Tag Archives: love

Marrying for Money

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Is there anything wrong with marrying for money? Few women I know will admit to it, but after meeting their mate, I can’t help wondering if they think anyone is fooled. For example, does anyone think that Anna Nicole Smith, a model for Guess and Playboy magazine married 89-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II for love?

At least the practice isn’t the dirty little secret it used to be. If you google ‘marrying for money’, dozens of pages of articles and websites encourage you to do just that. Daphne Merkin, writer and journalist, is honest about  her refusal to marry for money. She writes “If the man is rich enough, one overlooks everything. He can be bald, hairy, have a stomach that hangs like an apron and be really under-endowed.”

I have met many women who won’t admit that they married for money, but freely confess that they stay married because of the money. A woman in one of my seminars said “Am I happily married? That’s beside the point. I know what I’ve got – and at least he has money.”

Many of the other women agreed with her. One woman said  “Don’t you feel like you sold your soul just for the money?” Hey, souls are sold for lots of other things as well.

Is there a difference between going into marriage for the money and staying married for the money? Is it wrong to believe that money makes someone more interesting? If marriage buys you a lifestyle you want, are you selling your soul by opting for security and stability over romantic love and passion?

The statistics on love and passion aren’t that impressive. Presumably passion evaporates within the first two years of marriage. There’s no guarantee that love will last, but having money is a good diversion. How would you advise your daughter?

Check out the other blogs about love, marriage and money at http://www.financialintimacy.com

Christmas in Space

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As I write this, two astronauts of the six man crew on the International Space Station are outside the safety of their spacecraft, replacing a malfunctioning pump that’s part of the station’s cooling system. This is the real thing, in real time, not a Hollywood movie. The space station is traveling 17,227 miles per hour, completing over 15 orbits around the earth daily.

While they work to repair their craft at 250 miles above the earth, down below, millions of shoppers are orbiting parking lots at malls, racing against the clock to have gifts ready by Christmas. The pressure and frenzy that surrounds the holiday is a marketing marvel, perpetuated generation after generation, by retailers whose annual profits depend on those minions believing that gift wrapped stuff, delivered on time, is an act of love.

No matter what their spiritual beliefs were before they launched into space, the astronauts experience a transformation upon seeing Earth from that vantage point. They use words like awe, wonder, vastness, spirit, humility, infinity to describe their recognition that we are a tiny, fragile blue dot in a vast sea of black.

I can’t imagine anyone who relates to their experience feeling pressure to beat the Christmas deadline.

What the astronauts saw: http://vimeo.com/55073825. Share their awe and share it with your children. What an awesome gift that would be.

A Parent’s Act of Love

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Psychiatrists have long equated the reluctance to write a will, prepare an advance directive or estate plan, with fear of dying.

Who wants to think about planning for death? We have to confront our mortality. No more illusions that it won’t happen to us. We have to face giving up our possessions and power. We have to deal with uncomfortable subjects like aging, illness, death, inheritance and a host of other things we’ve managed to avoid thinking about.

Having the ‘money conversation’ is rarely ‘just about money’. It’s also about family dynamics, mistakes, regrets, guilt, and a host of other issues. Children feel morbid, greedy and intrusive asking their parents questions about money and death. The parents don’t want to start conversations about ‘touchy’ subjects either. The result – people procrastinate, hoping for the best. Hope is not a strategy. It’s a procrastination tool and most often, it doesn’t work.

Click the buy the book button:   www.moneyloveandlegacy.com/

Check out the guide  for opening the conversations that matter between parents and children.Follow the check lists for what parents need to put in place so children aren’t burdened with a financial and legal mess after parents die.

It’s truly an act of love for parents to get their affairs in order.

A Most Beautiful Organic Wedding

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Of course you notice their beauty – the groom tall, lean, golden in the California sun, he in formal grey, but with the whimsy of suspenders, she, demure in flowing waves of white chiffon, baby tears woven in her hair and her bouquet.

What really strikes you is how comfortable they are with each other, best friends who also happen to be bathed in romantic love. Then you notice their tenderness, the softness with which they gaze upon each other. You watch them talk, the tenderness and attention they show each other, how proud they seem of the other, how gentle, yet how strong and steadfast they have been in the fours years since they first met and grew in love.

They described it to me as an “organic” wedding, a ceremony that grew naturally from their sentimental love of family heirlooms and their sensitivity to the joining of two families with different religious tradtions.

They planned for their wedding to be outdoors in their beloved wilderness, where they could share their love of birdsong and nature with their invited guests.Their friends pitched tents and talked until the wee hours.  Their parents and grandparents, lodged in comfortable cabins, perhaps dreaming of how different things were when they were married.

When cheers of mazeltov rang out as the pastor pronounced them husband and wife, I couldn’t help thinking how lovely a wedding can be when it truly includes the shared philosophy of bride and groom. The food was simple, delicious and abundant. Because they did so much of the work themselves, they began the  process of building something together from the start.

I didn’t fully understand what organic meant until after the wedding, but the effect is clear when you see it in action. Something that’s organic is whole because nothing artificial is added. It’s an ‘organic’ event that celebrates the uniqueness of a wedding, but reflects the values and visions of the couple.

Long life and happiness to my granddaughter and her beloved husband.

 

Widowhood and Divorce Biggest Stressors

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You may have suspected it. The SRRS confirms it.
Stress correlates directly and measurably with the chance of getting sick. 

Developed by Dr. Thomas Holmes at the University of Washington State Medical School, the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) assigns rankings to life changing events. Death of a spouse and divorce rank at the top of the list.

Combined with the other factors on the chart that are natural companions to widowhood, the combined score of a widow catapults off the charts.

Divorce typically doesn’t happen without warning.  Not so for widowhood. Within the space of a heartbeat, you can be widowed. A plane or car crash. A fall from a ladder. A boating or skiing accident. A heart attack. Your world turns upside down. Your social status changes; your family pressures increase. Financial pressures can push your nervous system beyond your ability to cope.

For the first time in your life, you may now be faced with financial decisions. Your husband may have wanted you to be involved in the marital finances, but you let him do it, saying you were too busy or not interested.

Perhaps you were married to an optimist who refused to face his mortality, who told you not to worry, that nothing would happen to him. You may have been worried sick (metaphors do apply here) about how you would cope on your own if something happened to your husband, but you never took any action to make sure you had the financial information you now need.

In short, you may be totally unaware of what you’re facing as you now have to manage things on your own.
Ultimately, the only thing you can control is to plan for the things you can’t control.  If you’re not familiar with the finances in your family, not just the household budget, but all the marital finances, get involved.

If I were your husband, and I loved you, I’d nag you to participate and understand the finances. After all the hard work we did, I’d hate to see you blow it all after I’m gone.