What is the bare minimum you would need to marry ONLY for money?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Here’s the (hypothetical) situation:

For whatever reason, you have to get married, and you have to marry for money. You do, however, get to pick who you marry.

Your marriage will be as follows:

Not happy, but not sad. You’ll never fall in love, but you certainly don’t hate the person you’re shackled to for life. You have to be monogamous, so no bringing in a 3rd party to the mix, and no affairs, either. You can, however, have all the sex you want with your spouse, and they’re willing (assume they are as minimally attractive, in your eyes, as you’d need them to be in order to get into bed with them). Your sex life will be nothing spectacular but you at least won’t die from the lack of sex.

You don’t have to spend every waking moment together (the money will afford both of you the luxury of pursuing any interest you want) but you do have to live in the same house. Your new mate is one of those types that has money to burn yet still insists on living in the same house they bought 30 years ago/grew up in/whatever. It has all the modern conveniences that you’d expect and it’s nicely decorated, but it is no mansion. Therefore, contact is unavoidable. You ARE going to run into each other in the hallway from time to time if you’re both home. (When you’re home, you’re staying in the house, so no running off to a hotel.)

Your spouse is debt-free, of course - and you will be, too, after the wedding. Since this is hypothetical, assume that the money is a sure thing - marriage to this person means financial security for the rest of your life. To make things easier - your spouse is an only child, their parents are dead and there are no pesky relatives on their side of the family that are going to be all up in your grill.

Two questions:

  1. What is the minimum amount of YEARLY income coming into the household (through investments or businesses or whatever) that you’d require to agree to a situation like this? For the sake of simplicity - assume you will be living wherever you live right now.

  2. What is the minimum amount of liquid assets you’d require, if any? By this I mean cash, in the bank, that you have ACCESS to. You can’t drain the account and run away, but you can dip into it at any time for anything you want (trips, cars, etc).

Bear in mind, I’m talking about the BARE minimum here.

Have fun!

2

Bare Minimum? What you are describing is about the perfect marriage.

3

I would not marry for money in any circumstance, regardless of the amount.

4

I would not marry for money. I expect to work and will make more than enough money to support myself. Freedom is priceless.

5

Bare minimum would be however much i would need to never have to work. The relationship you describe sounds a lot better than most relationships already, and i don’t need a lot of fancy things to be happy. I guess around 250k a year would be enough to sustain both of us and live a comfortable lifestyle.

6

Um…that doesn’t sound like a bad relationship, I agree. I’d marry in that case, though not necessarily for the money. I wouldn’t marry for money…but I would like to be comfortably well-off.

7

Can we define “where I live right now” as “Spain”? The house I bought 5 years ago is in the other end of the country from where I currently sit, and I’d like to spend time there…

What I don’t understand is why would money need to be my motivator to enter such a marriage. It would certainly be an improvement over my sex life - does the marriage involve “not working any more”? I’m not interested in that, sorry, it’s not about money, it’s about generally enjoying the job (and I’m good at it, damnit!). Hm… maybe I could marry the heir to my current client and get him to give me a nice job which people would think I was taking as a hobby but hobby my ass… but I have no idea how much money that is, other than “lots”.

8

OP, two questions: do I have to be on call and do what he says I have to do, or can I join him at events/gatherings/parties/dinners at my leisure?

Here’s why I ask: I dated a guy once for 6 months that paid for everything. He paid for fine booze, dinners out, clothing, and gifts in the few hundred dollar range.

He also, however, thought by extension of said gifts that entitled me to be “on call” for him. That other than class, I was required to meet friends or people he’d worked with, etc whenever he wanted.

Obviously I valued my freedom and left when he put too much pressure on me for those things.

If I have ultimate say and freedom, I can answer the question.

9

What she said.

It’s uncanny how often I’ll come into a thread to post to find you’ve expressed what I want to say–usually more concisely, too!

10

This. If I don’t have to work, I’m happy. A vacation a month would be nice too. :smiley:

11

I wouldn’t leave my current partner for any amount of money.

12

As a bare minimum I’d want enough money to not have to work or work around the house and still be able to peruse all of my interest and hobbies. In order for me to not work I’ll need 100K after taxes yearly. In order to not have to work around the house we’d need a full time maid, gardener and pool caretaker (I’m a dude no need for a pool boy) along with occasionally handyman and other needs so I figure that will run150K. To peruse all of my interest and hobbies I think 200K would allow me to travel or whatever on my whims so I’d need 450K to keep me in style and then to keep piece in the house I figure we’d need to double the no work and interest money so 750K a year.

As far a liquid assets I think that I would at least need a nice house on the ocean with a pool so we would need at least a $5 million home and probably half a mil in cars. So I’ll go with 5.5 mil in assets with 750K a year post tax income.

13

Hmmm that’s a good question I hadn’t considered.

I’ll say no for the first one, and “sorta” on the second. I say “sorta” because let’s face it - even in normal marriages we all have to go to things with our spouses that we don’t want to go to, sometimes.

So while you won’t be on call, there will be times you’ll have to suck it up and go to a party you’d rather not attend. Not constantly. To make it easy, let’s say you have to attend 50% of the events/gatherings/parties/dinners that you do NOT want to attend. (You’re always welcome to go to the stuff that sounds like fun.)

14

Bare minumum for me would be health / dental insurance.

15

Yikes. “Not happy,” no love, and only unspectacular sex with a minimally attractive person? And I can’t even use the money to build a dream primary residence?

And this is sounding like a good deal to folks?

16

It’s not a dream to me, and I wouldn’t bypass it for “true love”. My response is only assuming I hadn’t met my SO/future hubby.

I would need around 400k/year post taxes, with 3 mil at the ready for “emergencies”. I’d want to buy cars and gadgets for our second residence as well as vacation regularly. I would want a chef and a maid, plus maintenance people. I’d need an assistant, to take care of all the little things that are so annoying and grating in life - calling the guy who installed our Corian countertop so he’d fix it under the warranty comes to mind. Or having someone on call to receive packages and take the cars for oil changes/maintenance/inspections. I would devote my time to being on the board of various charities and possibly to political causes. I would never simply “lounge poolside” all day; this makes people depressed and lack meaning in their lives. My “work” life would be volunteering my time and resources every day, with the ability to pick up and leave for vacation at will.

Now, this 400k/year is only for myself. Should we have children I’d need to be guaranteed so much more - to outfit them in only private schools, tutors, science camps, cooking classes, vacations, nice clothes, each a nanny and a personal trainer. Private college tuition for 5 years, professional school tuition for 4, and 35k/year to live on for those 9 years, plus a 10k graduation bonus for college and professional school. Oh, and an additional 20k if they want to take a gap year after high school.

17

It’s a lot more than some people get.