For some reason it's much easier to post once I've already thrown some stupid thing up there already.
It just seems a bit weird that it's all about having money to get out of bad interpersonal situations instead of just having money for bad economic situations. I guess Dave Ramsey and Suze Ormond covered that ground.
Being poor isn't that bad until you have violence, children, medical bills, etc. I think the point of the article is to shake young women out of the complacency of being poor, when they're within the personal-responsibility margins of having a small buffer.
Please do not take "complacency of being poor" out of context. I mean specifically kids fresh out of college.
I've been poor and I've been rich. Rich is better.
This still sort of looks like the standard "save enough for a six month emergency fund" that everybody gets except with sexual harassment and halter dresses added.
I guess it seems worthwhile to remind women that they have some vulnerabilities that don't commonly apply to men. Still, I thought it was really strange to not see something about how you could just get laid off or whatever.
7: I suspect that the idea is that you'll support your partner, and they you, with normal reduction of expenses when you're down to one income. I suspect that the ideal by this articles lights is not to tap your FOF if your partner gets laid off--relationships may turn worse when they lack a job, they may be revealed as not adequate partners by treating their time off like a vacation, etc.
The layoff situation as a singleton seems similar to quitting because your boss harasses you in their examples.
I think there's another aspect in that it's a lot easier culturally for a woman to justify her reliance on a man financially than vice versa, even women who think of themselves as feminist. I think a man would get a lot of pushback if he spent all his money on clothes and eating out to the point his girlfriend had to pay the rent and utilities.
I have a small quibble. If my boyfriend were supposed to pay half the utilities, wasn't, and then was racking up $50 late fees, I would get really upset and might call him stupid too. I agree with the general point, but I'm ok dating someone who tells me I've done something stupid if it's true.*
*Ok, thinking about this there's a difference between telling someone they are stupid and something they did was stupid, and the former is a lot less ok.
I read that and wasn't sure what I thought about it. But the message is "If you're implicitly relying on being able to count on economic support from anyone else, you're vulnerable to that person, so don't leave yourself in that position." Which is sort of an additional layer on top of "And you could get laid off, so you'd need an emergency fund."
I think a man would get a lot of pushback if he spent all his money on clothes and eating out to the point his girlfriend had to pay the rent and utilities.
The "No Scrubs" rule? I don't actually think it's that rare for the genders to be reversed here, especially if we count not playing child support.
And if "beer and cigarettes plus the occasional stripper" counts for "eating out".
I would never be able to live with someone who was bad with money, so I'm also having a hard time with the story. Agreeing to pay half the bills and utilities and then spending all your money on less important stuff is also a slap in the face to the person you're dating. My ex did stuff like that, and our couple's therapist told him he was a shitty person because of it. Maybe the boyfriend was being kind of shitty because he was stewing in resentment that he saved his money and lived frugally while his girlfriend saw him as a giant checkbook, so she could go to out happy hours all the time and buy clothes out of her budget.
I so get that's not the point of this story, but I'm having a hard time reading past this.
11
Yeah, but in that case we wouldn't assume the girlfriend footing the bills is the abusive one.
She could be, if she applied herself.
It's not that it's insanely rare, but it's more negatively viewed when a man does it than when a woman does. Like, a version of this aimed at a man (we could, for the sake of argument, refer to him as a 'drummer'), would be saying things like "Don't count on your girlfriend to keep paying the rent -- she may throw your useless ass out at any time, and then you're back to living in your car." Not warmly supportive, but condemnatory.
And if "beer and cigarettes plus the occasional stripper" counts for "eating out".
Don't do that to the stripper.
I think heebie must have meant 'without negotiating appropriate additional terms of payment, and only assuming she's up for it.' Not really included in the stripping gig, as I understand it.
Always a good way to navigate your way through a strip club. Where better, in these parlous times, to find love?
(Is anything ever parlous except times? I have no idea at all what the word means in isolation.)
Parlous = perilous, I think.
But the message is "If you're implicitly relying on being able to count on economic support from anyone else, you're vulnerable to that person, so don't leave yourself in that position."
Yes. Although an even better and more broadly applicable one would be "personal responsibility means that you pull your weight". The story has the subtext that living off your boyfriend is foolish because he might get violent, rather than it being wrong because you're basically a sponger.
