Is being single actually more expensive? The concept of a “singles tax” has floated through articles and personal finance columns for most of my life, but in the surge of inflation and AI clickbait, it seems to be coming across my feed more often. So is the singles tax a real thing, and if so, can you avoid it?
What is the Singles Tax?
If you haven’t heard of the Singles Tax, today it mainly speaks to how living costs impact single people harder when they do not have a partner. Zillow sent out a press release in 2024 on how “The ‘singles tax’ now exceeds $7,000,” referencing how not having someone to split rent with costs individuals an average of $7,000 more per year in rent. Undoubtedly, that number is higher in 2026. This is one of many examples of how living alone affects personal finances negatively.
Few places in the world today have an official tax on singles, though it hasn’t always been that way. Countries that have had a particular interest in increasing birth rates or heavy-handed moral stances when it comes to marriage have experimented with these taxes on single people, often called a “bachelor’s tax.” These taxes haven’t really seemed to move the needle much on the targeted issue, not surprisingly, but it seems to always be in the toolbelt.
The group at the Financial Diet has done a good bit of work covering this topic, and while I don’t agree with some of their conclusions, and I couldn’t match some of the statistics, they do a thorough job of laying out what most people think and feel about personal finance as a single person. However, wrapped up in their and many others’ summations of the Single’s Tax, they are very heavy on the narrative that this is an issue that affects single women significantly more than men, even in the absence of children.
There is a Social Single Tax that is intertwined in a lot of this, whether it is the expectations for people to pair off, the mental weight of always being asked about their relationship status, or the constant threat of being a third wheel; this social tax can have a real, material impact on decisions and expenses alike. The social aspect, especially, holds potential for disproportionate impact for women.
I do not think that anyone can argue that living alone in an apples-to-apples scenario with couples costs more. As housing costs remain at all-time highs, the difficulty of bearing that weight alone is certainly real. With marriage rates continuing to decline, this topic is worth consideration. When the unmarried population was a majority, like it was in the 50s (22%), it wasn’t going to garner a lot of attention. However, in a world where single and married people are almost equally represented in the US population, either the rules or strategies need to change. At least we should set expectations realistically.
Is The Singles Tax Real?
Yes and no. Here, the semantics are important. There is absolutely a cost-of-living burden that weighs more heavily on single people. We have officially set up a system where the assumed default is a two-person household. Not just two people, but two incomes.
We have developed widely accepted definitions of what a normal and good life looks like. What the house, car, luxuries, and hobbies look like for modern people. It doesn’t change vastly for single or married people. Sure, you may be able to cut back on square footage if it’s just you, but single people still buy houses at whatever the market is selling them for. Couples will require two cars, but the type of car remains relatively comparable. We all have to eat, and no one is eating at home, so the food cost per person is still in the ballpark. The only thing that massively changes is simply housing costs, if we assume that single people are competing with couples for the same home, and both people in the couple are employed.
So let me get the controvertial part out of the way, there is no “Tax” on single people. They pay the same market value for goods as everyone else. Whether they have the benefit of someone to split expenses with has no bearing on the cost of anything.
There is a disadvantage for single people here, though. It isn’t a Singles Tax, but a Couples Discount.
Two people simply need more than one, so there is something of a bulk discount built in. Things like financing also become easier, not because banks prefer married people, but because there is naturally more collateral and a built-in cosigner with a couple. Furthermore, while most countries do not tax people for being single, they still want to encourage the next generation of taxpayers to be produced. This has led to some tax discounts for those who file together. More of a carrot than a stick to hopefully keep the population up.
All these discounts combined truly do not offer enough incentive to assure marriage; if they did, the numbers would be trending up. From a taxation standpoint, it is clear that the government couldn’t care less about encouraging marriage rates or disincentivizing singledom. How we think about these things is important, so seeing it as a tax is not helpful, especially when married couples are becoming the minority now.
So, Why Does It Appear That Couple Have The Advantage?
We can skip right over the two-income point. That much is obvious. There are some other things here that single people won’t consider or even accept. Like a lot of things in relationships, it doesn’t always make logical sense to people who haven’t been in a marriage for a decade or so.
Here are just a few areas that lead to better financial outcomes when you shift from single to a couple.
Advantage One: Lifestyle
Single people and couples live very different lives. There is a point for most people after they get married where they realize (or are told by their friends) that they have changed and they aren’t as “fun” anymore. Going out loses its allure. Hobbies start to feel less important. Routine feels so intoxicating that leaving that state feels like a bad choice. What you enjoy changes when you make the decision to spend your life with someone else. “For better or worse” feels like it hinges on your decisions around how you spend your time (and it does).
You aren’t losing your fun, you are simply updating your understanding of it. Fun in a couple is rarely the same as someone with no responsibilities to another person. Fun starts to naturally drift towards things that make life better for you and your spouse. Sometimes that is cooking together, doing chores, or just sitting in silence next to each other on the couch. Most of these “fun” things have little cost, they actually recharge you, and there isn’t a lot of social negotiation that has to happen between tons of friends. Just two people who generally know what the other likes, and that is enough.
When you are with someone for a while, you tend to realize that you don’t have but one person to impress. I am not at all saying that you should let yourself go, but you can now be consistent and natural. You don’t have to show off looks, flaunt your wealth, or make loud statements to stand out. That frees up a lot of budget in comparison to trying to find that person. Trying to establish yourself socially can be expensive just by trying to maintain your best possible self under public scrutiny. Letting that go and settling down changes a lot in relation to your confidence, social obligations, and what you are trying to get out of the world around you.
