There are a lot of things that are really, really great about being a personal finance blogger. I get to set and achieve financial goals, jibber jabber constantly about the latest financial news, and have cool debates about money – all while a great community of people are reading and throwing in their thoughts and ideas. I really love blogging, and I particularly love blogging about money.
As with all great things in life, though, there are certain….drawbacks. One such drawback I’ve experienced in my time as a personal finance blogger is that sometimes I don’t feel like a “normal” person when it comes to money. In fact, I think that my interest in personal finance kind of sets me apart from the vast majority of the American population. And it’s one segment of the American population that I’m becoming a little concerned about: American males.
I wrote a little while back about my recent break-up; while I’m in no way interested in dating again for a while, I have started thinking about how my dating standards might be impacted by my financial standards. See, when I started dated my last boyfriend, I was a 22-year-old financial idiot. It would never have crossed my mind to pick a guy based on his money management skills.
Oh, how times have changed.
Now I would definitely say that it’s very important to me to find a guy who knows what’s what when it comes to money. But the question is: what do I exactly mean by “what’s what”? Do I expect him to have the same knowledge about and interest in personal finance as I do? Probably not. I fully understand that personal finance is my kinda dorky interest. It would be unreasonable to expect to find a dude who’s equally obsessed with budgets and interest rates and frugality.
However, all this is not to say that I have no standards when it comes to my hypothetical partner’s financial history and habits. At the very minimum, I expect a person who has:
- A decent credit score
- A basic habit of saving
- A basic desire to reduce debt and avoid it in the future
- A general awareness of his spending habits
In other words, I’m not expecting perfection. I don’t expect that my partner can list Dave Ramsey’s baby steps or explain the exact difference between a traditional and Roth IRA. But basically good financial habits (saving, investing, paying down debt) are an absolute must.
What about you? Exactly HOW financially responsible do you expect your partner to be?
