no longer live without.
Note that I am not advocating for a frugal bachelor lifestyle. Yet, even if you like to spend some of your money every once in a while, your chances are quite good that you can life in enviable financial security, assuming you diversify your assets a little bit. Not having to worry about money probably also adds a few years to your life. Just the freedom of being able to take a somewhat lower-paid but more interesting job is a luxury that a lot of men, in particular married men who need to provide for their family, do not have.
And then if you have kids, expenses will explode even more.
Some are necessary expenses – children need stuff, you need a bigger place, childcare, vacation (now during high season), etc.
But then the behavior of a lot of women isn’t helping. A bigger place? In a more rural area is not an option – it has to be in or near overpriced cities. A stroller? It must be the one for more than 1000 dollars from sex and the city. And please only premium clothing brands and toys for my baby!
This is a great little article for guys to keep things in perspective.
Sometimes men tend to complain about their situation or about some things occurring in a way not to their liking. Or men phantasizing about romance and love “with a wonderful women”.
When in reality in plenty of cases it’s not so great a thing. And a more solitary, self-sufficient existence is much more of a blessing, despite all of society’s programming.
I live such kind of a life and almost every morning and evening of a day I tend to remind myself of the overall splendid situation I find myself in. And how grateful I am for this.
Granted, I did dodge some heavy and dangerous bullets. But all women I’ve encountered so far in the end weren’t able to keep up their façade and showed their true, nasty colours. And in the end, when it was time for an oath of commitment, my horniness never got the better of me and I was able to evade the schemings of female luring, and for good and sound reasons. I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish this without my time at the “Sleazy university”, mind you. As a regular kind of guy I would have been cannon fodder for the female meatgrinder.
I am saying this while – as a believing and practicing Orthodox christian – being fully aware of the importance of the mystery of marriage. Marriage is good, and right and it is important, it is willed be the higher powers, but at the same time it IS a category of martyrdom, albeit a bloodless one (“white martyrdom”). Both spouses have to be aware of this and they have to KNOW why they enter this mystery and for what reason. This of course requires the right woman with the right mindset. Anything else is a suicide mission. So I do commend every man who is entering the mystery of marriage with the right woman – and thus for the right reasons.
And this is also one core problem of modernity: That people are getting married for the wrong reasons (thereby destroying their life) AND people staying single for the wrong reasons as well (thereby harming their life too).
If you are really horny then committing may not be the best option, because you will be stuck with one woman which is arguably less fun, sexually speaking. I see it in the opposite light, thinking committing makes more sense when you have had enough sex already. I haven’t been there yet, though, so it’s purely theoretical
Don’t take at as a personal attack, I’m just really curious. What’s does Christianity say about using prostitutes? Or did you stop using them before converting to Christianity?
“What’s does Christianity say about using prostitutes?”
I’m pretty sure that goes against doctrine,as sex for any purpose other than procreation is viewed as a sin of lust. I think the real hidden agenda by portraying Lust as a sin is to control people’s (both men and women) sexuality,so they are forced to reproduce for “the good of society” (and not what’s best for the individual)
Today,we have our alternatives for sexual release such as internet pornography(and perhaps in the hopefully not too distant future,good quality fuckbots and VR sex.) and pay4play(well,not that this hasn’t existed already. its the world’s oldest profession after all),and these allow us to more easily evade losing deals in relationships.
https://blog.aaronsleazy.com/index.php/2018/12/12/when-beta-providers-get-laid-it-is-not-real-sex/
https://aaronsleazy.blogspot.com/2014/07/she-is-not-only-girl-who-would-want-you.html
As I’ve said before,what is in the best interest of any particular individual,is often (if not almost always) in conflict with what would be best for society. An unattractive couple producing kids to add to the cogs is beneficial to society. it is,however,not beneficial to the unfortunate couple.
I have been working on an article about sin, but I am not sure whether it will see the light of day. The key thought is that the (seven deadly) sins can be abstracted. They are sins because they embody excesses and perversions of the original motive. For instance, you obviously need to eat to sustain yourself. However, if you eat for the sake of eating, even if you enjoy it, your behavior is, at the very least, offensive to others. You may get away with it if you are a mighty ruler but taking more than you need would clearly have destructive consequences in times of want. Similarly, sex serves procreation. If you want sex with countless women, without taking on the responsibilities of its consequences, you engage in highly reckless behavior. Regarding your point, I do not think that lust is a sin because this is, or was, a convenient way of controlling people. Instead, blindly engaging in sexual activity with reckless abandon has seriously negative consequences for you. Yes, it is better for society if Tyrone does not father 12 children, but it is even better for him if he does not allow himself to be consumed by the chaos he creates. Also, the kind of person who has children with multiple women surely has many other problems as well.
Probably, we speak of sins because you can easily understand what they are and why they are bad. Had our ancestors spoken of the need to learn to control your urges, no matter what they will be, I do not think a lot of people would have listened.
Maou:
You wrote “sex for any purpose other than procreation is viewed as a sin of lust” – no noteworthy Christian denomination teaches anything like that. Not the Orthodox, not the Catholics, and not the Protestants (well, there may be some small fringe groups that do, but no major Protestant denomination that I know of). It honestly sounds like a made-up talking point from some anti-Christian website, heh. 🙂
You are right that the use of prostitutes is forbidden, though.
I was raised in a Catholic All-boys school,and this was part of what we were taught. (I’m no longer Christian/Catholic,if its relevant information here) Just looking at a woman lustfully,and masturbating by your lonesome,already counts as sin of lust.
