It’s not news that starting a family can be expensive for queer parents. Many of us have lived that. But a new report from Family Equality lays out the costs for different options; looks at how income variation among LGBTQ people impacts their choice of option; and offers suggestions for addressing the imbalances.
The “myth of gay affluence” has long haunted the queer community, even after much debunking. LGBTQ people are in fact more likely to be in poverty than non-LGBTQ ones. Now, a new study shows that LGBTQ people are also more likely to participate in public assistance programs—and are thus at particular risk when those programs are cut.
If there’s one thing I like as a consumer and erstwhile marketing professional, it’s a responsive company. I posted yesterday about a survey sponsored by TD Bank that explored how parents teach their kids financial literacy, but clearly focused only on opposite-sex parents. This morning, I received the following e-mail from Jimmy Hernandez, a media relations officer at TD Bank. I repost it here with his permission:
The New York Times has an article today on “The Extra Hoops Gay Parents Must Jump Through” in terms of legal and financial protections. Three experts, a lawyer, a financial planner and an accountant (which sounds like the start of a joke, but it’s not), offer their advice to a lesbian couple in Michigan with two children.
The Boston Globe this Sunday published an article titled, “Learning to adjust,” with a sub-heading explaining, “For millions of middle-class Americans, the recession has forever changed spending habits and forced a reconsideration of basic expectations–like retirement.” It’s a nice article about personal finance in our times. What makes it noteworthy, however, is that the two spouses profiled in the article are lesbian moms Liz Page and Marianne Stravinskas. The fact that they are a same-sex couple is incidental to the main thrust of the article, which is not about “gay” finance per se.
The New York Times has just published a major new piece on the costs of being a same-sex couple. Their conclusion? Lifetime added costs range from $28,595 to $211,993. Authors Tara Siegel Bernard and Ron Lieber did extensive financial modeling and analysis, based on a hypothetical same-sex couple whom they chose to be similar to
