Mailbag: Dating, Money & Love: Matchmaker Maria Answers Your Toughest Questions!
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One of the things that frustrates me as a matchmaker and a dating professional is the amount of people that will decline a fantastic match just because they don't want to spend

10 days out of the entire year doing some specific vacation trip. What really I want you to think about when you're dating is the day to day dates, the day to day conversations and how you're managing money if you're deciding to live together or go on dates together or share a lifestyle together.

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Hey everyone, I'm Jean Chatzky. Thanks for joining me today on Her Money. So we are bringing you a mailbag all about your dating questions. If you were listening on Wednesday, then we had matchmaker Maria Avgatidis on our show telling us

the truth, actually, about what it takes, what it costs to date these days, and how to make some smarter choices. We asked our amazing Her Money Facebook community what questions they had for Maria, and we got some amazing responses. Maria, hi, welcome back. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be back here again.

Our first question is from an anonymous listener, which we allow, but we definitely allow on a day when we're talking about dating. She writes, I'm 53 and somewhat recently divorced two years. I have about $600,000 and contribute the maximum to my 401k, and I'm starting a career where I can receive a potentially reasonable monthly pension, $3,000 or more a month, when I retire. I

I'm also able to receive half of my ex-husband's social security. He earns $150,000. I'm working hard to try to have a secure retirement."

I'm starting to date and I'm realizing that I could potentially have a more secure retirement than some of the men I meet. I don't share my financial details, by the way. Here's what I'm wrestling with. I started seeing a 60 year old gentleman who's been very lovely. He does not know my financial picture.

I have come to realize that he has no retirement plan outside of Social Security. How are others navigating this? Would this be a deal breaker for you? Any advice? So Maria, before you dive in, I got to tell you, among the women who I know who are single and

this comes up a lot, right? Women have more college degrees than men these days, more graduate degrees. We're starting to come into our own as the primary breadwinners, and we are historically better savers. So of course, in many situations, we've set ourselves up to be pretty secure, and it's something that we really care about. What would you say to her? So I think this is an incredible question.

And ultimately, it's about what are the right questions to ask not only them, but yourself. I mean, the main question that she's asking is like, does he have a retirement savings beyond his Social Security? And the questions that I would ask, for instance, is how does he think about financial responsibility? Some people may have saved a lot of money, but they're so financially reckless about

that it will affect the lifestyle that you share. But if they are, if they've planned for their future, what sort of strategy does he have to support himself? Like in that specific example, where she's talking about social security, what are his lifestyle expectations? There are people who have planned on their social security as you know, if their mortgage is paid off, and they have their social security, they have thought, okay, well, these are my lifestyle expectations.

And maybe one of the questions that could come up is, does he expect to travel extensively now that he's with you? Is he expecting to enjoy a lifestyle that he cannot afford, but he's expecting you to supplement? Which comes down to the main question. Would you feel resentment if the financial burden eventually falls more on you? So I don't believe that

All that someone can offer, especially a man, is their financial well-being or financial success. I think that there's a lot more that a man can offer, which is their emotional generosity, their safety if they are an actual safe person. So all relationships do require all these different levels of generosity, be it financial, emotional, spiritual, intellectual.

And so I think what we got to go back to the financial, it's like, is there a resentment if the financial burden falls on you, but also what sort of responsibility does he have in return? If you already feel uneasy about the possibility of supporting someone in retirement, then

That's something to pay attention to. It's also something to express to them. You know, if you really like them, if you envision building a future with them, we have to also be okay with having vulnerable conversations about money and about what that future looks like.

When you are just starting to date somebody, often there's, you know, you get the warm fuzzies, right? You're feeling like, oh, it's going to be fine. Yes, I have more money than he does, but I'm not going to worry about that because love is blooming. How do you know upfront if the resentment is going to kick in later? You know, it's worth thinking about how a lot of men don't think like this. Right. Right.

Men do not enter relationships for the most part thinking about what is she financially bringing to the table. I think we've just been as women sold on this hegemonic idea where women need to date wealthier men, women need to date more educated men. And we all know that right now there's way more women enrollment in colleges. Women are outpacing men in certain industries and how they're doing. And like you said, women are saving more.

So it's okay to, I think, in the early dating, ask about their lifestyle expectations like, oh, five years down the line, or do you think you'll retire? And what would that look like for you?

How have you planned for that future? Okay, lifestyle expectations. That's where we're going to focus. Our next question comes from Andrea. She is asking about a prenup. She writes, my husband and I signed a prenup before we got married almost three years ago. We're now 41 and 42 and plan to love each other forever. But at our ages, when we got married, we both had a lot of separate assets we built up individually during our single years. By the way, he has more money than I do.

I still think there is a stigma around a prenup, but I'm very appreciative that my husband and I had an open conversation about finances in our future and mutually agreed a prenup was a good thing for us to do. So my question is for my other friends who are in their 40s and 50s and dating again.

