How important is it that your SO is financially responsible?

[marywantsmoney]

As you can maybe tell, I'm really on this personal finance train. It's becoming a big part of my life (and how could it not money is all around us). I'm single so I date sometimes. Now I can't help but wonder how financially responsible my date is.

Is there a way you boys and girls figure out who's responsible w/ money. I feel bad but I really don't want to marry into huge financial problems...

Is this important to you?

[Tabs]

It is extremely important... and something tells me I am not the only one that feels that way on here.

As for how to tell, I guess that's what dating is for... to find out. If not, it can always be worked into the conversation somehow.

You should be able to tell pretty fast though, based on the way they look at things, the way they view their needs and wants versus how they will fund it (or if at all) as well as their general spending habits.

[disneysteve]

It is critically important. I would not proceed with a relationship with a person who was not financially responsible.

How can you tell? Trust me. If you are paying attention, you can tell pretty easily. How do they dress. How often do they eat out, and where? What do they drive? What type of vacations do they take? Do they seem "high maintenance"? Are they frequently talking about costly goods and services that they spend money on? Do they have much debt? If so, how did they acquire that debt and do they have a solid plan for paying it off? Are they constantly wanting to do things that you consider frivolous?

[rennigade]

Marriages/relationships fall apart because of finances. Its a big deal...and its important to my wife and I.

Just being around a person for a couple weeks you can pretty much figure out if they're not responsible with money. Most of my friends you could probably tell they are terrible with money within a few hours.

[MakeAStash]

More important than what they drive is how they keep it. It's very often true that if their car is a mess, so will be their financial lives.

[MonkeyMama]

It's very important. I don't know that I have ever even dated anyone who wasn't financially responsible.

Maybe it's just me, but it seems like these kind of things are quite obvious. When you date you are making a lot of spending decisions. If you are dating seriously you are talking about your views and long-term goals. You should get a pretty clear picture, unless your date is being purposely extremely deceptive. That's the thing though. I just don't know that it's anything that really specifically needs to be discussed. It can and should be discussed at some point, but it's not like just because you think it's important you start drilling your date with questions. I honestly don't know if I ever asked my spouse any overt financial questions. I am sure a lot of it came up naturally when discussing our futures together.

I feel like sometimes the, "fiscal responsibility is very important to me," is taken to mean a more as a cold analysis when dating. For me, it's more just going with my gut and how I more easily click with people that I am more compatible with. It's more subconscious than anything.

[bjl584]

Very Important.

I've had relationships end in the past due to incompatibility with finances. How do you make things work with someone when they spend every dollar they make and I'm busy saving 30% of my income?

I strongly believe that the reason that my current relationship is so solid is because we are both on the same page financially.

[Fishindude77]

More important is having a solid relationship and being able to work together for the better good. Many young couples have started out with one or more of them being a financial mess and poor manager of money, yet over time they wised up and have done very well.

Now ... if you're say 35 or 40+, dating and getting serious I'd say it's much more important to look at. The older someone gets, the less likely they are to change poor money habits. Friend of mine was telling me his 55 year old single mom, who has always had a good job is carrying $30,000 in credit card debt and has almost nothing saved for retirement. Unless you are loaded, you'll want to be real careful about hooking up with someone like this.

[ua_guy]

Being on the same page with finances is important. You should be able to tell if your date has their finances in good order just by looking at the general picture and listening to how that person talks about money, what they value, and what their goals are. There's a sharp contrast between frugal people talking about money, and people who are careless with money, talk about money. It might sound like complaining about money either way, but one doesn't want to spend it, and the other doesn't have the money to spend.

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

Extremely, nothing would scare me worse than a SO that blows through money. My wife is great with money though, I'm lucky.

[phantom]

I think financial compatibility is very important, and as most people here are saying, I think you'll get a general sense of it through the dating process. I also think you have to decide for yourself what your financial deal-breakers are to know what sorts of things you're looking for.

How a person spends money tends to be obvious. You'll notice if someone you date eats out every meal, always has the latest gadget, drives fancy cars, and generally spends freely when the two of you are out. If you find that sort of spending to be wasteful and way out of line with your priorities, and if you can't imagine finding a way to share money with someone who engages in it, that alone should probably be a deal-breaker. But, maybe you think some of that sort of spending is alright so long as a person isn't going into debt to pull it off and still managing to save towards other goals. Then you might need some less observable information. Some people will tip you off about their poor money management skills by complaining. But, people who have things under control and make different choices than you could be harder to spot.

