Tag Archives: sexandrelationships

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The Accidental Breadwinner: Some Women Have Their $hit Together

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Thanks to The World of Wealth for pointing me to this fascinating NY Times article called “The Accidental Breadwinner.”

Writer Karen Karbo details her three marriages, her long-ago dream to be taken care of by her breadwinner husband, and the reality of her making most of the dough in each of her marriages. She writes how a friend, whose husband made enough money to give her time off for a few years to “figure out her life” ended up with a cheating husband, stuck in a marriage in fear of now having enough money to live the life she’s become accustomed to.

Karbo poses the question, “Is it better for the longevity of a marriage if one party (usually the woman) feels financially trapped?”

Well, yes. Marriage, just like any other business relationship, tends to survive longer the more complicated it is to get out of. But that isn’t the kind of marriage I want to be in. Does it really take three marriages to get it right? Karbo sounds like she’s found happiness now, with split incomes and an unromantic agreement on who pays for what (including who pays for who’s kids.)

As I’ve written before, I’m worried about my current relationship because I’m the half of the duo motivated by money. That means my dreams of being the woman who works part time and takes care of the kids while my hubby brings home the bacon are all but dashed. Those dreams aren’t real anyway, but they certainly are, in the back of my mind, what I expected. That’s what happened to my mom. She went to school for fashion design and worked in the industry for 10 years, only to quit when I was born and become a housewife. And she’s always been afraid to leave my father because, like Karbo’s friend, she doesn’t want to also leave the life she’s grown accustomed to. The money she’s used to spending. Even if she did get a job, she’d likely be earning minimum wage. At 50 something years old, how many raises can one expect before retirement age approaches?

I refuse to get stuck in a marriage that’s destined for a situation like that. I’d rather be the breadwinner, accidental or predetermined. Still, my dream is a marriage where both parties bring in a sizable amount of income. My aunt and uncle are prime examples of that type of couple. The husband owns a one-man marketing firm, stays home, takes care of the kids, and still takes in six figures. The wife works as a marketing exec for a magazine, and also takes in six figures. Together, they own a nice house in a really nice neighborhood. That’s the kind of life I dream of. I can only hope that Mr. Sweetheart will realize that asking for raises is an expected and acceptable part of being in the workforce.

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Last Minute (Frugal) Gift Ideas

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It’s that time of the year again. Men are dressed up as Santa and sitting in malls. Kids are spinning dreidels and being schooled in gambling (for chocolate coins). And bank accounts everywhere are being drained on gifts for friends and family.

This year, with the economy in the South Pole, it’s more important than ever to be cost-efficient with your holiday gift purchases. Thanks to the Internet and the awesome PF Blog community, gift ideas that won’t break your bank account are aplenty.

My Dollar Plan offers 16 last-minute frugal gift ideas under $20. From lottery tickets to gas, if you want to splurge a bit you can pick up both en route to a holiday party, all while rejoicing that it doesn’t cost an arm, leg and foot to fill up your tank anymore. For 50 more frugal gift ideas, head over to Bible Money Finance. BeingFrugal breaks affordable gift-giving down into what to give particular types of people (your girlfriend and grandma really shouldn’t get the same gift, even if you are being frugal.)

When you’re going cheap, the best thing you can do is be creative and unique. That’s why I love this post on Squawkfox filled with 10 frugal handmade gift ideas (and pictures of what they should look like, so you know you’re doing it right). The Frugal Family Fun Blog also has a few homemade gift ideas, though some require an education curve that you might not have time for (ie: knitting). They also led me to a post on Good Housekeeping offering cheap and easy food gifts (that look really nice. Check out their curried lental soup, yum!)

Whatever you make, don’t waste money on wrapping paper! Head on over to Frugal Zeitgeist for a lesson in gift wrapping on the cheap. Sqauwkfox also has some frugal gift wrapping insight.

Q & you A:

What frugal/affordable/not-ridiculously expensive gifts are you giving this holiday season?

What’s the best gift you’ve ever received that hasn’t cost the giver a small fortune?