Maria, I'm going to take this one if you don't mind. Yes, a prenup is a pre-nup.

is much more important if you're coming into a relationship with anything separate. Separate assets, separate children, separate expected inheritance, separate business, separate real estate. Because the goal is that you want to make sure that you have control

over what happens to those things going into this relationship. You can make changes later on if that is something that you want to do, but you don't want your hand to be forced by the fact that, say, you live in a community property state. You don't want your hand to be forced because you decided to partner up with someone and that to...

impact or even harm, let's say those kids down the road. So I would say for all those folks who are in their forties and fifties and dating again, I got married again in my forties. My mother got married again in her early seventies. We both got prenups. Before we take our last two questions, a quick word from our sponsors.

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She writes, another anonymous listener, Maria, she says, I've got a question about dating with a huge income gap. He's a physician and I'm a student. I'm 30 and I've got about 15 months left in my program. We've been dating about eight months. I'm standing on my own two feet, but it's challenging. He's offered to help with plane tickets so I can visit family and tuition. I want to feel that I'm capable on my own, but I'm wondering if I should accept help. What do you think?

So I think the thing I think about is two things, intention and your feelings about it. So it sounds like he genuinely wants to support you based on what you just wrote to us.

But it doesn't seem he's supporting you because you need it, but because he cares about you. So if that's true, if what I'm coming off what you're saying is true, then the offer is coming from generosity. But if the intention is to have some sort of control or have some sort of expectation, that is an important distinction to have.

And then we have to talk about our feelings about it. So if you accept this offer from them, right, plane tickets, a trip, maybe helping you with rent, whatever that case is, does it make you feel cared for? Does it make you feel supported? Do you still feel independent? Then that's something to certainly think about. But also, if it makes you feel indebted,

pressured, that is the sign to decline the support. Correct.

Great, great advice. And one more. This one's from Beverly, who says, how do you navigate money discussions differently when you are both retired and you have financial plans that you've built over a lifetime? And this question reminded me of something that you said during our original interview, which was that you have to continue to date your spouse. Mm hmm.

Can you talk about both of those things? There is this sort of magic that happens to, I think, a lot of women, which is learning. I hope for a lot of women learning when you can also just do things on your own and not with your partner.

So when you are dating, you can say like, hey, I go on these two girls trips every year. It's something I look forward to. I enjoy spending time with. That's just showing that you have an enriched life. I'm answering this question in this way because I think what...

what the question is really asking us is like, can they afford the life that I've dreamed to have in retirement? And it's like, you can dream any life you want in retirement with a partner and without, but we still have to have time for ourselves and do the things that we still plan for. It just doesn't have to necessarily be with that

partner. What that partner has to provide to you is the support day to day. One of the things that frustrates me as a matchmaker and a dating professional is the amount of people that will decline a fantastic match.

just because they don't want to spend 10 days out of the entire year doing some specific vacation trip. What really I want you to think about when you're dating is the day-to-day dates, the day-to-day conversations, and how you're managing money if you're deciding to live together or go on dates together or share a lifestyle together. And in terms about you asking about

how important it is to date your partner, even if you're in a relationship. I mean, I think as women, our identity can sway a lot based on what's going around us. Like an example that I can certainly share from a personal perspective is when I became a mother, how quickly my identity shifted from this badass business owner slash sexy girlfriend, wife,

to my husband and now I was mommy. And it's not because my husband made me a mommy, it's because I became a mommy. And that mommy only wanted to talk about the color of my kid's poop. Because that's all you can really talk about the first six months with your partner, right? This is a big life transition. And so you have to snap out of it. You have to say, okay, I

I'm also a sexy wife. I'm also a badass business owner. I have to do things that I actually enjoy by myself that enrich my life that I can now share with my spouse in conversation. So it's not just about poop. I also have to date my spouse. He also has to do likable things. He also has to enrich his life and share that with me. And we also have to

actually make the plan, make the dating plans. Like for us, it was the 15th of every month. We had to physically go out. We had to get a babysitter. Like we had to do all these things because God damn it, we're going out. But that's what essentially is it is prioritizing the fact that this is the life that I want to have with my spouse. And I'm going to tell you why it's important to do that.

Because if your partner and you keep yourself at this identity that you don't certainly recognize and you don't want to be known for, one day you will be on a business trip. One day you will be on a trip with your girlfriends. One day you will be at a cafe around the neighborhood. And someone who does not know you as mommy will give you the attention that you have been craving to snap out of it.

And the amount of people who will cheat on their spouses just because someone else who's not worthy of our time, who's not worthy of completely destroying our financial future, just because they gave us an ego boost.

Because they don't know the full picture of our life. I don't know if this is something that's going to be relatable to anyone who's listening, but I think it will be. That there is this place where we will go through identity shifts as people, right? It happens again when our children go to college. It happens again when you retire. It happens again when if we have to become a caregiver or something happens like losing your job, your identity shifts.

And in that, you still have to manage to find time to give yourself joy. Because that is what makes being with someone enjoyable.

Maria, you are a very, very wise woman. If there are women listening who want to get into your dating pool or who are looking for additional matchmaking or dating advice, where can they find you? So the first thing you could do is, of course, follow me on Instagram at Matchmaker Maria. But you can also visit Matchmaker Maria dot com. It's got everything.

all the stuff there. You can join my database. You can go on a trip with me to Greece this summer. I'd love to have you. You can join a group intensive. We have a new cohort every month. And of course, you can pre-order my book on the website as well. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Jean. It was a pleasure.

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