The Government Punishes Families With Two Incomes

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:00]Your household has two incomes, and you're still broke. Now, have you ever wondered why? Listen, dual-income families go bankrupt more than single-income families. The second paycheck goes straight to taxes, daycare, and a mortgage that you couldn't afford alone. You're not really getting ahead, you're losing your safety net. One layoff, one emergency, the whole thing and it tends to fall apart almost overnight. The economy was rigged to need both of you working just to stay in the same spot, and nobody told you because they need you on the treadmill.

[00:00:28]So, statistically it looks like you're going to be in a better spot when you add a second income to the equation, but the math suggests otherwise. Let's take for example making $100,000 on a single-income family. On a single-income family making $100,000, you find yourself in two spots. Number one, you're in a much lower tax bracket.

[00:00:47]After deductions, after standard deductions, and anything else, you find yourself maybe in the 10% overall tax bracket, which means you're paying very little in taxes. But number two, now one of the biggest expenses of a dual-income family is no longer needed, which is childcare. Most people spend on the low end anywhere between a thousand to $1,500 a month on childcare. If there's one parent caring for the children and one parent working, now that expense that would have otherwise went to childcare, it now stays in your bank account. But then I want you to think about all of the other things that rack up just for the opportunity and the privilege of working. There's two cars, there's often times eating out because there's no time to prepare meals when two parents are working and coming home late at night. There's very little time to spend with children, which means when you are spending time with children, you're usually trying to do something to make up for the fact that you don't have very much time to spend with them.

[00:01:38]You're spending money. And one of the biggest things that lead to expense creep is when you're overstressed and you're just spending money to deal with the stress of working so hard and having a household to manage on the side.

[00:01:50]Whether that's lawn care, home cleaning, food prep, anything like that, you're spending a bunch of money just to try to buy a little bit more margin to spend more time with your children. Now, I want you to consider this. When you add a second income onto the equation, your income bumps from the 12% to the 22% bracket, maybe even the 24 or even 32% bracket. What this ultimately means is much of that second income is now just going to the privilege and opportunity of working for taxes. Then once you add in child care, there's very little left over after the month. In fact, let's do a little bit of math on this. Okay, so let's add this up. Let's say that we've got two people that now want to work.

[00:02:26]They've got two kids and the first spouse is making about a hundred thousand dollars, okay, a hundred thousand dollars a year. Now, on this one income, if it's just this only income, this individual is going to be at about the 10 to the 12% overall tax rate, which means very little of their income is going to be taxed. But the second we add on the second income, if we have a hundred thousand dollars now on the first income, but let's say on the second income, the spouse decides to go to work and he or she's going to make eighty thousand dollars a year. What happens now is this bumps them into the 22% tax bracket. At 22% tax bracket plus state and employment taxes, this is probably going to knock off somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-four thousand dollars in annual taxes. Now, that's one thing right there. You're losing almost almost a third of your income just because you bumped into the next highest tax bracket. But let's say that this family has two kids and because the second spouse is going to work, now the two kids are going to need day care.

[00:03:22]They're going to need child care before after during school, whatever that is.

[00:03:26]And even on the low end, you know, on the low end, you could do it for about a thousand dollars per child. On the high end, it can go as high as, you know, three, four, five thousand dollars per child. But let's just say for two kids, it's going to cost them on an annual basis twenty thousand dollars in annualized child care. Now, that's not a stretch. That's a pretty fair estimation. So, if we back out another twenty thousand dollars in child care, this means now eighty thousand dollars made, twenty-four thousand dollars is going to tax, twenty thousand dollars is going to child care. And after these two expenses alone, now we end up with just $36,000 of real income just for the privilege of working for the second income. If we're really being honest with ourselves, it probably doesn't stop there, right?

[00:04:10]You're probably going to have some other expenses associated with just the opportunity and the privilege of going to work. That might be commuting. That might be just stressed out spending.