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Sex: Who Pays?

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Whether you’re all about the one night fling, a long-term relationship, or marriage: the cost of getting jiggy wit’ it isn’t cheap.

Having sex, despite nature’s intention of an affordable entertainment option, isn’t free. Forget about the cost of looking sexy so that you actually have a shot at getting laid. Condoms, birth control pills, diaphragms, dental dams, STD tests, gynecological exams, lube, pregnancy tests, etc are all part of the costs of being sexually active. So who foots the bill?

The Costs of Getting it On:

Birth Control Pills: With health insurance, birth control pills cost $20 – $60 a month. That’s $240 – $720 a year. I’d imagine the woman usually pays for the birth control pill, especially if she’s not in a committed relationship. These costs don’t include any doctor’s visits that are required to get a prescription for the meds. If you’re in the lower class, you can take advantage of Planned Parenthoods cheap and/or free clinic visits and birth control meds… but anyone making minimum wage should expect to have to pay a monthly fee for birth control out of pocket. And that anyone is likely female.

Condoms: Love gloves cost about $.50 to $1.00 a piece. Depending on how often you get some, those costs could add up. If you’re getting lucky 20 times a month (reasonable for a stable, monogomous couple pre-marriage, or a single gal/guy with a little extra time on their hands) this adds up to $10 to $20 a month or $120 – $240 a year. For one night stands or early on in the relationship, guys usually provide the latex coverage. However, later on the girl may have to chip in for the rubbers. (If you really want to go cheap with your condom purchases, check out this dude’s science project on the cheapest way to get condoms in bulk.)

Lube: Ok, so you don’t need lube. But some people prefer it. That’s $10 a tube, give or take a few dollars. Who buys – the man or the woman?

Even if the man pays for condoms, the cost to have sex is far higher for the woman who has to pay for birth control pills, gynocological exams, etc.

Q & you A:

How do you split the costs for lovemaking that come up in your life / relationship? Who should pay for what?

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Woman in Charge: family finance for one day down the road

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My mom never calls me to see how I’m doing. The only time I’ll hear from her is to tell me that some show is on PBS that I should watch or that there’s something else of interest to her that isn’t really of interest to me at all, yet she thinks I should know about it anyway.

The last one of these conversations had to do with Suze Orman’s book “Women and Money ” that Oprah gave away for free (via PDF download) a few weeks ago. My mom e-mailed me about the book download and then followed up immediately when I called her later on that day “did you download the book yet?”

Ok, so Suze Orman’s books and blab have provided me with some useful finance advice in the past. But at this point I know all the basics about finance and that I should save money and invest it as opposed to spend all I make.

My mom is so clueless when it comes to money. Part of it is a generational thing and part of it is a chosen “ignorance is bliss” ideology. She’s always spent as if the bank account had no end. Now that I know how finances work, I don’t really understand just how she did it. Even though my father made a good salary, it was only in the low six figures… which is a lot, but not nearly enough to spend the way she did, or so it seems. My mom would order things from QVC without worrying about the cost. Jewelry, mostly, although sometimes she’d buy appliances and things. She wouldn’t go to the mall and spend like that, but because it was on TV she could. Well, that was her excuse.

Granted, she did work hard as a stay-at-home housewife for many years, and she deserved some of the finer things in life. She put up with my father who, despite being a good breadwinner, wasn’t the best husband.

Now, though, my mom is in her late 40s and my dad is out of money for a few years. He retired early and his pension plan doesn’t kick in quite yet. My mom doesn’t get what having “no money” means. Well, that’s mostly because my dad has kept her in the dark about our financial situation over the years. She doesn’t know how much money he has in savings, or what that means for their retirement.

Knowing my dad, he has a good amount of money available for retirement. After all, he made a career out of designing pension plans for other workers. I’m sure his pension is solid, when he will get it. Still, it’s completely astonishing to me that my mom has no idea how much money they’ll have in retirement, or how much money they have now, other than “no money,” which could mean just about anything coming from my father.

