To think being "well off" is the least important quality in a man?

[HollyGuacamolly]

I am single and pregnant and bitter but went for lunch with a group of friends (also single) and were discussing what qualities we want in a man; I was surprised that all of them listed "well off" as an important factor, but not one of them mentioned anything along the lines of kind/treats me with respect.

Is this standard attitude? Or do I hang around with gold diggers weirdos?

FWIW obviously I don't want someone who's shit with money and a total liability, but when assessing someone's potential as a new partner I can honestly say I don't take wealth into account.

I think if you are looking for a partner to have children with finances are important to consider as well.

Our money makes life 'smoother'. Kids need shoes/clothes? No problem just go and get some.

Someone needs medicine/health care that isn't covered by Medicare? No problem.

And so on, it is all very romantic to say money doesn't matter, but well it does.

DH and I have very similar views on money and I think that has really contributed to our happy relationship.

Money stress is a shocker.

In my teens and twenties I wasn't bothered about income but now I'm in my 40s with DC and see how important it is to not have financial stress.

I was foolish and ended up with a DP who hates saving and puts his head. In the sand re finances. At 51 he has no pension (never/refused to invest) and is on an ok but not great wage. I now have to consider the fact that me and his DC will have to financially support him in his old age.

It's crass just to look at money only but as others have said, ambition and good financial nous are important.

Mmm I see so many women with utter losers that I think that the man should have and be paid at least the same amount as the woman
Things change but starting out...parity

It's really an interesting question.

I would not be demanding "well off" as a criterion in any potential partners. Being "well off" tells you nothing about how they are - do they moan about any expenditure whatsoever, including food that's not out of date? Did they get to become well off by a way you would find hard to live with (from bank of Mummy and Daddy to arms dealer to Third World countries)?

Personally, I am shit with money and a liability and I don't really mind if my DP is also shit with money and a liability, if there aren't lines crossed. I will not fund an adult child, if we're both on minimum wage no problem, if I'm working all the hours that God sends and DP is sitting at home playing on the Xbox, problem. Also, if DP is earning a wage far bigger than mine and begrudges buying me a meal once every six months, problem.

I've lived in a few anarchist/communal set-ups where food and bills were shared, especially food when maybe some people were struggling a bit. That is something I'm really a lot more comfortable with than anything else. If I was doing better than my DP I treat my DP and I share everything with them, they would do the same for me as a matter of course. If DP did a strict demarcation of lines "I have earned precisely £5 more than you this month, which of course I wish to spend on myself..." I'd find that very weird.

Didnt bother us as met as teens and married straight away. We lived with 2 directors chairs, a tv stand and one of those old small tvs in our living room for months! We only had that and a fold out bed but we were in luurve so it didnt matter.

If something as small as not having money mqkes you argue you are a pretty weak couple imo.

Those times are what makes things romantic when you look back at what you started from and you have been married years.

Forgot to say, as loads of pp mentioned, it's a goals thing as well. If you are ambitious and want your DP to be interested in climbing the corporate ladder, you're not going to be happy with a partner who works part-time for the local homeopathic bakery and writes occasional articles for Peace News, even if they're well off

For myself, I would want someone with shared experiences. My experiences would include ridiculous amounts of time attempting to sell badly written left-wing papers and various other things from the dubious to the fantastic to the downright weird which happen to you if you do politics. Somebody who left uni to become an investment banker, I might really fancy them and they might be a lovely person (stranger things have happened) but I would imagine we'd have difficulties. Even if they were well off.

I would have agreed with you at 21, 25, 30 and even maybe 35. Now at 42 and 3DC I wish to God I'd put being 'well off' as a priority.

My DH had nothing when I met him and it was love at first sight. 10 years later and my God is there a difference between the women who married men with money!

My life has been an endless grind of full time work/housework/childcare - as has his. I earn more than him although he does a worthy job. We are knackered, have no holidays and will never own our own house.

My friends who married well are SAHMs or work part time, have 3 holidays a year (Disney annually) new cars, their own houses, great social lives.

I'm not bitter at all, my life is still great but I can't pretend it wouldn't have been different if he'd been in finance! I bet this stress has stripped years off my life which my more 'leisurely' friends won't have.

It's fine to have no money when you don't have dependents and you have a future of earning money ahead of you. Not so fine to have no money when you struggle to buy your children shoes and are worrying about where you will live.

I think an interesting way to switch the question around would be to ask whether you would expect a potential partner to judge you on how much money you could bring to the relationship?

My DH says the same! He met me around the same time he met another woman, he didn't know at the time that her family was extremely wealthy and would buy her and her new husband a house and pay for private school for their offspring. She married someone he knew in the end and their lives are parallel to ours. Except their lifestyle is very different! Big detached house, posh car, long foreign holidays 3 times a year, private school. He regularly jokes 'I should have married.............'

It's not a sexist issue it's a practical issue. Life is infinitely easier and more pleasant with more resources.

Very few people have a guaranteed "future of earning money" ahead of them. Loads of people with no kids are worried about where they will live.

It's not like you are living the life of Riley automatically because you have no DC - having DC for a start pushes you way up the list for housing and benefits, as it should. If you are a homeless man with no DC though, "it's alright for you, you don't have children, you'll be doing fine" would start to look a bit, well....

This issue is the same for men and women. If you have a relationship with someone who has a different financial outlook to you it can cause issues. Subsidising someone in the name of love shouldn't work one way.

I'd support someone during a rocky patch or if they were bringing up my children however I wouldn't expect to be doing that forever...just while childcare was too expensive or not what we both chose.