[00:04:19]You're too tired at night. You're too overwhelmed to cook dinner. That might be a little bit of extra wardrobe expense to be able to dress appropriately for the work that you have. Whatever that might be, let's say during the course of the year with car, with insurance, with over stressed spending, with, you know, just all the things that come with working. And And if we're honest with ourselves, we know that these exist. Let's say there's $10,000 in annualized expenses that might not otherwise be there. What this means is Now, once you factor all of this in, you're really only making 26,000 dollars a year. And you might be thinking to yourself, "Well, hey, that's still $26,000. That's going to allow us to get ahead. That's going to make a dent in debt or in saving for the future." And you're right. But if we really want to factor out, you know, the value of someone's time, if we take $26,000 and we divide it by the average working year, you know, if you're working five days a week, eight-hour days, you have a couple of weeks off during the year, you're working about 2,000 hours per year. 2,000 hours per year. And if we take 26,000 divided by 2,000 hours per year, what this comes out to, my friends, is you're making $13 an hour.

[00:05:26]$13 an hour. Now, I don't know about you, but most people when they decide to go get that second job, they don't anticipate they're really only making $13 an hour. And this is why our economy is set up to punish dual incomes. It's set up to really make dual incomes even more trap because on the surface it seems like this would be awesome. If I add another $80,000 to a $100,000 career, that's a hundred eighty thousand dollar income. But what it doesn't tell the truth of is that extra income backs out so much of your income just for the privilege of working. One of the other side effect consequences of having dual income families is the cost of housing.

[00:06:02]Want you to imagine this. Many families today, they are dual income families.

[00:06:06]And whether they've done the math or not, they feel tight. Everything feels so squeezed. But this is one of the challenges with non-dual income families trying to compete with dual income families. Now, when this family right here goes to the bank and says, "Hey, it's time for us to buy a house, and we're going to qualify for a mortgage based on a hundred eighty thousand dollar a year income combined income."

[00:06:26]This now allows them to get approved for loans and for buying homes that they can afford. They can afford, but it just puts them in a tighter situation. But now here's what happens. Because they can afford it based on their income, they drive the cost of housing up. And there's a lot of reasons that the cost of housing goes up, but one of the main reasons is just bidding wars, right? If someone else is willing to pay, you know, for a house, if someone else is willing to pay two hundred thousand dollars, then the new price of this house is two hundred thousand. If a new family comes in and says, "I really want that house, and I'm willing to pay two hundred twenty thousand," it drives up the comps in the area, which drives up the price of homes. What this ultimately means is for our single income family who understands the math a little bit more, they come to the table and they can only get approved for a mortgage based on one income, and they go to buy a house in a decent neighborhood, and they cannot qualify. They can't afford the houses that have now been driven up in price because of the dual income families. So, there's many different ripple effects that impact the economy, and across the board, single income families, dual income families, all families are finding themselves in a very tight and a tough situation because of the economics, because of the math behind what I'm sharing with you right now. So, back in the day, I hate it when I say that. When I say back in the day, it makes me sound like one of those old guys. It makes me sound like my parents.

[00:07:37]But maybe I am sounding like my parents.

[00:07:38]Because back in the day, right, most people grew up in single income families. There was one primary breadwinner. And if there was a secondary breadwinner, it was kind of side hustling a little bit. It wasn't necessarily a full-blown career. And everyone had this value that one spouse works, one spouse raises the kids. And it takes a village, it takes a combined effort to raise good solid families.

[00:08:01]Now, for many different reasons, for many different reasons, economic as well as value-driven as well as society's migrating more to cities and less out of little towns, many, many people have walked away from those traditional values that really built our American culture. Now, we find ourselves in a completely different culture to where most people are forced into dual income families because that's just the norm, that's the way it is. The value that one spouse works and one spouse stays at home, that has been all but abandoned.

[00:08:31]In fact, for many people, I'm just going to say women especially, for many people, if they're not working, they somehow feel undervalued or less valued.

[00:08:39]The value of caring for a household and caring for children is undervalued in our world at large. Now, I think this is just a switch in our culture and in our values, but nonetheless, it puts even more pressure on couples to have two working families. Then, it puts them in a position where they wonder, is it even worth it to have kids? I mean, yes, kids bring tremendous amount of joy and opportunity, but as we can see here, they bring a tremendous amount of economic stress as well. And what dual income families have to determine is that economic stress preventing them from having kids. Would it be easier to have kids by having one working spouse?

