How to Talk About Your Debt While Navigating the Dating Scene
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Here's your Money Briefing for Thursday, February 6th. I'm Arianna Aspuru for The Wall Street Journal. Navigating the dating scene can have its highs and lows. Tack on hefty credit card balances, student loans, and other financial obligations, and finding someone special can become complicated.
If you're dating casually, if you're just getting out there for fun, it's okay to not disclose your debt. But if you're doing it and you are hoping to find that forever person, it's important to talk about it at some point.
So how can you discuss your money problems without souring the mood? We talk with Wall Street Journal senior platform editor Julia Munslow after the break.
Listen at schwab.com slash washingtonwise.
Romance can be filled with flowers, chocolates, and a heartfelt conversation about your finances, including your debt. Wall Street Journal senior platform editor Julia Munslow joins me. Julia, what kind of financial problems can weigh on a person when they're dating?
There can be a lot of different financial problems when you're dating. Really, my story is about debt, but there are so many different kinds of debt that someone can have, and they can be perceived differently by the people you're dating. A lot of people have federal student loans, for instance, but there's also credit card debt, consumer debt, and even medical debt.
And on top of that, dating comes at a price. Dinners, bars, drinks, all these things. How expensive can dating be?
When you're getting to know someone and you're paying for drinks, you're paying for your outfits, you're paying to get to whatever place you're meeting, it can really add up. I spoke to one 29-year-old in San Francisco who told me he went on 57 dates last year and spent $17,000. Now, that's including travel and accommodation, but that's still a pretty high price point. Even if you are not footing the bill for the date necessarily, you're still having to pay.
How does debt influence the modern dating experience?
Figure out if you want a new dress or you want a new outfit and makeup and it's time and that time could be spent on that date or that time could be spent picking up an extra shift at work to help you pay off the debt. Yeah. So it does get expensive and it can add up.
Why does debt specifically feel like a heavy secret when you're dating?
A lot of people can feel shame about their financial health, especially if they're carrying a lot of debt. I spoke to one woman who has $69,000 in federal student loans and $19,000 in credit card debt. That's a lot. And for her, she struggled with the idea that she had all of this debt. And as a woman, oftentimes men would offer to pay. And she would feel guilty about having men spend their hard-earned money on her.
And when you're just starting to see someone having a conversation about money and who's paying for what, especially if you feel guilty like she did, can feel super uncomfortable, completely uncomfortable. When is the best time to share your financial situation with the person you're dating?
So it really depends on the person. Different people have different habits here. For the woman that I was just speaking about, she would ask people when they were still on the dating app, before they had even met, you know, like, hey, what are your expectations for who is handling the bill? And she told me that oftentimes people would tell her, like, oh, I got it. I'm the one who invited you, so I'll pay. But obviously not everyone is comfortable doing that. For her, it actually helped her assuage a lot of her anxiety issues.
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