(Happy Throwback Thursday! In honor of Lady Gaga’s appearance at the inauguration of President Joe Biden, I decided to resurrect this article. It originally ran on Feb. 13, 2012.)
Nope, that’s not SEO bait. It’s the intro to a song parody.
Although I listen only to the classical station, the Lady is ubiquitous enough that even I am familiar with “Bad Romance.”
One day when the tune was stuck in my head, I turned it into a personal finance lesson – and yes, I really do have a PF point to make after the initial silliness.
The following can be sung (if you must) to the tune of the song linked above.
Ah ah ah-ah-ah
Ah ah ah-ah-ah
Moo-la lah-ah-ah
What’s your bad finance?
I want your debit, your NSF fees
Maxed out your credit card? Come sit next to me
Cash in retirement? Oh do it baby
Stupid money tricks are all that I need
Want a six-year auto loan,
Out of network ATMs
I want your drama
Your lack of a plan
Loans loans loans
I want your loans
Loans loans loans
I want your loans
You know that I love debt
And you know how hot I get
When you are bad
Bad with your finance
I want your spending
Want your debt neverending
You and me could write some bad finance
(Oh-oh-oh-oooh and bad checks too!)
I want your bad debt
All your bad credit
You and me could write some bad finance
Buy rounds at the bar for all of your friends
Go on mad shopping sprees that just never end
Don’t match that 401(k), oh no
Spend it today ’cause we’ll never get old
Rah rah ah-ah-ah
Fi-nal no-o-o-tice
Goin’ to collections!
Want your bad finance
You know that I want you
And you know that I need you
(‘Cause I’m just not rich, baby!)
I want it bad
Your bad finance
Money changes everything
Well, that was fun, wasn’t it? Time to get serious, though.
The love of money can ruin love (nobody dates a miser for long), but so can cluelessness about cash. Finances are the cause of endless friction in relationships. He spends money like it’s going out of style. She goes shopping every weekend. We’re never going to get out of debt if s/he doesn’t quit throwing cash around.
If your current sweetie is lousy with money, take it from me: It probably won’t get better, especially if you’re an enabler who keeps doing all the heavy lifting in the relationship. Do you want your hard work undermined month after month by someone who smiles sweetly and says, “I know I should be better with money, but (insert excuse here).”
Do you want to be with someone who cannot believe in your shared goals strongly enough to grow up and start contributing to them? Someone who lets you sacrifice so that s/he can continue to indulge in instant gratification?
And if you’re the one who’s bad with money, take this from me, too: It’s neither charming nor endearing. You need to get hold of your finances before inflicting yourself on another person. Relationships can be fraught enough without introducing wild cards like overdrafts, repossessed vehicles or nightly calls from collection agencies.
Readers: What’s your bad finance? Ever fought/broke up with someone over money? If you’re coupled-up, how do you keep from fighting about finances?
I dated a guy who would say he was so far in debt that it did not matter if we went out to eat. I was saying I would just as soon that I cooked something. He insisted we eat out.
He allowed his daughter to run up a $1008 phone bill on my phone. Yes, we fought and argued. His daughter was innocent and did not know what she was doing. Yeah! He got new credit cards and used cash withdrawals to solve his financial problems and the ones he allowed a 15-year-old daughter to cause. Yes, she and her ways and his defense broke us up.
I found out later that his $2K camera he said he got on a trade was not a trade, but it was charged on his new card. He lied lots about finances.
He bought $35 worth of “groceries” because he was eating me out of house and home. He bought cases of Pepsi, Doritos, Salsa, cookies, milk, and eggs and complained about what I cost him. I never touch Pepsi, Doritos, cookies he bought, or Salsa. And, he ate more than half the eggs and milk. He did not like my assessment of his spending. I eventually had to borrow money to pay his child’s damage to my phone bill.
He went back to live with his mother and eat her groceries. He was 55-years-old.
Eeeeegads…glad to hear you shook him off. What a nightmare. The sad thing is when people actually marry these goofballs. Because marriage is a binding contract, it quickly becomes the “normal” partner’s problem as well. Happy you kept your eyes open.
I love the song! You’re better than Weird Al.
@Meghan: Aw, thanks…I know a woman who does a great Lady Gaga imitation. Wish I could afford to hire her to make a video.
Looong time ago, I dated a guy who made 3 times what I made and brushed aside my money concerns with “we’ll always have debt, there’s nothing you can do about that.” That, coupled with his general jerkiness, got him dumped.
In my younger years, I dated a guy who told me he loved me and asked to borrow money all in the same breath (this was on the second or third date). How romantic!! Needless to say, he got nothing from me but a quick good-bye.
Donna – just do it yourself. If you do, I’ll do my best to help it go viral. 🙂
My hubby and I are pretty good – but it took time to get there. After arguing for a while, we agreed – he covered his share of the bills, gave me a lump sum each month to help put towards the mortgage, and funded his retirement. Anything left over was all his!
Yeah, I’m still fighting that battle. Funny how 3 weeks after a $32 bill comes in he tells me he’ll have to wait until next payday to pay it, but has an extra $40 laying around to buy a couple a movies the next day. He’s a good man, but dang it! I can’t seem to get through to him. I can’t wait for my pink slip so he can pay all the bills for the first time in 5 years! If he can’t, he’ll be needing to find another place to live and I’ll be looking for a roomate….