Assuming no disability, specific social disadvantage or environmental, social or political disaster, most people have more potential to feed, clothe and house themselves in the future when they are 20 than when they are 50.

You have much more flexibility to find work and to adapt your living arrangements (e.g. sleep on somebody's sofa or at a push floor) if you have no children.

I don't think the additional benefits you get in this country if you have children enable you to escape the stress and hardship of poverty. There is no guarantee that those benefits will remain and they certainly don't exist in other countries. Without people working and earning money the benefits system doesn't exist.

If you're planning a future and children then having a partner who can support you all financially is very handy! I made a conscious decision to only look at men who could do this, with my mother's "it's just as easy to love a rich man than a poor one" ringing in my ears. They also had to want children, be kind and be normal! My DH is all of these. I'm very glad too but we were both very clear what we wanted when we met.

My good friend prioritised creativity over everything else. She married, late, to a talented carpenter but moans constantly about how skint they are. Her three sisters all married either City types or men with their own successful businesses and she compares her DH constantly to them, which I think is v unfair. If you want the life of a banker's wife then marry a banker.

It's always been important to me, DH isn't earning "rich" levels, but around the £60k mark, so in the SE we are comfortable. I wouldn't date a man who was less intelligent than me, "thick but pretty" has always seemed boring. I wouldn't date a man who wasn't hard working, and after seeing several woman stressed by dreamers who are "too special" to work for someone else, must be their own boss, meaning their family is actually worse off than if they were unemployed (one friend has clearer out her savings to pay his staff wages when thing have gone wrong), if also not date anyone with big ideas.

Spending above income levels is deeply unsexy and quite frankly any debt other than student loans or a mortgage isn't acceptable to me. Happy to be with a man who drives a cheap old car, not happy to be with a man with a fast, impressive car bought on finance. If you can't afford it, don't have it.

I also never wanted to be a main earner because I knew if want to work part time or be a sahm when dcs were small, if it's your wage that pays the mortgage, that's not an option. Money gives you choices, but if you are the only/major earner in a family, it takes away choices as well.

Being able to earn enough money to maintain a comfortable and interesting lifestyle is a non-negotiable quality and high priority IMO.

TooToo said "If you're planning a future and children then having a partner who can support you all financially is very handy!"

What is this, the 1950s? Man goes out to work, woman stays home and looks after the house and children? Um, whatever happened to equality? Can you imagine the reaction if a man dumped a woman because she didn't earn enough so that she could support him in what he wanted to do?

"If you're planning a future and children then having a partner who can support you all financially is very handy!"

You could read this as the partner being either the woman or man in a mixed or same sex couple.

If your life style choice is to stay at home to look after your children and you like financial security, you either need to find somebody who can support you, save up a lot of money first (or have a trust fund).

It's this in action: waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/pick-life-partner.html

People are bad at knowing what they want from relationships and tend to assume the "nice/respectful" etc part is a given, in practice that means you're not actively looking for it and focusing more on shallower aspects, probably because it's hard to tell if someone is nice, kind, respectful, grumpy, sexist etc at first glance whereas the other things have more instant feedback. It's easy to tell if someone likes the same kind of music as you or whether they're going to be a football/xbox bore. Not so easy to figure out how supportive they're going to be when you've got food poisoning and a toddler running around.

I think two separate issues are being conflated here.

1. Is it important to have "enough" money (whatever that means to you).

I think yes. Our household income is about £70k a year in SE and that is OK but not luxurious. We have a small house with an OK mortgage, can afford some extras and don't have to watch every penny. We can't afford expensive holidays and I can't spend much on clothes or haircuts or whatever. I'm hoping we'll be quite a bit better off in 5 yearsish if my career goes to plan.

1. Is a well off man an essential element in your household having "enough" money?

No, not for me. I earn the vast majority of the money in our house.

Personally I never ever felt that the way to get the lifestyle I wanted is to marry money rather than earn it. About to have a baby though so I guess ask me again in a year or two and I may feel differently.

Yes men have a similar choice but they get much more harshly judged for it. My DH will be a SAHD when the baby is here.

"If you're planning a future and children then having a partner who can support you all financially is very handy!" - ok, not something we tell girls these day, however, if you think you might want ot be a SAHM, or work part time, or you don't have handy relatives who'll do childcare for free and your wage will go on childcare, then yes, it's handy - it gives you options.

That's what money does really, gives options that families without it don't have. If you chose a man who has no money, little earning potential and no interest in earning much money, they you will have a lot less options in life than a woman who choses a partner who does. You might not want to pick that option, but choice is nice.

I never would have thought I'd be a SAHM if you'd asked me 15 years ago. I only resigned this year after having DC2, having a DH who's income covers all the bills and leaves enough over for us to have a few hundred a month each as 'fun money' (and a bit in savings) means it was a genuine choice, it wasn't one I thought I would need to plan for, but I'm very glad when it came to it and I suddenly wanted to be at home with them, I can be. It would be shit to really want to be a SAHP and not be able to afford it.

Surely it is simply going to different for everybody, depending on what you want and value in life?

I'm a hippie drop out, who lives in a commune. I consider myself well off because I can afford to eat, have a roof and can do fun stuff sometimes, but because I live in a commune, my living costs are lower than most.

Anyway, when I was looking (I'm dating someone at the moment) my list would be...

Has something in their life that they love doing
Is a real grown up (no man-children thank you!)
Is kind
Can deal with stress/negative events in a non destructive way (this is why I'm no longer with the DDs father!)