My Dowry

There’s a longstanding historical marriage tradition called a dowry. A dowry is the money, goods, estate, and other assets that a bride brings to a marriage. For instance, my dowry consisted of a 1979 Mercury Zephyr station wagon and a box of old dishes and silverware. Luckily, the tradition has fallen to the wayside in modern times and us poor girls are still able to land an acceptable husband.

Relationships headed down the road of long-term commitment eventually have to have the money talk. The talk is usually not shocking – I mean you can guess a guy’s financial security pretty easily by looking at things like whether he’s driving a brand new BMW or a 1986 Plymouth Reliant, or if he’s taking you to dinner at Taco Bell or Jeff Ruby’s. But the real significant, life altering financial information lurks behind those superficial indicators. The BMW is probably not paid for while the Reliant is. Your taco’s are being paid in cash while your steak is going on a credit card. Looks can be very deceiving.

The concept of a dowry has been reversed. Instead of looking at the assets each is bringing to the relationship you’re looking at the debt each is bringing. Take school loans as an example. It is not uncommon for a college student to be paying their own way through school, accruing debts in average of around $27,000 with debts of over $100,000 not unheard of. That’s almost a starter-home. Not to mention the credit card balances racked up to pay for living expenses and bar tabs. Not to mention the car payments. Not to mention the credit ratings that have been wrecked with years of “I’ll worry about that later” attitudes towards bill management.

Personally I had spent my entire young life focused on money management. I knew I was going to have to pay my own way through college so I saved from the time of my first baby-sitting job. I graduated with less than half of the average debt load and was pretty darn proud of it. Then I met and fell in love with a nice young man. He had about 8 times my student debt. Ouch. Combined together, super ouch. There’s no way I can be accused of marrying for the money. It felt like all of my hard work, all of the sacrificing was for nothing. I should have been partying instead of working Saturdays nights.

So my dowry from my husband consisted of debt. Student loan debt, credit card debt, and a credit rating that would make a great bowling score. Of course I’m not perfect. I’ve had my financial missteps, but for all of my careful calculating I feel like the credit gods royally screwed me on this one.

What’s a girl to do? Fall out of love? Try to find a more suitable financial match?

He’s awfully cute. 