Once on an airplane I met a woman who was a bartender at a strip club. She said that the key to making money as a stripper was to convince one or more regular customers that the relationship between the stripper and the customer was true, albeit expensive, love.
That's also how marriage works for "rules" women.
Yes. Although an even better and more broadly applicable one would be "personal responsibility means that you pull your weight". The story has the subtext that living off your boyfriend is foolish because he might get violent, rather than it being wrong because you're basically a sponger.
Although 'pulling your weight', in terms of personal responsibility, is not necessarily going to ensure your economic independence. The most obvious situation isn't directly addressed here -- women doing child care or other unpaid in-family caregiving -- but is certainly an issue, broadly. You can be working very hard and still not have control over the money you need to leave an abusive situation.
(On a different issue, the harassing boss situation isn't about someone who isn't working or paying her own way, it's just about the vulnerability of living paycheck to paycheck, and not being able to afford an interruption in your income.)
As someone in the middle of not-unrelated endeavors, um, it's complicated? How do you know what kind of tradeoffs are worthwhile? I don't really have good answers.
How do you know what kind of tradeoffs are worthwhile?
Assume a spherical bedtime.
Spooling that out a little bit, several years ago I cut back my hours at work a bit because it gave me the flexibility to do what I needed to do to be a foster parent. (Foster support payments per child per day are equal to about an hour of my time at work, so this is a financial loss but alleviated stress and let me foster when I wanted to.) I was of course not in a relationship where we were making equal sacrifices and I needed to stay in that relationship until I was able to have custodial rights to all the children, which is exactly what I did. Maybe those were wrong choices and I'm not particularly asking you to litigate that, but there are legitimate questions that come up and need to be answered somehow in relationships. Ideally the person doing more unpaid work might be compensated some other way, for one thing.
Moby, if I could imagine a bedtime that actually had an end, I'd be golden. (Last night was good! We could stick to that! Not jinxing anything, I swear!)
I've mentioned here before the family member who was completely financially dependent on her partner, whom she eventually married: she had rationalized it because she was the one running his business and controlling the budget such that they could afford to buy a nice house, etc. It's true that she was the financially responsible one who made his earnings and investments productive and sustainable, but that was worth fuckall when he left and took the business and other income with him, and didn't pay child support (far from it -- after his tax refund was intercepted he went ballistic and she had to get him arrested for threatening everyone with violence). It was the most amazing clusterfuck I've ever seen. He managed to singlehandedly eliminate all their shared assets and income except the house, which she held onto. Effectively she had a $40,000 fuck-off fund, via random inheritance; it was just barely enough to get her out.
Isn't this affected by class though? The assumption that everyone always pulls their own weight, all the time, seems quite bourgeois. And paid childcare and other reliance on market services makes it easier to see that everyone is "pulling their weight".
The assumption that just one income can pay the rent is a bit bourgeois.
16: I don't think it's actually all that rare. I can think of several examples quickly. Mostly falls into artists (as you say) or losers who can't keep a job, with the occasional delusional small business owner.
You're a bit bourgeois.
Wait, what are we talking about?
I can't be bourgeois. I live in Pittsburgh, a simple blue collar city unlike the sophisticated, battery-throwing eastern side of the state.
Have a heart, Moby. Thorn is too sleep-deprived for geometry.
"Pulling your weight" to me at least doesn't mean 50/50 financial split all the time. Raising kids, or doing all sorts of other uncompensated necessary labor is extremely important, and one way women do get screwed over, because they're the ones doing this, like in 32. This particular example, however, is of two MC/UMC single childless people who have presumably worked out a joint financial arrangement which one person is unilaterally violating to spend her money on luxuries that she solely gets pleasure out of.* That's very different from being the person who agrees to give up financial wealth for the good of a unit, only to get screwed later.
An analogy would be a partner who agreed to be the SAHP, but then spends their time watching TV or drinking instead of caring for the kids. You'd be absolutely pissed that your partner agreed to do something they weren't capable of doing, and didn't come to you to renegotiate. One example was the lights getting turned off because the woman didn't pay the electric bill. To get your utilities cut and a giant fine you need to have gone many months without paying and ignored the increasingly desperate warning notices from your utilities. If that sort of thing happens, the other person has the right to be absolutely pissed off.
