James at DINK“The radical left is doing everything they can to destroy the moral fiber of America. They want to do away with the family.” — Pat Robertson

James from Dual Income No Kids is a straight, married man that writes with his wife, Miel. When we launched Queercents, they were one of the first personal finance sites to link to us. They didn’t offer any explanation, they didn’t introduce themselves… instead they just quietly pointed readers here. I remember thinking, perhaps they are just progressive twenty-somethings and identify with us because they are dinks like many queer couples.

I was wrong. One day, I posted about our baby making efforts and James left a comment, “As the son of two moms, all I can say is go for it!” Ever heard of the term “Queerspawn”? Queerspawn is used by the growing population of children raised in gay and lesbian households. The majority of Queerspawn children are heterosexual, but they become part of the queer community because of their families. James offered to write a post about being raised by two moms. Here are his thoughts:

First off, I wanted to thank the authors of Queercents for giving me the opportunity to guest post here. My name is James. I am a personal finance blogger and I run Dual Income No Kids, along with my wife Miel.

I am also Queerspawn. This means that my mom is a lesbian and I grew up with her and her partner, my other mom, Gretchen. I wanted to write briefly and share my experiences growing up gay and how this affected my personal financial life today.

Perhaps the first thing I should say is that my parents sexuality actually had little effect on my personal financial life. What I mean is that there is nothing about being a lesbian, per say, which is likely to result in wealth or poverty. There are unresolved issues surrounding equality in marriage and inheritance laws that have not been adequately attended to by our legal systems. These however have less do with being gay and more to with societies reaction to begin a lesbian.

That said, other things about my mothers did have a large impact on my personal financial philosophy and health. My moms are very different when it comes to finance. They’re both professionals, so money was never tight, but they had different approaches to handling cash. My mother Sarah, was never a great cheerleader for frugality, but her partner — and my other mother — Gretchen was. When I was younger, I conflicted a fair amount with Gretchen over small things like money for fast food or whether to cook with the top on the pan.

My attitude towards money made an abrupt change after I finished my masters degree. After graduate school, I had managed to accumulate about $24,000 in credit card debt over the years I was in school. Most of the debt was due to silly expenditures like going out partying, or for auto “improvements” like a new car stereo. One night I added it all up and found I literally had nothing to show for the bill. To make matters worse, at the time I was living a damp basement and had an unstable employment situation.

Somewhere in all the damp misery, I became committed to the idea of paying off my debt and never incurring it again. In the process, I gained an appreciation for my mother Gretchen’s virtues of thriftiness. Eventually the debt was paid off — but the habits — and the value of what my mothers had to teach — have remained with me.