How Many Dollars are Enough?

After reading an article blasting men who don’t spend lavishly on dates, James Rigdon commented… and then kept writing.

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I recently read an article which drew me to write a response- my response became long enough that I chose to write my own article in response. In fairness to the other author, the link to his article is immediately below:

http://www.singleblackmale.org/2015/02/27/enough-already-cant-afford-date-just-dont-date/

This gent apparently writes an advice column, and people constantly ask him about how to save money on their dating life. And his response? If you can’t afford to go big, go home, you stupid tacky classless cheapskates.

I have extremely mixed feelings about this approach.

He does suggest that a person put some thought and effort into a date, and consider what the other person might want or like. He also makes the point that if you can’t live up to your date’s expectations, it’s probably not worth pursuing.

But overall, it’s got problems, especially this:

It’s saying that the working class shouldn’t date. Most of the middle class, too.

Really, his budget says that dating in DC should be all inclusive, should be costing between $150-250 per date.

First of all, who can afford that kind of bill on every date? Even if you only go out once a week (and what kind of relationship is that), for that to be any kind of affordable component to a single guy’s budget, that guy would have to be netting well past a thousand dollars a week. Otherwise the guy’s putting well past a quarter of his weekly net income into a single date.

Now, depending on who you believe, the median income in America is between $45K and $50K. That’s before taxes, incidentally. You can argue on one way or the other all you want, but let’s take the in-between- $47K. Now, a single guy with no dependents, living on his own, no deductions, will be paying just over $5000 of that in federal taxes. That’s not including what social security and Medicare will take out, not to mention state income taxes, where applicable.

What does that mean? Well, even excluding those other pesky deductions from constant income, that guy is netting just under $42,200 a year. That’s $807 a week. And this author has the audacity to say that this guy should be willing to throw out as much as 1/3 of that net income, per date. And let’s keep in mind- social security, Medicare, and state income taxes are going to likely chop that total down to the $500-$600 a week range, which means this joker wants guys to be willing to spend near to half their net income on a single date. And that net income? That’s before anything else is paid, like, you know, housing, and food, and heat, phone and internet so one could keep in touch with those potential dates…

Median income means, basically, that as many people are making more than that as are making less. Just saying.

For a comparison- the cost of four dates would be enough to take a two-person cruise for a week. Think about that, huh? How many people can afford to take a cruise once or twice a month?

Can people afford that kind of constant dating expense?

But this guy says people ought to either put it up there or don’t bother dating.

That means that he is saying over 50% of the population just shouldn’t be allowed to date. In what kind of bourgeois world is this guy living?

To put that in military terms- at that price level, the only people in the Navy who could ever afford to date would be Lt. Commanders and above. All junior officers, warrant officers, and every single enlisted person would never make enough to have a dating life.

Yeah, that sucks.

Next point- gender equality. This article presumes that the man will always have to pay for everything on the date. Really. Let’s perpetuate that kind of stereotype, but that’s the kind of thing that never gets brought up before a couple goes out. Who’s paying for it? The default assumption is that the guy will be paying for everything, and, as I’ve said many times before, that’s one gender stereotype that nobody’s really fighting, isn’t it?

This guy is saying that, first, he’s willing to put it all out there when he dates, because he knows that someone else is putting it all out there, and if he doesn’t go all in, well, the other party might just get more interested in that other person who’s spending more.

Sad commentary on our times, that a person influencing opinion is spreading that kind of view around. Who’s funding this joker, the DC Chamber of Commerce? Even putting aside the image that seems to have prevailed of late, that women want trash and that means there’s not going to be a whole lot of this kind of spending anyway, why should we perpetuate the idea that the one who spends the most has the overall advantage? Whatever happened to liking someone or not because of who that person was?

Yes, I know, to quote High Fidelity, “It’s what you like, not what you are like, that matters.” But that doesn’t mean it’s right. It doesn’t mean that’s what we should be telling people en masse.

If that bill’s going to be standard on dates, then there really needs to be some manner of splitting the tab; even going 50% on that bill, it’s pretty heavy, and both parties are likely to scale things back a bit, yeah?

The facts of life- sure, I wasn’t dating in the DC metro, which is one of the priciest places in America, but I’ve dated all over the rest of the nation, and I’ve never felt pressure to put $250 into the first date. There are reasons.

First, if you set that kind of standard, that’s going to be what’s expected going forward, and I’ve never been in a sufficient economic condition to afford to put that kind of money out for dating every time. It’s not that I’m cheap, but I have bills to pay, I have expenses, and there are times in life when I’m short on cash and such, and keeping a healthy savings has been all there was to keep me going during those periods.

Second, why should I be obsessed with making someone like me for where we go on the first date, especially if that’s not somewhere I even want to, or a place to which I go with any regularity? I realize, the typical first time of dating (usually three months or less) is dependent on putting the best face forward, not being your true self and letting someone see everything, but why complicate that part even further? Especially if, as I said in the above point, it’s going to be expected to be something regularly done? That’s kiss of death moment.

I realize stereotypes and unrealistic ideals of dating still exist, but that doesn’t mean we need to perpetuate them, let alone encourage and force them upon the public at large.

(Sources on income: http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/AWI.html, http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html)
(Federal tax estimate courtesy of http://apps.irs.gov/app/withholdingcalculator/index.jsp)

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This post is republished on Medium.

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