I agree with the general point, that people need emergency money, and that there is gendered violence/harassment women have to deal with more often, but I had issues with how the story was presented, mainly because mooching off a partner is also such a dick thing to do.
I was rejecting the sphere for that reason, guys! In fact, maybe we can just agree that bedtime is triggering and stop this conversation thread entirely. After all, I'm going to have to deal with it again in under eight hours and I need to be strong enough to survive.
I was thinking that the bourgeois assumptions were 1) maxing out a credit card is something that only happens if you're irresponsible 2) cutting back on expenditures is the difference between being $10k in credit card debt and having $3k in savings.
32: We just got a 3 month old bill from our lawnmowers with 3 months of late fees added even though they'd never sent us a bill earlier. We were all wtf? He is sulky and rude about it, so we're firing him. Turns out his wife did all the billing and she left him, hence the lack of bills. He still thinks we magically should have known we owed him money without a bill being sent. I hope she had a fuck-off fund.
I also think that there's something bourgeois about expecting to rely on a wealthy male partner. Most working class women don't have a cohort of men earning steadier paychecks than them.
||
Roc island is fucking freezing. 5°C, coldest in 30 years. And before the snowpocalypse contingent starts laughing, this country doesn't bother heating their buildings. I can see my breath inside my apartment.
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The last part of the article seems crazy to me. The idea of a FOF is to have enough by to live for 6 months, or, better, a year when it all goes tits up and you walk. So far, great. But if you've just made yourself voluntarily unemployed and/or homeless you don't start by blowing your savings playing in swanky hotels and drinking room service champagne - you do that once you've acquired a new job/apartment. If you have enough to last 6 months, why deliberately cut it to 5 before you start. Go to a mid range hotel and have a couple of margaritas in the bar, you might even meet somebody who'll put you in the way of gainful employment.
I was raised in part by my grandparents, who working class Norwegians. The lesson I learned was that I would probably never get married or have a kid in wedlock, and America had barbaric social services, so I needed a job that supported me and any family I wanted. I was actually shocked when I realized my boyfriend was reluctant to have kids because he'd been raised to think of the man as the sole breadwinner, and so he was worried about how he'd support a family. I was so used to think of money as something that was my business it never even occurred to me that he would be worrying about it too.
A sphere comprises nothing but ends.
48
Also, that comment about borrowing money from her dad annoyed me too. If you're in an abusive relationship or have a boss who harasses you, having parents willing to loan you money is a safety net not all people have, and it's an important one.* It's another way this article just seemed so bourgeois.
*If my daughter puts up with being abused or sexually harassed because she doesn't want to borrow money from me, I'll feel like I messed up somewhere. I'd also feel like I messed up if she spends money like the woman in the story too, though.
This might be why I don't see any Norwegians in the bar.
if you've just made yourself voluntarily unemployed and/or homeless you don't start by blowing your savings playing in swanky hotels and drinking room service champagne - you do that once you've acquired a new job/apartment. If you have enough to last 6 months, why deliberately cut it to 5 before you start. Go to a mid range hotel and have a couple of margaritas in the bar, you might even meet somebody who'll put you in the way of gainful employment.
Gainful CRAPPY employment. As hire As, Bs hire Cs. Why not go to the swanky hotel and move straight to the top to keep living the lifestyle you deserve. Gotta spend money to make money.
I get the point of the story, but it rubs me the wrong way because I think many young women would simply ignore any message that says "you should be financially frugal in case your boss turns out to be a creep and your boyfriend a jerk, because if you can't leave then, it's your fault for not being frugal." Who thinks, "Don't go out to lunch in case your partner decides to hit you?"
But I'm on board with the general idea. I have some students who think finishing their degree isn't important because they're just going to be moms; and some moms who made that decision twenty years earlier and are now back in school because it turns out that "we're in law school*" and "married to a businessman" doesn't mean you can actually support yourself when the lawyer or businessman leaves you and you have half an associates.
*I hate this locution so, so much.