My situation is so much different. Sure, right now I’m at the very start of my financial journey and I’m just learning how to save and invest. Without being able to control the markets, even if I make all the “right” choices I might still end up back where I started or worse. But at least I feel that now I’m in control of my finances. I know that if I can save a certain amount per year and invest it, if the market goes along as expected over the long haul, I’ll be able to save a certain amount of money for my retirement.

This makes me feel powerful. It also makes me focus just a little too much on money. Making money has become a bit of an obsession. As a freelancer, it’s easy to sign up for one too many projects. Who needs sleep, right?

But the way I look at it, the more I can make today, the more I have to spend later on. That’s true, regardless of what I have to do to get there.

Now, my boyfriend, he finally got himself a job and he’s making money. He spends less than me because he doesn’t have to pay rent (he lives at home) and he doesn’t really buy many clothes. When he does, he doesn’t splurge on designer anything. He still dresses nicely, but he has a very limited wardrobe. Two pairs of jeans, and a bunch of button down dress shirts. That’s pretty much all he wears. Oh, and two sweatshirts from his college and some really old shirts and shorts that he’ll wear to the gym and such.

His spending right now pretty much revolves around me. If we go out to dinner, he often pays. I used to feel bad about this, but now that all this saving money thing is a game, and as I’m paying so much in rent and clothes and products to look pretty (for him, mostly) I feel less bad about having him pay for food more often than not. Even though I’m “making” more money at my job.

My boyfriend is not at all interested in investing or finance. The other day I excitedly told him all about mutual funds and index funds and such, and he was bored to death. His mother has saved up enough money to send him to grad school one day which is, as far as I know, sitting in a fairly low-interest savings account right now. He makes money and although he spends a lot on us eating out and gadgets for himself, I’m sure he’s still making more than he’s spending right now. But he puts it all into his savings account.

I tried to get him excited about opening a ROTH IRA and told him about how hard it is to afford retirement these days, but he wasn’t interested.

Now, if this is the guy I’m going to marry, which right now I think might be the case, I feel like I have a right to not only inform him of these options, but push him down the path of opening an IRA and starting to save for retirement.

I guess, in the long run, if only one person in my couple hood is going to understand finances and save for retirement, I want it to be me. I don’t want to be like my mother, clueless and hopeless as it is. If I’m going to spend a lot of money, at least I want to have a solid grasp on what that means for my monthly contribution to my ROTH.

I keep telling my mom she should get a job. If she wants to keep living her lifestyle, it isn’t so hard, even if dad says they’re out of money. Get a part-time job and viola, some extra income which she can spend as she pleases. But she refuses, saying she’s too busy. She’s dealing with this whole fight with the school system about my sister’s education (my sister has a learning disability and the school isn’t giving her the appropriate accommodations) and otherwise she’s too busy doing other things… like, oh I don’t know, cleaning the house… no one in our house helps out with laundry or dishes, so that’s all her. Still, I think she ought to get a job. My dad is retired now, he can start helping out with some of the chores around the house. If my mom was working, maybe he’d be inspired to do so.

In the meanwhile, I’m going to make sure that I know the nitty gritty of personal finance. Even if my significant other choses to remain somewhat oblivious to how he can save for retirement, I refuse to let life take me for an unfortunate ride.

For the past few years, my net worth has gone up and down between $25k and $30k. Right now I’m at about $27k. My goal is to stop going down, and to break that $30k by summer.

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The Most Depressing Article Ever

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StackingPennies left me a comment on my post earlier today where I rambled on and on about making babies and marriage and such. While most of my peers seem to not share in hearing the baby-making clock, it seems many are thinking more about marriage (soon!) than popping out the kidlets.

I wanted to clarify a few things about the other entry first… Kacie mentioned something about not taking hormonal bcp’s to make me more fertile. To sum up why that won’t work — I don’t get my period ever unless I’m on BCPs. To make me ovulate will require expensive hormone injections and such. So for me, making a baby will be a large expense. There’s nothing much I can do about that.

