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Family Money

March 3, 2012 By 14 Comments
Reader:  Athol, and everyone else, I am curious how this plays out when you have inherited money in addition to income. I will soon start to work as a lawyer and I will start at about $90-100,000 a year and over time go up to about $260,000 a year. My parents are very wealthy and will transfer most of my inheritance which is about $8-9 million soon and we have a great summer house and a cottage in the mountains. I am thinking the sex rank will somehow be influenced differently if money is inherited rather than made all by yourself. It should add a lot of value because it is a lot of money but would add less as I haven`t achieved anything to acquire it. But as I will be making a lot myself there will be a mix of value adding types of money. Also I guess there might be some sort of value adding old money class thing to this as well although I am guessing that would be slight as where I live people are rather blind to class unlike in countries such as England and France.
There are some complicating factors in assessing the impacts of money as well. I know I could easily start going to the poshest clubs and get women that are looking for men with means but I dislike such women. The type of woman I am likely to meet and to like would be someone who just expects a guy with an education and a fairly good income. I am guessing the value contribution of the money goes down with such women although it will still be there.
I actually dislike the fact that my inherited money will impact a woman’s initial attraction to me and so I have always kept it secret. It feels more okay that it adds to an already established attraction. This will be more difficult now because I am buying an awesome loft apartment that very few my age would be able to afford. Women also tend to ask if you have loans on your apartment to which I would have to answer no. So unlike before they will now start to figure out very early that I have parents with at least quite a lot of money. Any comment on this by anyone will be highly appreciated.
Another complicating SMV factor in my case is that I majored in something else, worked a little bit and then started law school which in my country can be started straight after high school. This puts me years behind others my age in terms of career advancement but I guess won`t matter as much because when I start working I will already be a lawyer after two years of being an assistant lawyer while many who start out need years to get to do the work they want to be doing and a lawyer is still a lawyer (at least if he makes good money and works for a good company). Also I am dating women about 8-10 years younger than me right now and I will be ahead of them career wise anyway.
Athol:  Okay I gotta tease you a little upfront… your problem is you’re going to get 8-9 million dollars? LOL fuck you.  :-P
Joking aside though, this really is a potential relationship pitfall and a quite serious one. The biggest issue is the incentive for a woman to marry you with the express intention to eventually divorce you to get half of the money. And while not all women are like that, but there’s enough of them willing to do anything to get $4 million that you do need to worry someone is faking her interest in you from the get go.
The only solution to that is as you made clear in your later comment, your parents won’t even let you get the money yourself, unless you have a prenup that protects the money from such a situation. Your parents are absolutely perfect in their approach as it saves you from having to bring up the prenup as a relationship issue, and frames them as the bad guys. That’s a real gift from them.
I think the inherited money does seem less personally impressive that money you earn yourself. I think it frames your parents/father as Alpha more than it does you, but it’s still unquestionably pretty big cheese. Your solution to that particular issue is to find your own personal frame and play that to the hilt. I think the whole becoming a lawyer and standing on your own two feet thing is fine for that. It’s okay that you’re a couple years behind the normal career curve.
My advice is to not overly worry about looking for women. Just do whatever it is that you want to be doing for you, and when you’re in the middle of doing that, look around and see who the women are that are also doing it. Being interested in you and being interested in the same things as you, tends to have a fair amount of overlap. At the very least, you’ll be running into women that are actually self-motivated to do something, rather than ovulating gold diggers at the club. Over the long term a self-motivated woman saves a ton of relationship problems compared to one that desires to be propped up upon a pink cushion and waited on.
And not for nothing… if you find yourself working with a well kept, intelligent, sane woman in her 40′s or 50′s… maybe she has a daughter… 
Filed Under: How To Choose A Wife, Monogamy and Marriage 2.0

