The Smart Woman’s Guide to His Money

One of the most popular discussion threads among successful, single men everywhere is, “How can I know she loves me for me and not just for my money”?

If you happen to belong to that demographic, today, I intend setting your minds to rest, though not in the way you might have hoped. No, I am not going to provide you with a digital voice analyzer that will measure the sincerity of her sighs and murmurs. Instead, I hope to remove this particular concern entirely, which, if one thinks about it, is just as good as that box of electronic wizardry.

Here is the basic problem confronting a single girl: In the relatively short time she can reasonably devote to getting to know a guy, how can she possibly obtain a sense of what living with him for the next fifty years will be like?

Is his intelligence (his I.Q. score) a reliable guide? Of course not; many of the murderous thugs who rose to the top of Nazi and communist regimes were of extraordinarily high intelligence.

Is how well he plays tennis a reliable guide? Hardly; John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors were notoriously foul-mouthed, bad-tempered, and unpleasant individuals. How about the number of ‘friends’ he has on Facebook? Not at all. How he treats people and his relationships with family members and real friends indicates character, and is worth evaluating, but it doesn’t provide the whole picture and can take time to truly understand. So, is there nothing about a man that is easily observed and which provides some guide to his character and values?

Indeed, there is, and as usual, we can turn to ancient Jewish wisdom for guidance. Throughout Deuteronomy we find extensive laws about concepts such as honest weights and measures, tithing, lending, and returning collateral. All of these reflect a Torah-wide view that how a man handles money is a direct extension of his character and of his relationship with God, not a separate secular domain.

A woman who seeks a rich man may be a gold digger, but one who wants to know how a man handles money is gathering character evidence. The gold digger is interested primarily in what his money can buy her. The wise woman is interested in what his money can tell her about him.

Money may not be a perfect measure of a man, but neither is it merely a pile of dollars. Over time, financial reality often becomes a record of thousands of decisions: work, discipline, delayed gratification, reliability, relationships, ambition, generosity, prudence, and judgment. Net worth is not character, but financial behavior contains information about character.

Scripture tells us how, while fleeing his brother Esau, Jacob took his family safely across the River Yabok and then went back alone.

And he took them and brought them across the river, and he took across what was his. And Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn. (Gen 32:24-25)

Ancient Jewish wisdom explains that Jacob went back to retrieve some minor assets. This is seen as important because it is good and right for a man to be diligent about his money. His relationship with his possessions and money reveal his attitude towards the future. For instance, a prudent saver is saying: “Tomorrow exists” while a chronic spender is often saying: “I want what I want now.”

Marriage is perhaps the greatest long-term undertaking a man ever enters. A woman contemplating marrying him therefore has every right to ask: Can this man sacrifice today’s pleasure for tomorrow’s security? Marriage requires exactly that capacity. Everything they will do together requires it; children, buying a home, building a business, retirement, caring for elderly parents. Financial behavior is one of the places where a person’s time horizon becomes visible.

Suppose a man says: “I want her to love me for me, not because I’m funny.” That would surely be absurd. His humor is part of him. Or “I want her to love me for me, not because I’m kind.” But kindness is part of him. “I want her to love me for me, not because I’m dependable.” But dependability is part of him. So, what exactly does “love me for me” mean? A person isn’t some mysterious essence floating independently of his characteristics.

A man who repeatedly burns bridges frequently pays an economic price for doing so, and a man who builds trust frequently receives an economic return from doing so. That tells us something.

We love people partly because of who they have formed themselves into. If a man has become competent, respected, disciplined, productive, generous, and financially responsible, why should he resent a woman for finding the consequences of those qualities attractive? On the contrary, he should want her to notice.

As I always teach, marriage means sharing a bed and sharing a bank account. It astonishes me that so many think you should investigate the first before marriage but consider investigating the second unromantic.

What does romance say? “I love being with you.” But marriage should say: “I trust building a life with you.” Building a life requires resources. Not merely money—but discipline, competence, relationships, reputation, foresight, restraint, generosity, and responsibility.

Money frequently provides evidence of those things. So ladies, don’t apologize for looking. And gentlemen, don’t be insulted when she does. If your financial life reflects discipline, service, courage, relationships, sacrifice, and responsibility, perhaps the woman who notices really is interested in who you are. She understands that your money is one of the places where you have left fingerprints of who you really are.

Compare two men earning, shall we say, $80,000. One has $75,000 saved, no consumer debt, has worked for the same company for a few years, gives regularly to charity, and is helping an elderly parent. The other earns the same $80,000, has $28,000 in credit-card debt, leases a car he cannot afford, has changed jobs five times, and blames everybody else for his difficulties. Their incomes tell us nothing. Their financial lives tell us everything.

In conclusion, ladies, if you are contemplating marriage, you absolutely should care about his money. I am not advising you to marry the richest man you can find. I said you should care about his money. Because his money is telling you things about him that you desperately need to know.

And, guys, stop saying, “I want a woman who loves me for me, not for my money.”

Your money is a crucial part of “you.” Not the amount of it, necessarily, but what you have done with it, how you earned it, how you spend it, how you save it, how you give it away, and what responsibilities you shoulder with it. Net worth is not character. But financial behavior contains information about character.

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