Anyone else start to lose attraction when they find out someone they are interested in makes bad financial decisions?
At it's core, finances were the primary factor in me never being able to pull the proposal trigger with Victoria. Any resentment or frustration I ever had with her could somehow be traced back to financials. She was so bad with money. We were collectively making $130K a year with no kids and just barely breaking even every month. We had separate bank accounts and she'd just give me $700 a month toward whatever expenses we had. I was trusting her to maybe pay off some of the $80K student loans she had, but that didn't seem to be a priority. Getting an ungodly amount of clothes and multiple candle loot crates a month ($30+ a throw) were more important. I'd get called cheap for not wanting to book an international vacation on a credit card when we weren't making enough to pay it back in a reasonable period of time.
Then came the day when I finally got her to talk about her credit card debt. Now, I always knew she was a train wreck with credit cards. I may have shared here before that I once overheard her, her mother, and her aunt having a conversation about CC use and them telling her things like 'just pay back $10 a month and don't worry about. As long as you give them something, they can't come after you". Anyway, she revealed that not only did she not know how much credit card debt she had, she didn't even know how many cards it was across. Her best guess was "I might have less than $30K in credit card debt". From that point on, my brain noped the fuck out. I stayed around a few more months trying to find any path forward, but I couldn't find one after that.
She started working a ton, blaming it on me and how I never thought she made enough money. What she made meant nothing to me. How she spent what she made meant everything. She was spending $350+ on Uber Eats and Door Dash and putting it all on credit cards. It was madness. It's like the words "interest payments" didn't exist in her reality. I'd try explaining to her how that $30 in Jake's Wayback she just ordered was going to end up costing $100+ by the time she paid it off, but she didn't want to hear it.
Maybe I'm materialistic as hell (I don't think I am), but I'm struggling with this in the dating world now too. It's almost to the point where the girls without college that still work hard but have no student loan debt are more attractive than the ones who went to/are still in school with $75K+ loans. I feel like an asshole for thinking that way some times. I started seeing this other girl recently and we have another date tonight. She's really cool, but she told me when we went out the other night that she doesn't have a 401K plan and doesn't intend to start one (or any kind of alternate). She's 28. I hate saying it, but that alone could be a deal breaker. It's not just the money aspect though, it's the underlying thought process behind it. Unless she's part a family that's got a huge trust for her that I haven't been told about yet, what does one have going on in their head to think that they don't need any kind of financial safety net for down the line? Terminal illness maybe? I don't get it.