46 Where I lived in Morocco was like that in the winter. It never quite got freezing but it sure got cold as fuck.
Go to a mid range hotel and have a couple of margaritas in the bar, you might even meet somebody who'll put you in the way of gainful employment.
My brother got a job that way, except it was probably beer he was drinking. Irish mafia.
46, 55
It was like that way in rural China too. 5 degrees C is totally miserable if it's that temperature everywhere.* Do the locals have any good clothing items? In China people have these quilted fleece pajamas that look like 50s era kids' snowsuits.
*The weirdest thing was getting used to the fact it was usually colder inside than outside.
To get your utilities cut and a giant fine you need to have gone many months without paying and ignored the increasingly desperate warning notices from your utilities.
This is only true in liberal states, which bother to regulate their state-sanctioned monopoly utility providers. I've had my electric cut off without warning for being a few days late on a payment, usually because an electronic bank payment was delayed in processing for some reason.
55 - In a desert country, I would expect to get cold, and equip myself appropriately. But tropical Asia just isn't geared for this shit.
I can't even read the linked story because second-person writing something internet writing for women something, but if you're married and your partner has income and you're in California you are likely to be entitled to an automatic F.O. fund, though you should save enough to put the decent lawyer on retainer who can obtain it for you.
In a big country, dreams stay with you.
In other words, "marry someone who has a business" is a totally viable life-financial strategy, at least in a community property state. You do have to make sure to get married, though. But aside from the potential loss in acquiring human capital if you don't work, which is the real issue, you don't need to worry much about having separate individual savings per se.
So getting married right out of college to your first boyfriend is the safe way?
Of course, that's four years of uncertainty you don't need when you can legally get married at 18 or 19 in most states.
This particular example, however, is of two MC/UMC single childless people who have presumably worked out a joint financial arrangement which one person is unilaterally violating to spend her money on luxuries that she solely gets pleasure out of.* That's very different from being the person who agrees to give up financial wealth for the good of a unit, only to get screwed later.
That's what I was getting at.
57 - Whereabouts in China, if I can ask? I see they're having no-shit blizzards in Zhejiang, but that's also a freakish cold snap.
The locals have all manner of polar clothing for sale (which I had heretofore been mocking superciliously in emails to family). I'm considering buying stuff, but it's highly probable I'd need it only once.
colder inside than outside.
I have a sneaking fear this will be the case tomorrow, when the cold is supposed to break. What gets me though is humidity. Nothing gets quite dry.
Man 46 confused me, since ratites have a Gondwanan distribution and so it's summer everywhere I'd identified with Rocs. (Madagascar? No. New Zealand? No.)
The Democrats don't even know about Quemoy and Matsu.
66
Huangshan, Anhui. So mountainous enough it got cold. How cheap is the polar stuff? If it's cheap it might be worth it even for one night. Or do they have bath houses? That's a way to warm up. Damp cold is the worst
58:
Not always. In Texas, one of my college roomies forgot to pay our utilities for months once before we even got a call.
5 degrees and damp is just about Peak Misery in my experience. At least below zero all the water freezes and drops out of the air.
I was actually shocked when I realized my boyfriend was reluctant to have kids because he'd been raised to think of the man as the sole breadwinner, and so he was worried about how he'd support a family. I was so used to think of money as something that was my business it never even occurred to me that he would be worrying about it too.
Would it have been different had you realized that earlier? Was this an inhibition he wouldn't have been able to get past anyway?
"Sole breadwinner" doesn't feel very realistic to be sure, and would never have been my expectation after about 1980.
India is Gondwana too! And canonically, Rocs are clearly capable of flight.
The polar stuff is reasonable, yes. I'm fine, really, nestling in blankets, just wanted to rant a little.
Urple, how did your heating situation over the holidays work out? Or did it?
71 Yeah, that was Fez in winter. And nothing was heated. The interior masonry seemed to radiate cold. Nothing to do but throw on another djellaba. Misery.
5 degrees and damp is just about Peak Misery in my experience
Welcome to the sodden hellscape I call home.
Winter in Beirut was pretty godawful for the usual near-freezing, little-heat reasons, but 5 degrees (C) and damp is only a local maximum of misery; below-zero F (which is, what, negative 20 C?) is pure misery if you have to actually go out in it and I'm sure it gets worse as you go even further down in temp.