[00:09:12]And these are big questions that one YouTube guy that talks about financial freedom in 10 years or less isn't going to try to answer. I'm just going to bring the math to the table so you can see the challenges that are are inherent with two working spouses. So, if you're a two income family or a single income family, the purpose of this channel, it comes down to one thing. It comes down to the concept of retiring in 10 years or less. And the reason I say retire, it's the concept of having passive cash flow that supports your lifestyle. And it gives you the ability to retire from a life that you may not love and step into a life that you have more passion for. So, really, whether you're a dual income family or a single income family, whether you're making $100,000 a year or $200,000 a year, what it really comes down to is understanding the math behind your money. Here's probably the biggest opportunity and the challenge I would give you is in order for you to retire in 10 years or less, you've got to become the CEO of your money. And, you know, the math that I broke down for you today is part of some of the work that a CEO of money would actually do. If you want to retire in 10 years or less, you need to consider this. Every dollar that you have in your personal economy, it represents two things. Number one, it represents the time that you've traded to get that dollar. Think about the math that I just broke down for you. I just broke down for you a full-time working career, 2,000 hours in a working year, and that's probably understating how much most people actually work, but 2,000 hours traded for what little dollars you have in your bank account right now. So, the money that you have right now, it represents the time that you've already traded. As the CEO of your money, when you understand this and you understand that the objective of this strategy, of retiring in 10 years or less, is using money as a tool to buy back your time, then your money has a dual job as well. And the second job is to buy back time. When you understand this, then you start looking at every dollar that's in your life and you start looking at it under a lens of really three things.

[00:11:06]Lens number one is is this dollar that I have inside of my life that I've already traded my time for, is it going towards a value that I hold dear? I'll give you some examples on this. If you hold dear the value of working and the career that you have, if that gives you some intrinsic value, then yes, the dollar that you have should drive a career that you want. But if two spouses, if one spouse doesn't have the same value or drive in a career, they're just doing it because that's what everyone else is doing, then as the CEO of your money, you would look at this and say, "Is the value there for these extra dollars?"

[00:11:39]Now, on the dollars that you do have, you want to really look at it through your core values. What lights you up?

[00:11:43]What gives you a sense of satisfaction in the life that you have? Is it spending time with family? Is it traveling? Is it a leisurely day at the park? Is it dinners with your family?

[00:11:53]Whatever that might be, you're going to look at your monthly spending plan and you're going to make sure that most of your dollars are going towards values that really give you the sense of meaning and the sense of fulfillment from the time that you traded to get the dollars that you have. Number two, you're going to make sure an appropriate amount of your dollars are going towards meaningful and relevant goals that you have. People who do not have forward-pacing goals, they live their life on repeat. One year looks like the last year. This decade looks like the previous decade. Without a forward vision of what you want your money to do for you, then your life will just function on repeat. And what happens to most people is they wake up in their 40s or 50s and they realize they've traded 20 years of their life and they have very little to show for what they've traded in terms of money and options and the ability to retire one day. They then try to scramble in their 50s and try to put something together, but by that time, the pressure is so intense because they've traded so much time and they've lost the value of time to build wealth.

[00:12:49]So, start with a goal. And like I said, the goal of this book is for you to be able to retire in 10 years or less, which means you're going to want to take a portion of your money and you're going to want to put it in assets that deliver cash flow, income. Because when your income is greater than your expenses, you are financially free. You can retire. And so, the fun part about this is when you have this goal, you're going to take a portion of your capital. I tell people minimum of 10%, but if you can get it to 20%, even better. You're going to take 10 to 20% of all your capital and you're going to put it towards a comprehensive system that buys back your time step by step. 10 to 20%.

