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Having a partner can also be very very expensive. I'm easily $500k+ in the hole from paying all my ex-girlfriend's costs, who refused to get a job for 15+ years. (I'm extremely low-status in the dating market. I finally got out of the relationship, so at least I'm alone and miserable rather than paying through the nose and miserable.)
What's funny is that I wouldn't even have minded a trophy-wife situation where I at least got decent sex out of the deal. I know suggesting that makes me the worst kind of misogynist. We're supposed to pretend that relationships aren't transactional. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/communication-2
My ex was not the most frugal person.
Racked up student debt paying OUT-OF-STATE TUITION for reasons that read to me as asinine.
But at least it was a decent major. She had a tendency to just assume if you pay a lot for something it must be the best/high quality. Also had a tendency to throw out old things and buy new when something broke. Which, uhhhhh in hindsight was probably a warning sign.
I've made it a hard limit that the next GF has to be 'financially aware" if not thrifty. i.e. they actually consider the cost of things, consider repair vs. replace, and don't assume the most expensive option is always the best.
This winnows out a LOT of the field very early. I was dating a girl the last few months who apparently liked to select fancy restaurants just to see if I'd blink at paying the bill. At least, that's the game as I interpreted it. She would also cook for me so I was curious to see where things went. A few hundred dollars later and I can't even get a text back now.
Getting $500k in the hole is an outcome I'd truly want to avoid, though. I think I would pull the chute when the costs hit $100k.
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500 k$ ÷ (15 a × 365 d/a) = 91 $/d
That's comparable to the cost of legal prostitution in Australia. But, unfortunately, prostitution remains illegal in the Land of the Free™.
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