Noticing a trend
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| Thu, 06-22-2006 - 7:41pm |
I'm starting to notice that a lot of women here have said their husbands/exes are/were bad with money. Seriously, what is wrong with them? My dad was no peach at all but at least he had no problem working 3 shifts for overtime, budget, be frugal, etc. Why are the men of today so horrible with money?
Mine? Pffff. Three credit cards nearly maxed out at $5k a piece with 23% APR. Notice after notice of creditors calling/writing about his bills (thank god we don't have joint cards). Is finally making decent money (say $50k, he has his own business) and while I realize that he has to pay a lot to keep it going, my god, he can't afford anything---well, except golf and useless junk like ITunes purchases. He can't save at all. Anytime you talk about the bills or a future (retirement/savings) he blows up. I started opening his bills because I have no clue how or what he's doing and every time I see late payment or no payment.
I too wind up covering for him and paying for 90% of the bills. The only thing he gives me is 1/2 the mortgage and SOMETIMES $200 max. Um...our utilities alone plus groceries total 600+. On top of it I have my own bill and a stupid 30k home equity loan that he made me take out but of course the dead end promise of "oh we'll split the payment" never happened and I already had to refinance.
Seriously. What is with these guys?

I don't think its just men it's women as well. It's our society as a whole. It's a me me me I want everything now even if I can't afford it society. We lease everything, we put it all on credit. That's why our bankruptcy laws had to change. So many people have filed for bankruptcy and put it on the poor taxpayers of this land without even attempting to pay off their own debt. When you drive by your neighbors and look at their huge houses and their big SUV's and mom stays at home and they have 2 kids and you wonder how all these families can do it, you remember that americorp commercial where the guy is riding around on the lawnmower and he says "I am in debt up to my eyeballs somebody help me" that's why. Everyone is in debt up to their eyeballs they are so busy trying to keep up with the joneses, they want to have the latest toys and they don't wan tto have to save for it, so they buy it now and worry about paying for it later until later finally comes.
People need to start better managing money. We've become a society of materialism at its worse. And I'm sorry but its not just men, women too. Since when does having a 400 dollar purse a necessity??? Really? Come on, my 14 dollar purse from walmart is just fine, you can keep your burberry thanks. Please plaid goes with nothing. LOL
Heck, if Walmart or Target don't have it...I don't need it LOL!
Seriously, our society is WAY out of whack. We decide our value by our possessions and not by what counts (our morals, values, beliefs etc). We spend so much time creating an attractive outside illusion and never spend much time working on the inside. This is one reason divorce is so rampant. My stbx needs tons of attention from other women because he doesn't have the security and strength on the inside that tells him he is ok and worthy. We have to have what we want when we want it because we somehow think that is what makes us happy. Honestly the thing that scares me the most about getting back out there and dating is I wonder if there's anybody out there that cares about the inside more than the outside. I have so little patience with one dimensional humans these days!!
I hear ya. Its what so frustrates me about dating as well. I did online dating when it was fairly new and nobody had scanners so you basically had to go on dates blindly. Now online dating is really just a meat market. Barely anyone reads the profiles, they look at the pictures and if you aren't a size 2 and blonde and hot they are moving on, it's very frustrating, they don't want to even court you either, they think dating is hanging out in your living room, whatever happened to actually taking you out on dates too. Good grief. Its really tough out there. Seriously bad.
I totally hear you. I went out with a girl I met on ivillage the other night and she has heard me complain about online dating and we've been talking for years so we met finally for the first time and she thought maybe I was kind of shy to people so she was kind of observing me and she said that I was very friendly but she knows why I'm not meeting guys because I'm honest and direct and that intimidates men but you know what TOUGH CRAP. I am 33 years old and its time for men to grow up I want a strong man, and I am tired of dating boys and it is going to take a strong man to be with me and that's okay I can wait until my 60's to meet him if that's what it takes because I'm no longer tempering Sally and changing Sally to just have anybody. It's not who I am, I'm a great person just the way I am and it's high time women stop cowering and being phoney just to have any man by their side you know? THis is why we end up on a friggin divorce board. LOL
*giggles* anyhow I veered off the subject.
I was at a pool with a friend a few days ago and we were talking to a guy that was there. After he left my friend said I should come back and try to run into him again because she thought he was cute. The thought of spending time with him, although he was nice on the outside, made my skin crawl. To me it was obvious that he has nothing happening on the inside. I run into trouble because I am flirty and I like to laugh, kid and have a good time. When it is said and done though...I am thoughtful, have definite values and morals and a brain attached to my body. It seems like the men I run into are either very shallow and one dimensional or they are serious stick in the muds. Where's the happy medium? Honestly, it is hard to see myself in another relationship because it is hard to imagine that there's anyone out there.
Yes, we women are our own worse enemies. We raise spoiled sons. We let our sons see us accept disrespect from our mates and they grow to think that is the way to treat women. We push our daughters to look pretty and keep the peace. We still somehow teach them to wait for the knight in shining armor. We run out and get boob jobs and spend tons of money on our physical self so that men will like us instead of making them accept us as we are. We sleep with married men and enable them to leave their commitments. If we women would get our act together and collectively demand better from men, life would change radically. Could you imagine if a man was at a bar, walked over to hit on a woman and was told, "I am sorry but I notice your tan line on your ring finger. You need to put your ring back on and go home to your wife." If that pretty much happened everytime, attitudes would change a bit. (note...I realize that women cheat too, that's a soapbox for another day LOL)
Good luck to you on the dating thing. Maybe one day I'll have faith that it will be worth it!
You know the first time I saw that Dove ad that they played at the superbowl where the little girl with the freckles is looking at the screen and it says "She hates her freckles" and the girl in the bathing suit superskinny and it says "She thinks shes fat" I just cried because its so true, little girls of today grow up bombarded by images in magazines and dieting etc etc and they are so beautiful just the way they are pure and youthful and just kids, innocent it really broke my heart when that ad came out and I remember as a kid watching my mom diet all the time it gave me such a horrible body image that has taken me a really really long time to break, I mean up until my husband moved out of my husband I was still hiding food, how ridiculous is that, I mean my husband and I would go to the store, we would buy say twizzlers each for a movie I wouldn't eat mine, yet I'd hide mine in my sock drawer when I got home just like I did when I was a kid. Its so ingrained. It took me so long to not hide things that I considered BAD in my cupboards, or not eat things that someone would perceived as "fat persons food" when I was out because then they would know that must be why I was overweight. I had a lot of self work I had to go through to really work on myself and that was all because of childhood and I'm 33.
We have to get kids when they are young, you are so right. We have to get them believing that they need to love themselves first and foremost they don't need a knight and shining armor screw FAIRY tales. I'm not convinced I even want those stupid princess stories in my house, I think I want books where strong women are the lead role, not some helpless heroine that has to be rescued by a man. We need to raise boys to respect women and we need to raise girls to depend on themselves.
It's definitely an uphill battle but I'm willing to do it.