WHAT IF MY WIFE IS TAKING THE BIGGER FINANCIAL RISK?

My wife hasn't worked in six years.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. She hasn't been in paid employment for six years.

She stopped working when she fell pregnant with our second son, and since then we've operated what I suppose you'd call a fairly traditional household.

I work. She takes the lion’s share of the kids, the house and pretty much everything else that comes with running a family.

It's an arrangement that works for us.

But I've been thinking about that a little differently lately.

Because what if my wife is actually taking the bigger financial risk?

Over the last six years, I've continued building businesses, developing relationships, gaining experience and hopefully increasing my earning capacity.

Even when things haven't gone to plan, I've been accumulating something valuable.

Experience. Contacts. Skills. A track record.

My wife, meanwhile, has spent those same six years outside the paid workforce.

That's six years of career progression she's potentially given up. Six years of professional relationships she hasn't been building. Six years of independent earning capacity that might look quite different today if we'd made another decision.

And she's done that partly so I can do what I do.

Because the reality is, I can create considerably more economic value when I don't have to manage everything else that comes with running a household.

I can spend more time on my businesses. I can pursue opportunities. I can take on challenges that might be considerably harder if we were both trying to balance full-time careers with raising two children.

That's not to say I contribute nothing at home.

Although I suspect my wife might have a different assessment of exactly how much I contribute.

But the arrangement gives me an enormous advantage.

And I wonder whether we properly recognise the economics of that.

We tend to think of the person earning the income as the one creating the wealth.

But in a household like ours, I'm generating the revenue, certainly.

But my wife is creating a lot of the conditions that allow me to generate it.

If our arrangement were to change tomorrow, my wife would be re-entering a workforce she'd been out of for six years.

Now, I'm not suggesting she couldn't do that successfully.

Of course she could.

But I think we'd be kidding ourselves if we pretended those six years came without an economic cost or risk.

The essence of the question I am getting to is who has actually made the bigger investment in our family's future?

The spouse who builds the business, or the spouse who puts their career on hold.

And I'm obviously biased. I'm a business owner, and NEED my wife to back me by making sure everything else is done, so I can go and slay dragons (and occasionally some lawyers).

I'm also not arguing that traditional households are better than households where both parents work. Every family has its own circumstances, priorities and decisions to make.

The point I am making is that discretionary trusts have been a useful tool for business owners just like me:

Work 60+ hours per week

Has a spouse who raises the kids

The income splitting, and the ability to be flexible doesn't just enable businesses to take what they need and invest more into the business. It allows parents to have more choices, it encourages the family unit.

And most importantly it recognises tangible value in a stay-at-home parent.