Now, onto the real reason I’m writing another entry this evening…

StackingPennies posted a link to an article in The Atlantic titled “Marry Him! The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough!”

(Gosh, if Pennies thought my noting that I’m “deprecating into womanhood” was depressing, I’m not so sure how s/he felt about this article.)

The author, a single mother in her late 30s, uses four pages to convince her reader that settling, especially at such an old age, is the better thing to do than to live alone forever. Forget love or attraction, really. A marriage is a business agreement. Find someone you can stand, who maybe you enjoy spending time with, and that’s the best you can ask for, especially when you’ve passed your prime.

I’m glad that at 24, I’ve found a guy who I love, and as long as things continue to work out, I won’t have to deal with settling. One thing that I applaud myself for is my ability to be rational about love. I don’t expect “Mr. Right” to never veer to have his, uh, Mr. Left moments. There are plenty things that bug me about my boyfriend, but ultimately I feel comfortable with him. I’m attracted to him. And I’m head over heals in love with him.

But not to the point of being so romantically in love that I can’t see how our relationship would develop as we moved on to sharing our lives together. There are things that would be a bit of a struggle… dealing with compromising on finances… how to raise the children (I’d want to shelter them a bit more than he would). But in the end, I feel like we’d get along just fine. My biggest concern is what happens if he passes away first. I know, morbid thought, but if that’s my biggest concern than I’d say this is a pretty darned good relationship.

I don’t think people should ever “settle,” but I do think both men and women should have realistic expectations of what love is. So many people want someone to fit this mold they’ve invented of their soul mate. That doesn’t exist. Or maybe it seems like it does, but then you realize he leaves the toilet seat up.

My life is currently fantastic because I’ve found the guy I want to spend the rest of my life with. We could be rich, we could be poor. We could have 10 children or none. But as long as I have him there beside me through it all, I know I’ll be fine.

On the other hand, it’s not all that healthy to put that much weight on one relationship. My relationship experience isn’t all that varied, yet I think I know what I’m looking for. I’ve been on a lot of first dates, and have been in a few LTRs. I think that, while love at first sight is a joke, there is a such truth to knowing a year or so into a relationship if it’s meant to be.

Maybe I’ll have to settle with everything else in my life, but not love. That’s one thing I refuse to settle for. Thanks to luck, fate, or whatever brought me to California and helped me meet my boyfriend, I won’t have to

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My Boyfriend’s Birthday is Coming Up…

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And I’m at a loss for what to get him.

The good news is that with the raise, I’ll be able to spend a decent sum of money on his gift without feeling like the expenditure is a completely irrational budget departure.

The bad news is that my raise won’t kick in until March 20, a few weeks after his birthday. I get paid once a month, fyi. I will get one more paycheck before his birthday for $3300. But $1050 of that has to go to rent, and $600 must go to my “for tax” ING account. That still leave me with about $1500 for the month. Even with my various bills, I could try to keep spending down really low and figure his birthday gift is worth more than any splurges I might partake in over the month.

However, that doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t know WHAT to get him.

I feel like I need to get him something amazing. I totally flaked on Valentine’s Day this year and got him, well, nothing. For Christmas I gave him a $100 gift certificate to a rollerblading store so he could buy a pair of Blades (he did and he seems to like them).

How do I get him something better than last year’s gift? Last year, I got him a Nintendo Wii. Without spending a zillion dollars, well, what do I get the boy?

He’s gotten me such great gifts over our dating tenure. An ipod nano and a Wacom digital drawing tablet. He got me a smaller gift for Hannukah… a food scale… I figure it cost $30 or something. But for Valentine’s Day he bought food for a home cooked dinner… fish and champagne. Again, I got him noting. Absolutely nothing.

So what do I get him this year? I have less than a month to figure this out. I love him more than anything and I know he’d be fine with me getting him dirt in the shape of a heart, but I want to give him more than that. I want to get him something he wouldn’t normally buy for himself. But what would that be? He’s so hard to shop for.

What do nerdy boys like?

