Jan 7th, 2008
Ask the Readers: Sharing the Costs of Dating?
I’m a bit frustrated with my bank right now, which can be seen over at my personal blog. That said, onto the main subject for the day…
Not long ago, Trent over at The Simple Dollar discussed “The Costs of Finding Love”, which didn’t just focus on the financial costs of a service like eHarmony.com, but also some of the social costs. This intersected with my own relationship with my lady friend SF and our occasional disagreements on who pays for the date.
One day at lunch at work several of us (mixed gender group) were talking about who pays on a date and I stated I had read (I believe in Men’s Health Magazine) that despite a move toward equality, the male still pays 70% of the time on a male/female date; however, the two males in the discussion (myself included) said that in our experience it wasn’t 70% of the time, but more like 100% of the time except for a birthday.
Currently, in the about a year that SF and I have been going out, I’ve paid just about all the time. I don’t do this because I’m old fashioned (or at least I don’t consider myself old fashioned); I do it because I just think that it’s the polite thing to do. We don’t go out all that often, and I know that my financial situation is better than hers (although I don’t say that), so I just go ahead and pay. We don’t go to fancy places very often (we actually don’t go out all that often period, maybe once a month at most). She does put up some protest to my paying all the time, but it’s not like I actually insist on doing it; I just grab the check and pay.
I’ve not added up how much money I spend when we go out; I’m sure sometimes (like her birthday) are more than others (like when we ran for pizza and beer). Last night we went to a going away party and the hosts (who were the going away people) didn’t want to take my money, but I insisted on giving them $40 for the wine and food.
How do you handle the expense of dating or going out as a married couple? Is it Dutch sometimes, one pays sometimes, the other sometimes?
ALL of our money is joint, so there’s no “going dutch”. Or maybe having joint accounts is the ultimate “going dutch”?!?!
Brooke,
Maybe it is the ultimate going Dutch. I dunno. The joint account thing is still weird to me, so I need to do some more research on it.
-
Ryan
I’ve been with my boy for about 3.5 years, and we’ve typically split things 50/50 when we were both students. Now that I’m working and he is going to grad school, it is closer to 80/20 or something. I pay most of the time, he pays his share sometimes. And once in a blue moon, he treats me.
I don’t mind it (much) because his budget is much much smaller than mine and I love him.
Ryan:
Great subject.
I’ve been meaning to put my $.02 in on this subject.
Gender irrelevant in my case, in the beginning we would take turns or go dutch or agree ahead of time who would pay. My point, communication. Like anything and everything else in a relationship, finances should be discussed openly and agreed upon without assumption.
Not that we have anything to hide from each other, but we have individual accounts. It creates individualism in a relationship. And, have only set-up a joint account because our credit union does not have a branch where I am living on Maui.
I don’t think there’s a right or wrong, the main thing is that there’s communication and mutual agreement.
So, I guess I gave more than my $.02!
Always,
NEENZ.
http://www.faleafine.com