Let’s say you meet someone of the appropriate gender for you whom you find extremely compelling physically, intellectually, and emotionally, and who finds you similarly attractive. (And, of course, you’re fee to date.) But this person has a flaw: he or she seems content to work at a $30,000/year job so long as needfuls such as insurance and such are taken care of. The person shows no desire for financial improvement. Would you be willing to date the person? Why or why not?
I did indeed marry such a person. Before I met him, I mostly but not exclusively dated such persons, which confused the heck out of a few of the ambitious ones, who couldn’t figure out why I didn’t prioritize differently. Mind you, “smart and interesting” is part of my definition of “attractive”.
I don’t care how much money a woman makes or if she’s really driven to get ahead specifically in financial matters, but she has to have some ambition somewhere outside of watching TV.
30k would be enough for me to live like royalty. I don’t think I can adequately answer the question because to me that’s a lot of money. I’d be ecstatic to date/marry someone who made that much.
Even if I get the job I’m hoping to get in the next few weeks I’ll only be making $1,500 a month or so- not even 20 grand- but that’d be more than enough for me to live comfortably.
Wouldn’t make any difference to me - I’m not at all ambitious myself. As it happens I make enough money that a single-income household would be doable, but even if I didn’t enough to get buy ( and plan even in a modest way for retirement ) is all I’ve ever wanted myself. More is nice but unnecessary.
If anything I might have a slight bias against Type A, driven ambitious folks unless they are able to compartmentalize it to just work. Folks that are always on can be tiring. But even that isn’t a big relationship hot button for me compared to something like anti-intellectualism or kitten-stomping.
Thanks for this poll, Skald, and thanks to those who’ve responded…seeing the results thus far has given a much-needed (if temporary) boost to my faith in humanity in general.
The idea that there’s something morally or personally contemptible about people who don’t devote every waking hour of their lives to obtaining more money, or that career success is any kind of individual decency metric, is a hot-button topic for me, and I was all set to go off in a spectacular fit of righteous e-rage. I’m very glad — and, I must admit, a touch surprised — to see that I don’t need to.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Any woman I date needs to have some hobbies or some kind of life outside of “ma stories.” But she doesn’t need to be on the fast track to CEO of a fortune 500. In fact I find that a bit of a turn-off.
I couldn’t care less. My household is single income; I support my wife and our newborn son. She is an artist, a wonderful human being, and takes fantastic care of both me and the baby.
She makes no effort to sell her work at all, though occasionally random people do buy things purely by chance. If she wanted to, she could market her stuff online and to high-end stores around the city, but she prefers to make whatever moves her and to give her work away as gifts.
Neither of which is the same thing as “ambitious”. You could have a very smart person who’d rather put his or her energies into a hobby instead of into making money or getting promotions. I know lots of interesting trivia, but nobody pays me for that
Or you could have someone who has a high-status but not very high-paying job. An example of this would be Mr. Neville’s job as a professor of astrophysics, or pretty much any academic job. It’s not exactly a minimum-wage job, but he could be making a lot more money doing something else, and he knows it.
My financial ambition in life is to not have to keep track of every penny, be able to keep the thermostat at a comfortable level all year round, have cats, dogs, or both, and have a house big enough so that I can have lots of books. The house doesn’t need expensive furniture- Ikea will be fine, except for the bookshelves (those don’t do so well if you pack them full). I don’t want leather furniture- I’d have to worry about the cats ruining it, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t need a fancy car- my Honda Civic is adequate for my car needs, as long as it runs reliably. I don’t wear makeup, and I don’t want designer clothes- I’d rather wear a 10 year old T-shirt with something interesting on it. I do need someone else to do the landscaping and housekeeping- I’m allergic to house dust and grass. I’m willing to mend clothes, but I’m not willing to do the really cheap stuff like washing and re-using foil.
As long as they’re happy with the job they have it’s ok to not be ambitious. But if they constantly complain about how they don’t make enough money, but don’t actually do anything about it other than complain, then no, it’s not cool.
Are we talking someone from NYC’s idea of a medium city, or someone from rural Appalachia’s idea of a medium city? Because those are going to be very different places with very different costs of living. And does this person consider things like saving for retirement to be needful?
I’d rather date someone who makes very little money doing something productive and handles that money responsibly than someone who’s independently wealthy and spends his days loafing by the pool.