Don’t Be Broke

March 2, 2012 By 48 Comments
Warning: This post contains grossly offensive caricature about all women being potential gold diggers to make the point that there’s no getting around the need for men to have an income. Your mother probably wasn’t like this at all, and you probably aren’t like this. But you probably know someone just like this and dislike her…
Look there’s no way around this, if you’re a man, your income is a critical factor in your Sex Rank. I’m not saying you need to be a millionaire, but you can’t be broke. The only way you get women when you’re broke is by playing up the thug bastard card and getting it done on the basis of pure dominant physicality. Frankly that just doesn’t seem a viable option to what I imagine my default MMSL reader to be, so I don’t spend much time advising how to walk around like you’re an off-duty bouncer with a short fuse. Otherwise your option is luring women into your bed with cystral meth. (Though to be honest I find the cystral meth girls tiresomely clingy.) 
 So anyway… you need to earn an income. Ideally you have a disposable income.
I hate to sound like I’m shitting on the morals of women here, but every women has her price point differential where another guy can come in with a bigger wallet and take her from you. In fairness to the women, that price point differential is usually pretty sizable and as an awkward comfort… the practical reality of another guy meeting that price point and wanting her, is fairly small. Let me explain…
Assume Andrew and Anna are married. Andrew makes a fairly good income and pulls in $75,000 a year and Anna quite likes him. All is well.
Entering into the picture is Bob, who in most ways is pretty similar to Andrew, except he makes $125,000 a year. Bob makes a play for Anna, and while tempted, she declines his advances and stays with Andrew. The math being +$50,000 income a year being not enough for her to engage her hamster and find a way to rationalize dumping Andrew. Price point differential not met.
After that she meets Cory who is in most ways fairly similar to Andrew, except he makes $200,000 a year. At the +$125,000 differential, Cory is making nearly three times as much money as Andrew and over a period of four months Anna falls deeply in love with Cory and starts the affair that ultimately ends her marriage to Andrew. Pregnant to Cory, he proposes to her once the divorce to Andrew is finalized.
Now let’s imagine all that again with the same players, but with one critical difference… Andrew lost his job three years ago and never found another one. So his income is $0.
Anna has been totally disgusted with Andrew for at least the last two years and when Bob makes a play for her, his $125,000 income gets full credit as (+$125,000 differential) and he’s a knight in shining armor coming to her rescue. She doesn’t exactly immediately crush on him, but it does develop and grow quickly. There’s a lot to like about him.
Later she meets Cory who has +$75,000 income over Bob. Cory’s interest is very flattering to be sure, but she’s loyal to Bob who did after all save her from finanical ruin. +$75,000 wasn’t enough to swing her interest.
So….
… if the ladies reading really are honest, some guy making triple what your husband makes offering you a permanent deal really is going to be pretty damn tempting, but it’s also not something that’s very likely to happen. That’s because you just aren’t good looking enough to have that happen. If you were hot enough for that sort of guy to try and poach you from your husband, you never would have married your husband in the first place, you would have held out for a richer guy from the get go. As ugly as all that reads, that’s how Sex Rank works.
In Sex Rank terms, Andrew and and Anna are 7′s. Bob is an 8 and Cory is a 9. When the 8 male tempts the 7 female, she stayed loyal “good wife”. But when the male 9 tempted the female 7, she totally flipped out and ditched the male 7 as one would expect…. Except in reality a male 9 would not try and poach a female 7 for a permanent relationship. In reality Anna might crush on Cory, and he might screw her on the side, but he’d be quite content to see Andrew and Anna stay married.
But if the husband is totally tanking on his income, suddenly nearly any guy making a decent income starts looking really good. If Andrew turns into a zero income Lord-of-XBOX, his Sex Rank drops into the 3-4 range after a couple years. Hell Anna at 7 might very happily switch Andrew out for any other male 7, let alone Bob (8) or Cory (9).
So guys, there are no shortcuts on this stuff. There is no Game that can overcome you being broke.
And yes, all this exact stuff applies to men as well. We all have a beauty point differential where the girl is just so hot our morals go out the window. But realistically there’s not much danger of us getting her in the sack because she’s out of our price range. Of course if our wife turns into an obese sexless shrew… well nearly any woman starts looking good.
See how that works?
The caveat being you can’t only bring an income to the table. It’s a big factor in male Sex Rank, but certainly not the only factor.
Filed Under: Body Agenda and Sex Rank, Cheating and Infidelity, The Male Action Plan (MAP)

