Money can be the third wheel in a romantic relationship. There’s the worry of how much should you spend on a first date, and should you split the bill? Is there a right time to ask how much your lover earns? And if you’re financially incompatible, is the relationship doomed?
A household can’t run on chemistry alone, and you won’t buy a house together with vibes. Spending habits, attitudes to debt and earning will all materially influence your life together.
Financial compatibility can be a big predictor of whether a relationship sticks or falls apart. It all starts with the first date.
A first date can provide clues about financial compatibility. In the early days, lovers can fret about the signals their spending habits send. Will going budget-friendly come off as stingy or sensible? Does splitting the bill give their partner the ick? Or will a big gesture set false expectations?
The tack you take, and your date’s reaction to it, can indicate a lot about your attitudes to money.
One thing is for sure: going beyond your means will create mounting anxiety over time.
“The key to dating without financial stress isn’t about sticking to a rigid euro amount, but understanding your wider finances and setting realistic boundaries,” says Eoghan O’Hara, Ireland country head with online savings platform Raisin.
“There’s no universal rule for what you should spend on a date, but having some structure can help prevent costs creeping up,” says O’Hara. One of the simplest ways to sense-check your spending is to think in percentages rather than prices, he says.
“As a general rule, keeping your total social and leisure spending – including dating – within about 10–15 per cent of your monthly take-home pay can help you enjoy yourself without putting pressure on your overall finances,” he says.
Take, for example, someone taking home €2,500 a month; that works out at roughly €250 to €375 to cover nights out, hobbies and dates combined, he says.
For a first date, spending more than 1 to 2 per cent of your monthly income is usually unnecessary. That’s about €25 to €50 for someone with €2,500 in monthly disposable income
“A coffee, a walk or a couple of drinks is often enough to get to know someone, without the pressure that can come with an expensive dinner or activity,” says O’Hara.
“If you’re seeing each other regularly, the occasional dinner or shared activity might take closer to 3 to 5 per cent of your income,” he says.
Balance
“Dating should be enjoyable, not something that leaves you feeling stretched, or guilty at the end of the month.”
You could, however, treat dating as an investment because it certainly pays to couple up, according to Raisin research.
Maintaining an “average lifestyle” for a single person in Ireland works out at about €2,307 a month, according to Raisin’s data. This is based on certain household living expenses including mortgage or rent, energy, broadband, property tax and home insurance.
This compares with €2,535 for couples.
While couples can split those costs, paying roughly €1,267 each, singles must cover the full whack themselves – an extra €1,040 every month.
“Being single in Ireland often means carrying the full weight of housing costs, utilities and everyday bills on one income,” says O’Hara. “That makes discretionary spending like dating feel far more significant, even when individual amounts are small.”
Or you could think of dating as a “speculate to accumulate” play – investing now for returns later.
By coupling up, holidays and a car can become significantly cheaper. Living together will halve rent, utilities and food costs. First-time buyers can borrow four times their combined income, generally far more than house-hunting solo.
Coupling up can definitely pay off, but being honest about money can avoid a costly split later.
Wedding bells
You can be blind to a lover’s spending during the heady dating phase but the effect on your financial and personal wellbeing will eventually come home to roost.
Psychotherapist Helen Browne, a member of the Irish Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, has supported couples driven to crisis point by the cost of their forthcoming wedding.
“I unfortunately have come across several couples where one person is watching all of this unfold with increasing discomfort and distress … and they are horrified at the expense that is being incurred,” says Browne.
Two-day weddings are often the norm, as is going abroad for the stag and hen parties, personalised, matching pyjamas and presents for a large wedding party, she says.
Spending on things such as drone videography to create glossy Instagram content is now mainstream.
“I keep thinking of that line from Sex in the City where Anthony, the wedding planner, says: ‘I have one girl on Long Island who gave herself a stroke’,” says Browne.
“I see couples who have Airbnb’d their houses to go back and live with Mum and Dad in the box room, or lived separately, in order to pay for their wedding,” she says.
Couples are incurring “thousands and thousands” of euro in debt for their weddings, and this can throw incompatibilities into sharp relief at the 11th hour.
The evidence can be there much sooner, says Browne, if you ignore it. How a couple deals with the significant expense of invitations to others’ weddings is one test.