[00:13:26]This is really you saving for the future and I want you to take just a moment for yourself and envision the future version of you. Envision the future version of you 10 years out. You what you're doing today by saving 10 to 20%, you're not really doing it for you, you're doing it for that future version of you and what does that person want? I guarantee you that person wants more options. That person wants to wake up and say, "I'm not going to the office today." That person wants more control over their time and over their life. That's what that person wants, but only you can create it for them. And it starts right here with the diligent discipline to save 10 to 20% of all you make into a system that creates cash flow. This then brings us to number three, necessities.

[00:14:04]And here is the biggest trap that I think most Americans fall into. Most Americans today they live in a constant cycle of spending money. We've become so disconnected with our money that the second a dollar hits our bank account digitally, we turn around and also spend it digitally on credit cards, on subscriptions, on Uber Eats, on whatever it might be. And at the end of the month, very rarely does someone actually know where all of their money went. And if you really sat down and looked at where your money actually went, you would realize much of your money that you've spent was not actually spent on necessities. It was not actually spent on goals and it was not actually spent on things that gave you value. The entire world is built to attack your money. It's built to extract your money from your bank account digitally in a way that you don't physically feel it going and then before you know it, you traded more of your time, more of your life for less money because most of your money has gone out the door. For me, when I got committed to financial freedom and when my wife and I got really, really clear on what we valued, we started freely allocating money to our values. And our values were different. My wife enjoys dressing really nice. For me, generally I wear t-shirts, right? I have a shoe on right now with a hole in it because I don't really care. I mean, for me it doesn't matter. It's a very comfortable shoe.

[00:15:16]And so, for my wife, there had to be a boot for every season and there had to be a sweater for every occasion. So, we allocated some money within our personal spending plan to her values. We also allocated some money in our personal spending plan to my values. I enjoy exercise. I enjoy nutrition. I enjoy protein powders and things like that.

[00:15:34]And so, we put money into those two value categories. This is the both gave us a sense of satisfaction that money was helping us live the life that we wanted to live. We also really combined value travel. And so, every single year we allocate money to travel individually, to travel with each other, and to travel with our children. This now means that our money is going to things that we value. Now, it gives meaning and significance to the time that we're trading because we have money helping us build and live a life that matters. Do you see how this works?

[00:16:00]Then, in addition to this, the way we would run our income is our income comes in and immediately what goes out is our I'm just going to call it our financial freedom fuel. This is our savings. For us, we save 20%. This is our savings.

[00:16:14]That comes out first. And as soon as that comes out first, this just happens automatically. It goes into our passive income machine. And that now is automatically creating cash flow and financial freedom. Then, we spend whatever is left over. This goes to our expenses, right? And it's not the other way around. What happens for most people is their income comes in, their expenses go out first, and they save whatever is left over. We save first. We pay our future selves first. This then means that our goal is automatic. It's just automatic. And we only live on whatever is left over. And then whatever is left over, we make sure as much of it goes to values. This then allows us to really look at our necessities. We've made many, many choices inside of our life about the cars that we drive, the homes that we live in because when we know what our values and goals are, we allocate money appropriately to our necessities. And when we're building financial freedom, right? Financial freedom, it's a game that buys you back more options and more time. So, that's what I would say. This is the trap that most people fall into. They fall into a trap that they never actually become the CEO of their money. And they get to some point in their life after they've traded 20 or 30 years, and they wonder where all their money has went. They have very little to show for it, and when they try to pick up the pieces in their 50s, it becomes almost mathematically impossible, especially if you're going to use Wall Street, to ever be able to retire. You become a victim of an economy that was designed to keep you dependent. That's what I call the dependency economy. You're on this channel to learn about the ownership economy. And the ownership economy requires you to become the CEO of your money, to own your money, to own your decisions, and to own your results. So, if you want to learn a framework for you to be able to retire in 10 years, to really understand what it means to be the CEO of your money, and how to operate a financial system that makes this automatic and happen in 10 years or less, I'm going to invite you to go down to the link below this video, and go to retirein10years.com. This book was written after a decade plus worth of lived experience with me and thousands of clients that I've worked with. It was forwarded by my mentor, Robert Kiyosaki, and was co-authored by yet again another mentor, Robert Allen. And it's an entire comprehensive framework on how you can retire in 10 years or less. Go grab that book, and then join me on the next video.