Nothing to do but throw on another djellaba.
Mouseover text?
Go to a mid range hotel and have a couple of margaritas in the bar, you might even meet somebody who'll put you in the way of gainful employment.
I'm sure this works very differently for men, but if I went to a mid-range hotel for margaritas and tried to meet people, the offer of employment would probably involve prostitution.
Networking is in general a bit trickier for women.
My brother got a lawyer job from talking to a woman. And he's pretty good looking.
That's why you go to a high end hotel seeking marriage, not a mid-range hotel seeking prostitution.
Not like "gigolo-grade" or anything, but not as bad as your typical lawyer.
72
I don't know. We still don't have kids so possibly not. I think it's we were both thinking the primary financial responsibility would fall on ourselves. My feeling was, if I felt ready for kids, it would be because I thought I could swing it financially, whereas he was thinking that if I felt ready for kids, he would have to be taking on some huge new financial burden.
It was a Doubletree or Courtyard in Midtown Atlanta, I think.
82
I met a "professional bridge player," which turns out to be code for gigolo. He gets paid to travel with wealthy old women to the French Riviera as their bridge partner/arm candy. He is apparently really really good at bridge, but that's not the primary part of his job.
The interior masonry seemed to radiate cold.
Kind of; cold thermal mass literally sucks the heat out of your body, and much more effectively than warm air replaces it. This is one reason radiators rule, even though they primarily work by convection. Having a mass of hot cast iron in the room genuinely helps.
An aged and horrible relative of a childhood friend of mine once told me (when I was about 10) that I must learn to dance, play tennis and play bridge if I were ever to make something of myself. This advice I have not followed, with the results you see before you today. I'd have made a terrible gigolo anyway.
86 explains why Omar Sharif had a newspaper column.
A guy I knew very slightly in college, who was a member of my very good friend's fraternity and the guy everyone there made fun of for being a total idiot, married the daughter of a billionaire. He was moderately but not stunningly good looking. He worked in managing services for ultra-high net worth clients for a very high end hotel chain, which is how he met billionaire heiress. My friend said he came back to a reunion, people started making fun of him again, and he left in a huff on his private jet.
86: Out of curiosity I googled "professional bridge player" and was surprised to learn that a serious professional bridge circuit apparently exists. No mention of gigolo's, but maybe all of the web sites I found are actually written using an elaborate code.
Just don't ask what "North bids 2, no trump" means.
He worked in managing services for ultra-high net worth clients for a very high end hotel chain, which is how he met billionaire heiress.
"Don't marry for money, but go where money is" is a saying I recall seeing somewhere.
I once shared an office with the daughter of a billionaire. She would have younger men who would come by and never talk to the rest of us.
Seeä'd her todaäy goä by--Saäint's-daäy--they was ringing the bells.
She's a beauty, thou thinks--an' soä is scoors o' gells,
Them as 'as munny an' all--wot's a beauty?--the flower as blaws.
But proputty, proputty sticks, an' proputty, proputty graws.
Do'ant be stunt; taäke time. I knaws what maäkes tha sa mad.
Warn't I craäzed fur the lasses mysén when I wur a lad?
But I knaw'd a Quaäker feller as often 'as towd ma this:
"Doänt thou marry for munny, but goä wheer munny is!"
An' I went wheer munny war; an' thy muther coom to 'and,
Wi' lots o' munny laaïd by, an' a nicetish bit o' land.
Maäybe she warn't a beauty--I niver giv it a thowt--
But warn't she as good to cuddle an' kiss as a lass as 'ant nowt?
I didn't realize that Hopkins wrote in dialect.
I've heard "fuck-off money" as a piece of career advice many times, usually between grizzled mobile network engineers, smelly old hack journalists, blokes essentially. It's advice with a lot of generality.
Out of curiosity I googled "professional bridge player" and was surprised to learn that a serious professional bridge circuit apparently exists.
I have no idea what the current scene is like but Bridge Bum by Alan Sontag is a good, entertaining book, which gives a picture of the bridge world of the 70s.