Its very possible however that they are the ones who either misinterpreted or purposely twisted the information (I’m cynical about schools in general,so I’d say the latter is more likely,if that is indeed the case.) to suit whatever their ulterior agenda is.
The fact that different editions of the bible differ in what they say (this was demonstrated to us in college by a philosophy teacher/professor. I was no longer a believer by that time,but he was causing quite the uproar in the class) in certain chapters probably doesn’t help the case either.
Maou:
Yeah, the Catholic Church teaches that the proper outlet for sexu is within marriage (and so do the Orthodox and more traditional Protestant denominations). However, within marriage, sex out of lust is perfectly acceptable. 🙂
This is not the same “lust” of the eponymous sin. Lust is unbridled desire, and entails men fucking whom or what they should not fuck. Arguably, this even includes sodomy and bestiality. You cannot compare some Hollywood pedo anally raping a little boy with a husband having sex with his wife just because they feel like having sex.
“taking more than you need would clearly have destructive consequences in times of want.”
– You know,when you look at it from this perspective,it makes sense why we are biologically repulsed by obesity. Scooby Werkstatt has said in the past that overeating is no different than needless wasting/throwing away of food,and its easy to see why. Of course,you want to avoid the latter as much as possible just out of principle (it’d be better if you can give the leftover to some beggar over letting it waste,etc.),but for an obese person on a diet or someone trying to maintain leanness,if the only choice is between eating a leftover and breaking your diet,or just throwing it away,you may as well choose the latter because both choices fundamentally end up the same result anyway,except the first choice hampers you.
I know this,though its been something that’s been hammered into me,that I struggle to overcome.
Yeah,when I wrote that,I ironically enough forgot that contraception wasn’t always a thing. Having sex in that time meant having children,and 12 kids raised with no father are not likely to become productive citizens of a society. on the contrary,I believe studies show that kids raised by single moms are significantly more likely to grow up to become criminals/troublemakers.
“Had our ancestors spoken of the need to learn to control your urges”
– Religion definitely served a purpose back in the day. Would definitely be interested to read that article of yours about the 7 deadly sins should you one day decide to release it here.
@ Cycle Path: As the OP I can tell you that intercourse with prostitutes is a not a good thing, neither for the man, nor for the prostitute. In that sense I have failed despite knowing that I would be failing and despite knowing that this encounter ultimately would NOT be fulfilling to me – which is true. This I have to openly accept and work against, so that I do not fall victim to it next time.
As for the concept of sin: There exist shades of meaning for the term sin in Christianity, depending on the level of watering it down due to secularism. “Sin” as understood by the undivided church of the 1st millenium (which is the orthodox view) is a sickness of the human soul and of the human will, which cannot be treated or cured by human or purely intellectual means. This is a rather holistic view.
As far as sex is concerned, sex between married spouses is viewed as a very good thing to bond (“become one flesh”) and of course also to sire offspring, but if a couple turns out to be infertile their sex is still a good thing, because it bonds them to each other. A man who has particular difficulties in controlling his sexual passions is expressedly urged to find a suitable woman and get married, as to put his sexual energies to productive use, so to say. Casual sex and/or sex between unmarried people is viewed as harmful since it connects people, who might not be good for each other. It also “robs” a future husband of the purity of his future spouse. Though as old-fashioned and “fun averse” as this may sound, I do think there is great truth to this notion.
This is where the concept of chastity actually comes in. It means that one’s passions are the prisoner of the person, and not the other way around. This can mean for a married couple to purposefully abstain from sex on certain days, despite them feeling the urge for it, and then going at it on another day.
In other Christian denominations the concept of sin is viewed slightly differently.
For Roman-catholicism “sin” is also viewed in a legalistic way, somewhat like breaching a law which then requires punishment or correction to get the slate clean again. This is not entirely false, but it misses the holistic point of sin. This legalistic view comes from the Western Roman concept of law and law-abiding behaviour.
The Western catholic view of sex in many ways is more rigid than the traditional view of the first millenium church, because in has incorporated certain ideas of Neo-Platonic philosophy (which viewed matter in general and the body and its urges in particular as a bad thing) and taken some very personal views of St. Augustine and made them absolute (for no actual reason). This means that in many instances sex is only considered legitimate when performed with the intent of creating offspring, all other purposes are considered sinful. This is also connected to the Western Christian doctrine of “original sin” from the 12 century (which is actually heretical, since it disregards the clear statement by God that everything that He created was “very good”), namely that man itself has become sinful after the fall recorded in Genesis 3, 17. So man itself is considered sinful, his body is considered sinful and almost all actions and urges connected to it are sinful as well. This of course is a rather bleak outlook on practical human life and as such it almost invites all kinds of hidden, surpressed sexual pathologies and dysmorphia.
The Protestant view on sin is in parts similar to the Roman-catholic one (since Protestantism stems from Western Catholicism, albeit as opposition movement), in other aspects completely opposed as a laissez-faire view, which goes well together with modern Western nihilistic liberalism. Protestantism ever since its “radical reformers” of the 17th century and all its flavours, particularly in the English-speaking world, has become so diverse and incoherent that it’s impossible to name one overarching concept of sin and/or sexuality shared by all of Protestantism.
This guy’s feed today contains a good refresher course on why you should never, ever marry a Western woman, as there is literally no upside and unlimited downside.
https://nitter.poast.org/MallardReborn