Women and Money
Women don't understand money. There, I said it. That sentiment probably doesn't come as a shock to most married men, but it sets everyone else right off - "How dare you spread such scandalous lies!" and so on and so forth. It's still true though.
Unfortunately, money is one of those things we all have to deal with to get by in this world. Unless you're one of the few who have obtained true financial independence, you have a certain amount of money to spread between all of your financial obligations, and sometimes there's a bit left over to just do whatever you want with. At least, that's what a common-sense approach to money would seem to dictate. Women however, spend more than they earn*; much more. And it's not just because they have a man around to pick up the tab for them.
When I say that women don't understand money, I mean that they genuinely don't seem to understand its function or purpose. It's a medium of exchange, and in some way represents the value you have provided to someone else for a task you have performed, or goods you have supplied. When a man works, he knows exactly how long and how hard he had to work to acheive something. He understands the inherent value of what he is doing, and has an internal accounting system for keeping track of it. So when a man pays for something, he knows exactly how much effort he put in to aquire it. A sandwich? That might have cost him a half-hour at a his desk. A fancy dinner for him and his wife? Perhaps most of that day's work. A new computer? He'd be working late for 2 weeks for that. All of this mental arithmatic takes place subconciously, and happens before he actually makes a purchase.
For women however, the sole deciding factor in whether to make a purchase seems to be "I want it". A woman will make her purchase first and then worry about where the money is going to come from after the fact. She'll seem genuinely surprised or even offended when the bill comes due! Similarly, just watch what happens when a man tells a woman that she can't have something because they can't afford it. Is there any acknowledgement of the fact that money is finite? Hell no! A symphony of cajoling and whining springs forth to try and get the man to acceed to her demands, and it's amazing just how many men are prepared to put themselves in debt to try and satisfy their wife or girlfriend's material demands. There really doesn't seem to be any awareness on women's parts of where money comes from or what value it has other than "it buys me stuff I want" and "that person has more than me".
I suppose this comes across as a little bitter (something I try to avoid when I write), but some lessons in life are hard learned. NiceGuy once wrote that you should never loan money to a woman, but perhaps he didn't go far enough. Don't loan money to women and don't spend any on them unless you want to spend a lot more.
Addendum: Statistics
*You can read more about this in the book Women Want More, a brief summary of which can be found here. Though I hesitate to quote a book pushing such an obvious agenda, the statistic on household expenditures seems relatively straightforward - what proportion of that spending do women control? In short, women in the United States control 73% of household spending (found on page 21). So not only are women spending pretty much all of their own incomes, they are also spending the majority of the man's income too! Also, just to be sure, I looked up the methods used to collect the statistics used in the book, and on the face of them, they appear to be of moderate validity. You can read about them for yourself here.
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"I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one." -- Shawn Corey Carter, The Black Album
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