Also, I'd never seen anyone try to write Yorkshire dialect by using umlauts before. It's actually surprisingly effective in rendering the a-sound.
103: it's a joke based on the prevalence of diacritics in Hopkins' poetry.
86: Surely "good at bridge" is a euphemism here.
I was thinking that the bourgeois assumptions were...2) cutting back on expenditures is the difference between being $10k in credit card debt and having $3k in savings.
But it totally is in situations like the OP link. The voluntary upgrade to a nice car is easily 300-500 month on the payment alone and it's also going jack up your insurance, especially if you're young. Throw in regular going out to decent restaurants and bars and you can pretty quickly get that spending difference to 700 or 800 a month or higher.
For a little while we were hanging out with another couple (one of my wife's coworkers) and they just embodied that kind of constant stupid bad money handling. It was like watching a slow motion trainwreck. We had to shun them for unrelated reasons but god I don't miss seeing that all the time.
107:
Well, yeah, but the link really is the very portrait of a bourgeois situation in every way. I'm not saying that really awful spending can't get you into this kind of trouble.
In other words, "marry someone who has a business" is a totally viable life-financial strategy, at least in a community property state.
...and it seems to have been the "strategy" in my story in 32, so caveat should be added that you shouldn't marry someone who is willing to sabotage his business and earning potential just to spite you, nor should you run the business off the books, such that it dissolves as soon as it's removed from your ability to run it. (Sorry to harp on this, or at least sorry to harp without pointing out an obvious moral.)
In other words, "marry someone who has a business" is a totally viable life-financial strategy
Not nearly as sound as the "marry a billionaire heiress" strategy, though.
I know some people who have played bridge semiprofessionally, and they also said that it's a weird mix of playing bridge and being an escort for older women who like bridge. But I think they were playing in bridge tournaments in the US, not hanging out on the Riviera, and "gigolo" is definitely overstating the impression I had.
The top hit I found when googling professional bridge player (which may be personalized since this quote is from an acquaintance of mine) says:
"Top pros make a couple hundred thousand a year on top of getting their expenses paid for (flights often on private jets, top tier hotels, expensive meals, all with the catch that socializing with the client is required)."
The subtext isn't hidden deep in "socializing with the client is required."
Do you have to have a pencil-thin moustache and brilliantined hair to be a bridge-playing gigolo? I think it should be required.
It's really hard to have a pencil-thin, yet visible mustache with certain hair/skin color combination.
It's really hard to have a pencil-thin, yet visible mustache with certain hair/skin color combination.
If Jeffrey Jones can do it, anyone can.
There are no redheaded gigolos. Flashing black eyes and slicked back black hair or nothing.
Sorry, Moby.
117: That's not a pencil-thin moustache. That is, I believe, properly described as a small bristly moustache. Not gigolo appropriate at all.
I'm not red headed anymore. Except for my beard when it first comes in.
The gigolo with the beard, it is unheard of. Exceptions may be made for pretenders to the throne of Russia.
Because shaving is dangerous if you have hemophilia.
I am sure I've told this story here before. My parents divorced when I was 18 and the full extent of all divorce conversation with my father took place in a supermarket line. Out of nowhere he said "You'll notice that when your mother decided to leave me, she had the financial wherewithal to do so." I said "Yes, Daddy." and that was that.
Was there a professional bridge player co-respondent?
It's not funny if you have to explain it. But if you mom was saving up, she could afford to play cards.
It's not funny just because you don't have to explain it, of course. A statement and its inverse aren't logically dependent.
123 is awesome. Like a scene from DeLillo.
No, she didn't take up bridge. She went on to marry (and substantially support) a nice Iranian choreographer. That was probably the best ten years of food in my family. Since then she's moved on to a nice Egyptian engineer (they met campaigning for Kerry). I do like ful for breakfast, but frankly miss the Iranian food.
(My mom and dad remained friends and holidays at either of their houses now include everyone, which is a very inclusive everyone.)
112. A friend of mine had a similar experience for a couple of years trying to teach Go to some sort of squillionaire (I don't think he ever worked out exactly where all the money came from). The upside is that the clients'enthusiasm tends to be short lived; the downside is so does the income stream.
That's why you have to diversify. IYMKWIMAITYD.
