plonis:
I know that a Chareidi family generally make enough from the wife’s job and the kollel stipend to live day to day, but what about big expenses like marrying off kids or buying a house? Even buying clothes becomes a huge expense after a while.
Also, while I cannot comment on your personal status as you obviously are in a position to know a whole lot more than me, but I have a few questions about how you are describing Chareidi life in Eretz Yisroel. When I was there for Yeshiva, the vast majority of Chareidi friends that I had lived off of the Yeshiva which lived off of American donations. Most of their mothers did not have full time jobs and those that did didn’t make nearly enough to support their children. Almost none of the fathers worked in any non-Yeshiva position. They lived “day to day” based on the fact that the government paid for a huge portion of the Yeshiva starting from Yeshiva Ketana, so children basically stopped relying on their parents from when they turned bar mitzvah until they needed to get married. Did I miss something? Because that’s how most people I knew lived.