Like MonkeyMama, I think a lot of financial incompatibility is likely to come out when you start talking about long term goals. If you talk about retiring some day and your partner doesn't think he'll ever be able to retire, you'll know you're not on the same page.

If you don't pick up on financial issues early, there's always premarital counseling. No matter how good you think you've covered every topic that matters, I think it's always a good idea to have someone prompt you to talk about potential areas of disagreement before getting married.

[lirpalynn]

I've found that I don't really have to even boldly ask guys questions to get a good grasp on their financial state. For the most part, I've found that sharing bits of info about myself (I just don't care about name brands or having much "stuff", I might use my credit card while out sometimes, but I always pay it in full each month)opens a conversation without feeling forced or weird.

[FLA]

very important

Ex-husband: lived a life of frugality and didn't even do it with some plan about simple living. Hmm, maybe that's a clue, he's just simple, lol. When I met him he had 2 plates, 2 cups, 2 sets silverware. Ancient, uncomfortable furniture, an old twin mattress that killed his back so he slept on an uncomfortable love seat all curled up with no space for his legs for years. He had money, he just did not care about stuff. he was a saver. I was never this frugal but we met in the middle fine. He was older than me by quite a bit, he had all of his 403B in cash! When he told me this, I almost threw up, lol. I shared how I used index funds, comfort with risk, blah, blah, blah. Basically, he just had me set it up, we both worked for the same company. We were cruising, saving well, had a modest home, 2 kids. But then I started looking at the 403B statements quarterly more closely, every time the market took a down turn, he put all our money back in cash, forging my signature. I nearly blew a gasket and this was just one of many, many signs that frugality, while important to me, was not a top issue in our divorce. When we divorced, he got this well-known pit bull lawyer (he took our entire savings to pay for him without telling me), who eggs my ex on. The divorce was done in '04, I have been taken to court yearly, I am currently in the process. Well, he made over double what I made, he paid the NYS minimum child support, I refused alimony and yet he had to declare bankruptcy because he could not pay his lawyer bills, all these years later, he still owes almost 45k. I don't, I have a sensible lawyer, we always have the same family judge and they just ignore them, rule, the judge reminds us to please stop wasting her time. I pay my lawyer a nominal amount. I thought I had hit pay dirt, man who loved to budget and save. I have no clue how you can go from being this way your entire life to being bankrupt because you just have to keep suing because you are mad. His entire portfolio that I helped him set up? GONE and he is 60 now with two college bound kids. Too bad, so sad but his own fault. So you can pick a frugal partner and live that way for years and it can still go down hill once divorce becomes a reality or some other stressor becomes an issue.

I would still pick a financially responsible man the next time. I dated the opposite for 7 yrs, but that's a story for another day, lol!

[Snydley]

My story: I was the one who was bad with money and I thought my husband was too extreme, obsessed with saving, and that HE was the one with the problem for a LONG time. I was never a spender (not into material stuff at all) but I didn't really save or think responsibly when it came to money. When DH and I first moved in together (just BF/GF) he said to me one day "you left your cc bill out and I noticed you were charged a $35 late fee this month; are you short on money?" to which I replied, "oh no, I just forgot to pay it on time." He then asked if he could pay my bills for me because he hated the thought of giving the cc company $35 for no reason.

We argued for years about money after we were married (he'd set budgets, I'd go over them). I wasn't being extravagant at all, just not wanting to crack down as much as he thought we needed to. We were living in San Francisco and he was setting this budget to give us ~$300-500 to save towards the eventual downpayment on a house. Well, fast forward 7 years and we saved the $40K we needed for our house downpayment by following his plan. Around the time we bought the house, I was up late alone one night and happened to start watching a Suzy Orman show and was shocked to realize that my DH was never crazy, he was saying to me all the things that she said in the show (about emergency funds, cc spending, etc.)

I apologized, told him I've been wrong and that we would never have our house if it wasn't for him.

The point is, I think we worked through it because I (1) was able to see the light of day and (2) I'm not into 'stuff' and not a big spender at all.

So don't get serious with someone who is into expensive/label things..they are probably pretty shallow anyway.

[marywantsmoney]

More important than what they drive is how they keep it. It's very often true that if their car is a mess, so will be their financial lives.

That's a good tip. I think I heard Suze Orman say that once.

Come to think of it, it really, really, really seems true.