Advantage Two: Support
Being alone can be hard because you do not have consistent people to support your efforts, not just financially. Some days it is having coffee made when you wake up late, some days it is listening to how your day went wrong, and sometimes it is pointing out blind spots. We make a lot of bad decisions when we are stretched thin, stressed, obsessed, and feel like we have to manage it all on our own. Having someone in your corner frees up bandwidth for you to think things out a little more and propel you to do bigger things.
Rarely do you see a couple whose strengths and weaknesses are the same. This may be one of the single biggest advantages as a couple; having someone to complement your personality to make a more capable unit. One may be industrious, and the other domestic. One may be agreeable and the other disagreeable. One may be confident, while the other is self-conscious. It is also likely that one is better at saving and one spending. All these, if taken to the extreme, are harmful. They could use balance, and it is easier to find that balance when the counter trait is in someone you love. You will humor other ways of seeing things in service to them, making you better unconsciously.
When people are single, they spend a lot of time, energy, and money seeking out this type of support in friends, coaches, and even careers. This one aspect of being a couple touches every level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and can’t be simply overlooked. How much money have you missed out on or lost by not having support as a single person?
Advantage Three: Perspective
Something I find myself saying more and more in the realm of relationships is that living a life alone is playing on easy mode. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but there are some things you just don’t get until you increase the difficulty. Being with someone is not always easy, but when you are in a relationship, you come to know and expect it.
Being with someone adds to your list of responsibilities; it adds to your impact in the world, both positive and negative. When you are on your own, you can live with only yourself in mind: your happiness, your desires, your consequences. When you add someone else to the picture, someone you care about, your perspective completely changes.
Married people have about 26% higher earnings than single people. Men particularly emphasize this. There are a myriad of reasons for this that can include selection preference, but I would attribute much of this to simply perspective. If you are working solely to support yourself, you will maximize for your happiness.
Most people are not solely motivated by money; if they seem that way, there is normally something else behind that. Generally, less work makes most people happier. If you are only concerned with your expenses, you can throttle those. This is where I think men epitomize this at mass. Most men do not need much to be happy. Young men, if there is not a woman in their life, are content with a bed, a couch, and something to watch TV and play games on. They can work just enough to maintain that lifestyle, and it will maximize their happiness in a vacuum. Women (generally) want social aspects to maximize their happiness. This relies on beautiful environments, status signals, and acceptance, even in the absence of men.
This mindset shifts when we have someone else in our lives. We now have to manage our needs and try to fufill other’s as well. This means we need more resources. When trying to find a balance that meets everyone’s needs, we increase our focus on earning and community, because we need those resources now and in the future to ensure that everyone has enough to be happy and supported.
Lastly, it makes us think about a future beyond ourselves. When you are married, if something happens to you, then you will be survived by your partner. It isn’t about having a life insurance policy; it is about building a life that continues after you are gone. When you are single, you don’t have to care who gets your stuff, and you aren’t responsible for anyone else if the world burns up on your exit.
This only increases when you have children. Your grown spouse will probably be able to take care of themselves, but your children will have entire lives to live after you are gone. It is so much more than worrying about legacy and providing the next meal; it is a conscious and well-meaning vote cast for the future of the world.
When you can look past your own needs and wants, you must look beyond the immediate future. That requires planning, saving, investing, and producing a surplus of resources. You cannot do that with a self-interested perspective, so your mind evolves to see that kind of future, and nihilism becomes a harder stance to hold.
You can reproduce the reasoning alone, save, invest, and grow your wealth, but most cannot reproduce the dire necessity of that without tying yourself to a family. Earning more, spending diligently, and saving more all become the natural inclination as you are driven to look after others, expanding all your economic interests.
Robin Hood Can’t Save You, but Friar Tuck Might
The Singles Tax, while some of its aspects can be very impactful, is not something systematically and intentionally imposed today. A lot of the proliferation of the idea involves wanting the material benefits that couples make happen with the combined efforts of two people, without all the investment in a relationship.
Finding someone and building a happy life with them may be harder than ever; that is evident based on the numbers, but the benefits are equally as clear.
Getting married is an investment, and it acts just like the stock market does today. You always stand a chance to lose, most likely not to zero, but a loss nonetheless. However, there is an invisible hand that wants and needs you to have some success. It requires you to invest smart, though. You have to put some hard-earned capital in the game regularly if you expect to be able to live on your portfolio one day. If you bet big, your chances of losing big increase. Invest smart, regularly, and try not to panic when a dip comes.
Since this is the case, I would not suggest planning on some Robin Hood-style tax reform to come in and incentivize being single. Honestly, it doesn’t make a lot of sense from a population standpoint, despite the individual upsides (I acknowledge there are tons of good reasons to be single). We should all strive to support ourselves, no matter what that looks like or what it takes. The easiest way to do that is to focus on scaling back rather than up. The good news is that being single makes that a lot easier.
However, focusing on yourself in this world can only take you so far. Once you have your own oxygen mask on, you need to assist others. Finding a partner and each of you giving it everything you have to make it work is one of the more predictable ways to achieve the level of comfort we associate with middle-class success. It may take two incomes, someone to stay at home, cooking more meals together, living in a smaller place than your dream home, or even putting up with someone else’s annoying but benign habits, but those are the investments required.
Marriage is being rebranded as a luxury as it becomes harder to obtain and maintain. It was never a given, but it definitely is not now. That is why I encourage having a great relationship as a goal rather than a career, a car, a house, or any other trappings of a comfortable life if you want to be successful. Of all the wealth hacks, this may be the hardest, but most effective one if you are willing to go all in.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
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