Culture, Entertainment

Millionaire Matchmaker – Bravo’s Latest “Reality” Show

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If you haven’t had a change to catch Bravo’s latest reality show: Millionaire Matchmaker, you’re not missing much. Take a bitchy Yenta from New Jersey, Patti Stranger, whose entire life is dedicated to helping super-wealthy men find the girl of his dreams. Surely it makes for a good business. She charges anywhere from $10,000 to $150,000 a year to hook up the hotties and the notties (oh god, did I just quote a Paris Hilton movie title?).

The men who appeared on the television show were actually fairly attractive, but one has to assume for every attractive-yet-single millionaire willing to appear on TV, there’s another ten whose reflection would likely crack mirrors.

Overall, the show greatly offended me. The men, surprisingly enough, did not offend me at all. Sure they wanted women who were perfect everything and had unreasonable expectations, but what really got me is this woman, Patti, has no freaking clue what men actually want. She thinks she does, of course. Being that the matchmaking service is LA-based, looks matter a lot (even more than they would elsewhere.) At the beginning of the show they film her going through a series of headshots and she says “definitely not” to a women who is wearing glasses. You can’t see the photo up close, but the women certainly doesn’t look fugly. She just doesn’t have a glamor shot like some of the other girls. Given the right makeup, hair stylist and photographer, her pic would probably look just as “hot” as these other girls.

Meanwhile, this women definitely has a very narrow concept of attractiveness (ironically, she’s very unattractive). Redheads? They’re out. She even asked a redhead if she’d dye her hair brown.

The only thing I’ll give them credit for is that they did want to get women with an education. In the end, though, this proved difficult. And too much education wasn’t good either. They’d take women of top-notch pedigree (a graduate of the Ivies, etc) but not someone who used Dr. in front of their name while introducing herself.

Episode one featured two men… #1 “Sex Toy Dave” – a millionaire who made bank by selling – you guessed it – sex toys. On the Internet. His snazzy house featured such things as a view and a stripper pole in the middle of the living room (awesome). Of course, Patti wanted the stripper pole gone. Her interior designer suggested moving all sex related things to a “sex toy room.”

Ultimately the gal Dave picked, who I must say was actually a relatively good choice for him, was not offended by the stripper pole (though she was a little good two shoes and was slightly off put by it. She wouldn’t try it out herself.)

Meanwhile, the other guy was an older (46 year old) options trader. A Yale grad. He was a bit disillusioned with the type of gal he should be with. Patti wants to get these guys “younger” girls, but not with a 20 year age difference.

But her method of natural selection seems to go against this. She put the two men in a room with a dozen or so women and let them all have at it. The most impressive women got asked out on solo dates with the two guys.

Mr. Options Trader picked out a very hot, young brunette with blue eyes. Sex Toy Dave chose a women who seemed really cool. She had the Ivy pedigree, a great smile, she was laid back, and pretty but not in a porn star sort of way.

Still, in the end the pair didn’t work out. He was too much of a party boy for her.

I don’t really understand why these men spend thousands upon thousands of dollars asking this woman to find the perfect women for them. Maybe they’ll get laid (though that’s against the rules until they’re in a committed relationship) but find the perfect woman, i’m not so sure.

First off, any women who wants to be in the “Millionaire’s Club” is in it for the wrong reasons. Unless you literally find women on normal dating sites and think they’re perfect for someone rich, and ask them to join the “club” without the intention of marrying rich, you will get gold diggers and more gold diggers. Do these men really want that? Eh, maybe they do. They have all this money and sometimes it’s nice to spend it on designer clothes for your special lady. I guess.

I think if it weren’t for Patti, this show wouldn’t be quite so offensive to me. But she’s just a nightmare. She wants the men to change for women who she think would make good wives and mothers. What ever happened to pay someone to find someone who might like you for the way you are? Or… you know… just find them.

Patti’s club website: The Millionaire’s Club, is subtitled: Where successful men come to meet their beautiful and intelligent wives as girlfriends. Honestly, the site looks skanktastic. It’s one step above escort service.