Who Pays The Bills vs Who Spends The Money

March 1, 2012 By 24 Comments
Reader:  Athol, was wondering if you could write a blog about Beta men and their money. Women are attracted to men who can provide for their families, obviously. But what happens when they marry and then she takes over all the bill paying? I get that many guys see this as an obnoxious chore, and initially delegate the work to the wife. But does this backfire? He who controls the money controls the marriage is my experience. And if the wife married (mostly) for money, isn’t she less likely to have sex with her husband if she’s able to help herself to his fat direct deposit at any time? Wouldn’t it make sense for a beta-who-wants-to-be-alpha to open up his own bank account and have his paycheck directly deposited, then pay all the bills himself, simply giving his wife a biweekly allowance?
Athol:  There’s this thing where whoever does a chore for the first time in the marriage, gets branded with that particular chore for the rest of the marriage. So if during the first week of wedding bliss you take the trash out, you have de facto agreed to take the trash out for the remainder of the marriage. You cook a couple times in a row the first week of the marriage, you’re the chef.
Fairly often the wife is the one that pays the first couple of bills, and she becomes the traditional bill payer. So there’s really no delegation involved, it just kind of happens and suddenly she’s in charge of the money. Which is I agree an unfun task, but also a disproportionately powerful chore compared to say being responsible for scooping the litterbox. (Which I accidentally did the first week we had a cat. FML.)
So if she is the bill payer, that gives her the leverage to say “yes” or “no” to how the money is spent. That therefore gives her control in the relationship. Right?
Maybe…
What you need to make careful differentiation between is the task of being the money manager, and being the one that actually spends the disposable income how they please.
It’s quite possible that the money manager is also the disposable income spender. This is the ogre husband that feminists warn us about, where the wife doesn’t even know the number to the bank account, or how much is in there and receives a weekly half a pittance to buy food and cleaning supplies. Plus she better keep the house up nice or get yelled at like the help. Meanwhile he buys whatever he wants for himself.
Of course it can equally be the wife that controls all the purse strings and husband doesn’t even see his money ever. The direct deposit of his paycheck being more like a badly overpriced wishing well than anything else. There’s no money for a fishing rod, but she always has her hair and nails done twice a month and has what appears to be a plethora of shoes. 
It can also be one person desperately trying to manage the money, while the other is constantly buying stuff and basically hogging the disposable income by spending it before the money manager has a chance to spend it for themself in any way. Plus they can just be straight up spending money the couple doesn’t have.
All that being said, I’m not sure it truly matters who is the money manager, as long as both parties are responsible with the spending of the disposable income. There’s likely a balance of power in there as to who spends the most of that money.
Now as to… “Wouldn’t it make sense for a beta-who-wants-to-be-alpha to open up his own bank account and have his paycheck directly deposited, then pay all the bills himself, simply giving his wife a biweekly allowance?” the answer is probably no. This is going to be seen as a very aggressive move by the wife, and she will get very defensive about it, and generally assume that the express purpose for this is to take control of the money for the express purpose of hiding expenses… like hotel rooms. You think you got trouble now lol.
Very likely the person spending the disposable income is the one with the highest Sex Rank. So if that isn’t you, your opening move is far better to “take control” of enough money for a gym membership and start there. I’m pretty sure if you’re getting hit on by other women, your wife will think buying you the $500 fishing rod you’ve had your eye on is a great idea… “Surprise honey! You deserve it!” (Now go on a boat on the ocean far away from those bitches…)
  
As to Jennifer and myself…
Jennifer is the bill payer in our family, I really have to admit that I have no clue where we are with who needs to be paid for what and how much money we have, or why she calls her pen pal in Switzerland every second Friday. 
However in terms of the one that spends the disposable income, that’s really more me than her. For the most part my wants are pretty light, so it’s not really all that much I’m spending on myself all that often. As long as I have an Internet connection I’m happy. It’s typically me making the “lets eat out” decision, or actually telling Jennifer she needs to buy something for herself.
Jennifer is the coupon queen, though not to the “Extreme Couponing” level. We don’t have a spare bedroom with rolling filing cabinets of soup, toilet paper and a pallet of 53 bottles of salad dressing. She does save 40-50% every time to the grocery store though. Almost always when I see her with a great outfit I haven’t seen before she’s typically as excited by how much she got it for as the outfit itself. When she’s snapping up $150 jeans for our daughters from Savers for $12 I’m actually quite impressed with her.
For us the money management is part of Jennifer being the First Officer. We simply aren’t going to have a conversation about how much to spend at the supermarket because I know she’s on top of it. Most expenses are routine, there’s nothing to talk about when it comes to the power bill, the cable bill or putting money in the kids school lunch accounts. Routine expected purchases she just handles. This all helps free me up to write MMSL and not have one more thing in my head that I have to keep track of. Carry on Number One.  
However outside of routine expected purchases she has this mental threshold of $50-70 where she tends to seek permission from me. For the record I’ve never told her to think that way, it’s just something that she does that I figured out ages ago. Only about four years ago did the penny drop she was being submissive by doing it.  In actual fact doing exactly that frames the husband as the Captain quite nicely for those ladies looking for a way to lure the lurking potential dominance out of their husbands.
I’m the one that green lights buying bigger purchases…. but I have no clue how much money we have so I pretty much always have to check with Jennifer whether or not we can actually buy it. I’m not going to pillage the checking account down to $500 right before Jennifer needs to write $1500 worth of checks. I mean that might cause a break in my Internet service… plus Jennifer frowns on it.
So for us, we have a system of checks and balances and it’s working pretty well. Or at least it’s working pretty well now that I went all Captainy and started MMSL and it’s pulling in a helpful income. We’ve made a couple of serious missteps with finances along the way and the economy has been tough all over. We’re on target to have all the credit cards paid off by July which will be an awesome feeling.
Oh and my $1200 laptop is on it’s way, the first splurge of any sort with the book money. It’s 80% work tool, 20% toy. Jennifer was very supportive about keeping her golden goose happy lol. Yay me! 
Jennifer:  LOL at “Captainy” being an adjective. You only need an “allowance” for someone that has a spending problem that must be controlled or it will seriously mess up the finances. This is different than a “budget” amount as in, “we only have $200 until payday, this is what there is.” 
Filed Under: Captain and First Officer, The Male Action Plan (MAP)
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