Good point. But if I were in the market for a new mate, I would very wary of a man that made less money then I do. I don’t know if I could risk it.
At this point, I just want someone who has a job, is willing to work, and knows how to manage money or is willing to learn how. I may end up being the one in the relationship who deals with most of the money, as I don’t mind it and in fact enjoy it, but my SO should at least know how to do it.
[QUOTE=Antigen]
For me, I don’t think it’s the money so much as having someone who’s more or less my equal in terms of education and ambition, and whose spending and saving habits are fairly similar to my own. I wouldn’t mind if my boyfriend was making less, as long as he had a good job he enjoyed and that provided him with enough money to do his thing. I don’t know that I could find myself comfortably in a relationship with a convenience-store clerk. Maybe I could, but I feel like there’d always be a part of me wondering why he didn’t try for something better. It’s not so much gold-digging as success-digging, I guess, and for me success isn’t necessarily measured in gold.
I think most of the money-related fights in relationships are about spending versus saving - if one person thinks every extra penny should be pumped into the kids’ college fund, but the other thinks they should be allowed a nice family vacation once a year, there will be problems.
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Ditto. It has to do with the characteristics and qualities behind the amount of money they make (and therefore are why they make what they make), than the actual money.
In my youth, I dated a few musician types, unemployed musician types. No, “love” does NOT conquer all. It’s no fun being the only responsible one in a relationship.
[QUOTE=fetus]
I knew a number of people with this kind of attitude…they just believed that formal education was a crock and they could be better educated people just by having their eyes and ears open. That’s true to an extent: just being a college graduate doesn’t make you educated. But unless you have the brains, the luck and the work ethic to build your empire on your own (which is extremely rare), you gotta go to college.
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Problem is, some of those people don’t realize that someone who can make it like that without a college education is the exception, not the rule, so they say everyone should drop out of college and start their own business instead.
[QUOTE=Telperien]
At this point, I just want someone who has a job, is willing to work, and knows how to manage money or is willing to learn how. I may end up being the one in the relationship who deals with most of the money, as I don’t mind it and in fact enjoy it, but my SO should at least know how to do it.
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Yup. My husband doesn’t deal with our bills or cook, but I know that he knows how - he wouldn’t be like one of these pitiful widows who doesn’t even know how many bank accounts they have when their husband of 50 years dies.
Yup. I dated a couple of guys who were employed when I met them, and then lost their jobs while we were dating, and never seemed to get gainfully employed again. That became my deal-breaker, too - if I can work for a living to pay my bills, that was the bare minimum that my partner was expected to do.
This sums up my attitude pretty well. My husband is transitioning from a career in non-profit administration to the high-paying, jet-set world of elementary education, but I knew when I married him that he would never be wealthy. And that’s okay. We’re never going to get rich off my salary either.
I could never marry someone who thought working 80 hour weeks was acceptable, no matter how much money he made. It’s more important to me to have someone who can support himself but who prioritizes spending time with family over his job.
Reported.