“Do you both choose to go ‘all-in’ as guests at a wedding – participating in the stag and hen trips, spending on a big present and staying over?” says Browne. Do you both feel you have to commit to everything, or do you, for example, discuss scaling back your summer holiday to compensate?
“Is the other person open to managing things in a sensible cautious way, like saving for it, or not going away yourselves so you can attend? Are you both of a mind you have to plan for it,” asks Browne.
How you negotiate joint expenses while dating will reveal a lot.
Being clear-eyed about what life together might look like after your wedding and discussing your expectations is critical too, she says.
Assumptions around future inheritances come up in couples therapy all the time … Couples can be slow to break omerta on it
Do you envisage always having a two-income household? If you plan to have children, what will childcare look like? Is the expectation that someone will continue to work the “big job” to pay for holidays, a cleaner and private schooling, or is taking a career break an unspoken wish?
If there are expectations of a life together, you need to talk about money.
Ask questions
When is it fair game to ask a new partner how much they earn? Asking too soon can send them running for the hills but avoiding the topic altogether can create problems later.
“You don’t need to swap bank balances on the first date, but once you’re seeing each other regularly, it’s reasonable to start understanding where each other stands financially,” says Raisin’s O’Hara.
Almost three in five people say money plays an important role in the health of their relationship, and more than half have experienced financial stress with a partner – according to a Raisin survey of 800 adults in Ireland last year.
“Talking about whether someone is saving for a deposit, paying off debt or prioritising travel and experiences can help set expectations early. These conversations are especially important if one person has more financial flexibility than another,” says O’Hara.
“Talking about money early isn’t unromantic,” he adds. “It’s practical. It helps avoid resentment, pressure or guilt later on as the relationship becomes more established.”
Helen Browne agrees. “If you have a child with someone, you are in a legal arrangement with them for life – more so than buying a house together,” she says.
“You need to know the financial standing of the person you are getting into a legal arrangement with, so, absolutely, we should be having those conversations about salary, savings, pensions, health insurance and financial commitments.”
Assumptions around future inheritances come up in couples therapy all the time, says Browne. Couples can be slow to break omerta on it.
“I’ve met people who say, my partner is going to inherit a bit from their family and that will help us buy the house – but nobody has talked about how much that is. That’s very common,” says Browne.
Buying a first home in this State is for many couples predicated on the bank of Mum and Dad.
“But that’s not great if you haven’t talked about what the balance is in the account of Mum and Dad,” says Browne.
“I have met couples where one thought help with a deposit might be €50,000 and the parents might think it’s €5,000.”
Till debt do us part
How much an individual earns is one thing but a shared attitude to borrowing can be the biggest predictor of compatibility.
“The biggest issue we see is whether someone is willing to spend money that affects their financial standing – that’s whether or not someone is willing to get into debt,” says Browne.
Is buying something you can’t afford anathema? Or did you grow up in a household where borrowing for a holiday, a new kitchen or a sofa was the norm?
Neither way is “wrong”, but a readiness to be real about the consequences of financial decisions is required of both parties, says Browne.
“Ultimately debt is something that will have to be faced, it can’t be put on the long finger indefinitely,” she says.
“You might say, this car or holiday is something that is very important to me, it’s special, it would enhance my wellbeing, or create memories that are really important to me – but you will have to pay for it at some point.”
Being able to be honest with yourself and your partner about spending is vital, she says. It’s about having a shared financial reality.
“That’s anything from, ‘I have a couple of hundred on my credit card that you don’t know about’ to ‘I have huge debt, and now we won’t be able to buy the house’,” says Browne.
The spectrum of financial transparency can range from omitting to tell a partner about spending on something, to actively concealing it, to being deceptive.
“Going back to the financial crash, there were a lot of stories of professional debts that had spiralled and which had not been shared with a spouse,” says Browne.
And if you think you can change a partner’s approach to money, think again.
“If you want to be happy, you have to really think about whether you can accept and live with their financial approach,” says Browne.
Whether a person is spendy or frugal is fairly well entrenched. “Trying to change that is like trying to change a very fundamental aspect of their personality, and that’s not possible. If you want to try to change them, you are headed for conflict.”