I’m learning that when you live on one income for 15 years, then jump to two incomes, you don’t suddenly feel rich. There are one million things we deferred buying that now need to be dealt with. I don’t mean luxury items—neither of the adults have bought a raincoat all these years, for example. There’s the broken storm door to replace, the barely-functioning bathroom dehumidifier to replace, one wall in our kitchen where the electric outlets have never worked, two cars that are 17 and 19 years old, etc.
So even though more money is coming in, which is great, the exact same amount of money is going out. We will definitely start beefing up the kids’ college funds and my retirement fund in January. But I’m realizing it’s going to take two years or more to “catch up” before we’ll actually start doing fun stuff like finishing the basement or some adventures abroad.
I identify with this very much. It probably took us 2 years of paying for all the delayed things before we were suddenly like "woo we're rich now!".
We are 1.25 incomes, but I have a feeling we will feel this way when DD2 goes to Kindergarten next fall. I keep thinking we will have so much extra money but between the cost of aftercare and extracurriculars plus catching up on stuff we’ve been putting off for years, I’m worried we won’t even feel it. Which is a huge bummer.