Marriage has a lifestyle inflation effect because 2 people are rarely willing to give up same things. So if one is willing to give up in-unit laundry and the other is willing to give up air conditioning, guess what, you’re going to end up with both and work more to pay for it.
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Only way married people can make cost-down tradeoffs is if both really badly want actual money in the bank more than lifestyle features. The big-saver couples I know of share a fundamental miserliness. They’d both rather have the money than anything you can buy with money.
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The costs are still distributed over two, right?
I think even more significant than this lifestyle inflation might be job market effects of needing to be in the same city (the two body problem). Cities where this would not be a problem are likely to be high rent.
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You made me think of "Days of wine and roses" with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. A love edified on addiction to alcohol.
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Isn’t the corollary, that one doesn’t care about upgrading to in-unit laundry and the other doesn’t care about upgrading to air conditioning, just as valid? And therefore marriage prevents lifestyle inflation?






