Guys, Do men care about a woman's income, and what is your income?

[Anonymous]

I currently work as a location scout in film/TV. I love my job and I make enough to get by and be able to save a little as a single 26 yr old (30k a year in LA), but I can rarely afford to splurge and I have to live with a roommate. I love the flexibility that comes with freelancing, and it's a really fulfilling job.

Is my low income off putting to men? Most women I know my age make significantly more than I do, have a masters/Phd, have more "respectable" careers. Men, what are your thoughts? And if you don't mind me asking, what is your income?

[MrOracle]

NO! For the majority of men, a woman's income is one of the least important things to us - though her level of DEBT can be a factor.

To a woman, a man's education, career, and income are important - often very important - and I can understand why. But men are completely different, because we want very different things from a woman, and so her education, degrees, career, and income are largely irrelevant except when they are a negative (and they absolutely can be a negative). We already have careers and income, and frankly, women generally don't share their financial success with their men the way that men have always done with women, so a woman's money doesn't tend to benefit men regardless.

It's not that we're just jerks who want to keep women down - that's not what it's about at all - rather, one of the main reasons we want to be with a woman is to have a family, and in order to have a family, the woman needs to be relatively young, and to be able to devote time to both MAKING the children and raising them to the point where they can reasonably take care of themselves for a couple of hours - basically until they're ready for school full-time (first grade).

Once the kids are in school, if a woman wants a career, or to go to school and get a degree, we're all for that. We want her to be happy and fulfilled and to have her own success - but the MOST important thing to most men who are looking for a committed relationship is children, and children can't be put off - there's a fixed biological window of time when children are possible (or, more accurately, when healthy children without lots of expensive treatments are likely). There's no avoiding that fact.

Feminism encourages women to completely deprioritize committed relationships ("sleep around instead!") and focus on her education and career in her 20s - the time when men are most interested in being in a relationship with her because that's when she can give him healthy kids - because Feminism wants to prevent relationships between men and women completely, and if they can keep women out of a serious relationship in her 20s, chances are she'll never have one. And by the time she realizes that was a mistake, it will be too late for her to change - and since women are SO against admitting their mistakes, they're unlikely to teach younger women the truth, and so the cycle continues.

[RavVid]

I'm around the 100K but it varies a lot as I contract. Basically I don't care what a girl makes; I care who she is. I'd marry a broke waitress if she is nice. I don't care about what academic attainments you might or might not have.

There are a lot of useless degrees now. You can see it as an advantage to not have one of those especially feminist studies as I like to joke. There are so many law grads now, a lot don't get placements. It seems undergraduate degrees have become so devalued higher degrees have become necessary.

I am more interested in you enjoying your work (as I do). You will be happier if you do and it'll be easier for us to be happy together.

Men have quite different mate selection criteria to women. Income is one of women's but not men's.

Short list of mine 1/Happy fun nature 2/co-operative & not disputatious 3/family oriented (includes me) 4/ faithful (includes not angling for likes of revealing pics) 5/ Generous wrt sex 6/ Can take you anywhere

I think most men would have a broadly similar list. If you've got these you are good to go in my opinion.

[Anonymous]

No, a female’s income doesn’t matter. Men don’t look to women for security, whether that’s physical or financially. Women fail to realize that what you find attractive in men isn’t what men find attractive in women. For men, it usually starts off w looks. After you introduce yourself, ask her out, then you start to learn about her personality. Men want a girl who is feminine. Not argumentative. That’s not to say that you won’t have little arguments once in a while. But a girl who is constantly disagreeing, arguing, etc, no thank you. I’ve been w my girl for 15 years. She’s very feminine, cooks, cleans, takes care of the house, etc. After about 5 years we decided that she would discontinue working, stay home, take care of us on the home front while I worked. Men will date “down” as the saying goes. Women not so much. Especially in today’s society. Women are outpacing men financially but they still won’t date “down.” They still want a man to make as much as them or more because they still expect him to take care of them. If he’s concerned w how much you make I’d say you walk away. The only time I may be concerned w finances when it comes to a female is how much debt does she have? Women usually have a lot more debt than men especially those who went took college classes that amounted to nothing. As far as how much I make, close to six figures. Hopefully I’ll hit that this year.

[Anonymous]

No, men don't care about a woman's income, at least the kinds of men most women prefer. There are male versions of "gold diggers", but they are low quality men and obviously not the type most women want.

You need to understand that men and women have different priorities in a mate, and the ones women have for men are not the same as the ones men have for women.

The things men and women value in each other are, at their core, no different today than they were hundreds or thousands of years ago, even though we live in a very different world now. That's because those things are still coded in our DNA.

Women are still attracted to confident, smart, capable, strong, taller men because those are the traits most likely to make a man capable of protecting and providing for a woman and her children.

Men are still attracted to healthy, kind, compassionate, nurturing women because those are the traits that make a women most capable of being a good wife and mother. Note that "provider" doesn't appear in that list.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

I never cared about it the slightest bit. It does help now that my wife contributes a decent income of her own as a book publisher, but it was never anything that affected my interest in a woman.

What I did always care about is that a woman is passionate about something. It makes conversations generally more interesting. It was never important to me whether or not it generated much of an income though. She could just have a high school education and be a passionate but struggling writer or artist, for example, and that would interest me plenty enough.

I'm hardly rich but I do well enough on my engineering salary and very decent about saving money to support the both of us.

[GuyAnswersGirls123]

One of my biggest fears of commitment was growing into one of those couples who have little in the way of interesting conversations and have to resort to the smallest talk about food or weather, like:

Me: It's a nice day, isn't it?
Wife: Yes, it's very nice.

What a nightmare! So I always favored women with whom I could have the deepest and most naturally-flowing conversations. My wife might be ideal in that regard as a book publisher since her job requires her to read manuscripts of new books all the time and she has a never-ending hunger for reading new books. I find it generates new and interesting conversation material all the time.

Yet my preferences had everything to do with the conversation and nothing to do with income.

[BoopBoopBeep]

I don't care how much she makes as long as she spends less than she makes, because I see poor financial habits as impulsive and emotionally immature. If she's doing that with 30k or 300k... same same.

As to the second part, let's just say I make six figures.

[Anonymous]

It's not her income that I care about it's her passions, where she's heading.

As for my income? That's difficult for me to answer as it varies from year to year. Last year I made about 70k but an avg year is about 40k.

That may not sound like a lot but it's about 25% above avg income for where I live.

"Quality" (key word) men are not going to have a problem with what you make unless 1. You have caviar taste to go with a bologna paycheck. And 2. You're in horrendous debt.

You're still young. At 26 years old I was flat broke. Now at my age I got a net worth in the high 6 figures. Keep plugging away, you'll get there.

[exitseven]

I never really cared how much a girlfriend made. I dated people that made more money than I did and I dated somebody who was a bartender. My wife is a physical therapist and we both made about the same amount of money. She , ade a little bit more than me but I teach a class at night that pays very well so if you count that I came out a little ahead.

[aceleon]

most guys don't give a damn

i do, i am not a bank account or your father, i don't wanna feed anyone that is not my own offspring or pet.

i have no income right now, i am waiting for an exam.

[Anonymous]

Why do today's women struggle so much with this concept. There are things that are very important to men in a woman, but being a good provider isn't one of them. In fact, in some ways it can be a turnoff. By that I mean that career driven women generally don't make good wives and mothers because their priorities are inconsistent with those of a good man.

I think today's women have lost sight of what men want.

[Avicenna]

It's probably not a problem to most men. A bigger issue would be debt levels, if any.

[JacobJordan]

Could not possibly care less what her income is. My income is very very high