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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.
Good luck with that. Your best option is to look among new immigrants, preferably from some Asian country, modern US people are raised with attitude of temporarily embarrassed princes and princessess who feel any hint they should count money and consider the costs as mortal insult to their noble status and honor.
Imagine how Marie Antoinette felt when hubby told her: "Honey, you have enough palaces, you do not need another!"
The age of bourgeoisie counting every penny is over, the age of aristocracy is back.
I realized a while back that a lot of women were raised in McMansions with parents who basically paid for everything, from cars to clothes to fancy knick knacks, and of course university education, from the time she could walk.
And inherently, they will expect the same from their spouse. But that's impossible for a normal guy in early-adult stages to procure.
By becoming as wealthy as we have, we've now made it so that the general norm of "you, a dirt poor peon, marry another dirt poor peon, and gradually build your life up to a higher standard" a thing of the past.
Women who came up in prosperity would inherently have to accept a (temporary!) standard of living hit to marry a guy in his early-mid twenties, unless his family is massively wealthy. Women are generally wired to never, EVER accept a loss in status and standing and so this thought is probably vomit-inducing.
And there's now ample evidence that women, when given economic/financial advantages, tend to opt against having families/kids.
Again the solution is to economically boost men, or at least, stop the policies that are economically de-boosting them.
If only such support ended at HS or college. One occasionally meets a girlboss in their 30s who spends every dime on travel and clothing and eating out because her parents are still providing the apartment, car, and maybe even spending money. And she expects the future husband to be able to provide that level of living. Made for some entertaining first dates.
"Oh, I love Paris. I try to visit twice a year. How often do you travel abroad?"
"I've never left the US. My idea of travel is hiking and camping for 10 days without a shower."
On the one hand its a natural thing. If the parents are doing really well, making sure their kids are comfortable (and, more directly, making sure their beloved Katie never has to do porn or shack up with a drug dealer) is what they would do as an extension of their established role.
The second/third order effect of "Katie now expects to live in a 5000 square foot house and drive a late-model SUV and will reject anyone who can't offer that" is a little harder to see.
The very SECOND I hear that a woman has left the country on vacation more than once (with the exception of Mexico travel, I guess), I pretty much know my chances have dropped to negligible.
I guess maybe this is another thing where my background influences what I've seen, but as far as I can tell I've never been on a date with a woman who had this kind of lifestyle. Especially the "looking for a man to offer that almost seems like looking not only for a provider who can add meaningfully to the dual household income, but looking for a man who can bankroll an entire lifestyle, and I've genuinely never encountered that. Together we can afford these lifestyle choices is familiar to me; marriage after all has financial advantages. But this is the sort of thing that appears deep into a relationship, not up front.
Is this a lower-middle-class/upper-middle-class split thing? Regional? I've tended to date people who come from modest households.
I think there's women like this out there.
I think they are extremely hard to locate if you don't already know them or their families.
The ones who expect foreign travel are hard to locate? Or the ones who don't?
Ones who expect foreign travel.
I mean, you see them on dating apps a lot, but I think they're just harder to pin down dint of being so traveled.
Not really a big point either way. Lots of women advertise their preference for traveling.
Its slightly rarer that one has been actually well traveled in their youth.
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