Lee: Ker-ching!

A couple of years ago Ray Parlour got divorced and the courts found that his wife had a claim on his future earnings, I find that immoral. She was given money based on the ‘lifestyle that she was accustomed to’. That’s not how it should be. And it goes both ways. An ex-girlfriend of mine had a few bob and was married to a guy and he turned her over. He had debt when they got married. The debt went in the pot, so she had to pay his debt as part of the deal.

I think this is one of the biggest reasons for people not getting married. Because they know when they get married the burden is on the person with the money - be that the man or the woman. As much as people say they will never take your money, when push comes to shove, down the track they always do.

If a woman decides a guy has a few bob, she can’t just live off what he’s got and then ask for half. In my books, she’s had a good run and should walk away with what she came with. If you gave up a career for children, again, it’s your choice. I think the father is totally responsible for the kids and he should always pay for the kids, whether he is there or not.

There are plenty of women out there who have a career, have had kids and have carried on with their career. So I don’t buy women getting half when they stay at home.  I’ve had a situation with a girl who was getting divorced and she’d been knocked about by the guy and she thought that was justification for her getting money out of him. Really someone should have taken a hammer to him for knocking her around. But she shouldn’t treat him like a cash register, so every time he hits her it’s ‘Kerching’. She should have left the bastard and not just stayed thinking she was going to get more money every time he hit her. Become a boxer if you want that. I found the whole thing bizarre.

Because of the way the law works I could never see myself getting married. I got turned over by an ex-girlfriend who managed to screw me for shitloads of money. It wasn’t even a marriage and I found out about the law the hard way. The law doesn’t care about morals, it just has a set of black and white rules. The way it plays out isn’t healthy for marriage at all. I think it kills the potential. Now I look sideways at every woman I meet – now I know the law.

If a man buys a flat entirely himself and puts their girlfriend on the deeds, then she gets half, even if she didn’t pay a penny. The end. That’s it plain and simple. In that situation I would deal honourably with someone. If I was with a really rich woman and she bought the flat, I would walk away. After all I’ve been living there rent free.  It’s unfair that someone goes into a marriage with nothing, and then comes out with half. Knowing the law, I just think, Marriage, fuck that!

you can see Lee this Saturday at the Fymfyg Bar

Sam: Dirty Sexy Money part 2

Since money is more difficult to talk about than sex for most English people it is one of the topics that proves very sticky with my clients.

I remember when I was working on ‘How to Have Sex After Marriage’ one of the couples had a complete breakdown of trust over money – he had racked up huge credit card bills and almost gone bankrupt. She only found out when the bailiffs started knocking on the door.

To me this was shocking – how could you be so closed about such an important issue in the relationship? This simple truth was that they never talked about it – that when he lost his high powered job, and then kept spending like he was still in his high powered job it never came up until it was almost too late.

Money is a dirty topic in this country – I even notice it with my clients when they come to speak to me. They hate talking about money – again I took Kate Fox’s advice and only discuss money by email and in writing, which seems to be the most comfortable way forward.

But what about when you are in a relationship? It is really right that you send emails to each other when you want to talk about money? I’ve encountered the most enormous resistance from clients when trying to get them talking about money in their relationship. It is an explosive issue.

The best approach I have found so far is the keep it private but share approach. Each person keeps their own personal account and then each month pay an agreed amount into a joint account to cover joint costs like mortage, rent, bills etc etc. Each person can do what ever they want with their personal account, but the joint account should like Fort Knox – off limits to every one!

The joint account shouldn’t have a card attached to it, or if it does it should be kept safe – this approach ran into trouble with some of my clients when one of them started using the joint account as a personal credit card, leading to all sorts of trouble and arguments.

Money is like a big time bomb waiting to go off in most relationships – if you don’t sort it out early and deactivate the bastard, it’s probably going to go off and do a lot of damage.

What have been your experiences with dirty money in a relationship, and have you got any approaches that work or have ended in disaster?

Sam: Dirty, Sexy Money

Did you know that according to Kate Fox, a renouned and respected sociol anthropologist, most English people would rather talk about sex with their parents rather than money. Now this is something astonishing. Consdering the massive, huge, head exploding embarassment of talking to your parents about sex, money really must be a really, really dirty topic.

Money is quite a tricky subject when you are dating. The realities of modern dating can make is a rather expensive business. With internet dating you might set up a couple of dates a week, and if you are a traditional type, you might end up going for dinner, which could easily end up costing £80-100 quid a throw. Now if one person has to pay for this, suddenly dating becomes a horribly expensive business – especially if in the first ten seconds you realise there is no chemistry, but Kamakazi style have committed to an entire expensive evening.

Needless to say I recommend my clients always go on a ‘coffee date’ first if they are meeting someone on the internet.

Most professional women are getting to the stage where they are often getting paid just as much, and in some cases more than the men they are dating. To me intellectually it seems fair that if you are both earning the same amount, then you should split the bill.

But, one women recenly rather bluntly put it this way – ‘If he can’t pay for dinner, how is he going to support me when I’m on maternity leave with the kids?’. Us guys on the other hand are probably thinking ‘I could have just bought Grand Theft Auto IV with that money, and I didn’t even fancy her’.

I actually advise my male clients to pay on a first date – and with good reason – a recently survey found that 6 out of 10 women think paying the bill on a date makes for a bad dating experience. We live in a modern world, but still doggedly hang on to our old world traditions.

So who pays on a date? Should you go 50/50? Or should the man foot the bill?