My ex and I had really different money views. He wasn’t necessarily bad with it, but we definitely didn’t see eye to eye. He let his parents control everything, including buying the condo we lived in (we then had some sort of weird rent-to-own set up I never really understood because no one talked about money). Also he let his parents control all his investments — and consequently he was investing like a 50-year-old with super safe holdings with super shitty returns. He never wanted to go on vacation because it was too expensive and we lived for over 6 months without a couch because he was too cheap to buy one (he finally got one secondhand from, you guessed it, his parents).
Money wasn’t the reason our relationship ended but it would have been a perfectly good reason!!
Donna, I want to hear you sing this. 🙂 Please upload video to YouTube ASAP!
Hi Donna. I am not familiar with the singer but I’d like to see a video of you too!
When my husband and I first got married he had a habit of going to the ATM and not telling me about it. Oops! We were overdrawn frequently until one day he handed me the ATM card and admitted to being financially irresponsible and that he shouldn’t have an ATM card. He’s on a cash allowance system and has unlimited use of the credit card to purchase gas. It worked!
Our 27th anniversary is in 2 days and we are in great financial shape.
Conversely, I have a friend who frequently makes bad financial decisions. She complains about being broke but spends thoughtlessly. Those $1.65 sodas add up. She runs out of toothpaste and spends $5 a tube. I won’t “break up” with her but I think I’m done trying to help her spend more thoughtfully. For whatever reasons my tutoring has had no effect on her spending. Sometimes we have to give up!
I twice had to take the debit card away from my husband because he would not record his withdrawals and we’d wind up overdrawn. Finally he learned to treat it like checks.
Oh, and to answer your question, here is what my wife and I do:
I manage the day-to-day finances and keep her up to speed on what’s going on and our general overall situation. However, because our spending is well under control and we are saving enough, there’s not much to talk about. Generally, our discussions are on which credit card to use for what so we can maximize our rewards. We both have an “allowance” now to spend on whatever we want. We did this because we are both savers and need permission to spend so we don’t feel guilty. It’s working so far! The only thing I want to do to improve it right now is to put together a file or notebook for when I die/become incapacitated so she’ll know exactly what to do and where everything is.
We haven’t had any bad finance between us because we are both fiscally responsible and we communicate often about our finances. I feel for those in lopsided relationships though (spender & saver, or worse, spender & spender). I can see how that would make things difficult. Glad to hear some of the stories and tips that have helped others!
DH and I don’t talk about money as often as we should, mostly because (knock wood) we’ve never been in serious money trouble … even when I was disemployed for a while, picked up enough part-time& temp work to cover what I needed to cover.
Previously, though … I supported a would-be screenwriter for three years while he did NOTHING but watch movies and screw around on me. What an idiot I was. Ultimately cost me over $30K to get him out of my apartment and into his sister’s. Hope he has been miserable every day since. Thank gourd I didn’t marry him.
Donna, I have said this before and I will say it again-you are in the wrong line of work. Call Weird Al.
When I was younger I dated a guy with money who bought me presents at Woolworth’s. Don’t get me wrong – I LOVED Woolworth’s. And I didn’t date him for his money. But I was kinda embarrassed when his pals’ girlfriends showed me what their guys bought them (real jewelry, for example) and I had plastic and tin. At that time, I figured “Okay, this is what he thinks of me”. It didn’t work out for another reason altogether anyway.
I just thought I’d share.
I had a long distance boyfriend who didn’t have a driver’s license when I was 18 and was in college but my boyfriend still lived at home. We were about 75 minutes away from each other, and I drove to see him every second weekend or so, sometimes more. Then we’d drive to the city to go to the movies and stuff. I had to borrow my parent’s car and put a full tank’s worth every time, probably 40$ back then. We even drove his sister around too. Over the course of a year, he never paid for gas. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but he also only paid for his half of diner, his movie ticket, not mine. Also, I lived in a dorm so I was the one paying the long-distance plan and always calling HIM so it wouldn’t cost anything for me, meanwhile I probably paid $30 or something per month of long distance. Over the course of the year, it added up to a lot of money that as first year student should have been spent on other more important things. I really resented that he never even offered to pay for his half. Ugh.
Haha well played…. I missed this the first time around 🙂 She was pretty good at the inauguration!
Agreed! I wondered what she’d do with an oldie but goodie.
Extremely late to the party here. But I confess to a delicious shiver of Schadenfreude on learning during a routine Google check of old boyfriends (OK, yeah, like other people don’t do it?) that the one who dumped me first and hardest filed for bankruptcy in 2019. The money issues weren’t the main cause of the breakup, but he never did have a lick of sense about $$ when I knew him. Hee hee!
And, yeah, Lady Gaga blew me away yesterday–the more so as, up till now, I haven’t been a fan.
‘
“Shiver of Schadenfreude” is the name of my next rock band.
Donna,
If you don’t want to sing it, how about a Bill Shatner dramatic song reading!
It would be a hoot. You could film it in your house or the beautiful yard.
Cathy
Maybe I could get DF to channel his inner Captain Kirk….
I missed this post the first time, thanks for the repeat! Also, I can’t imagine living with someone and not being on the same page financially. No way, no how, no patience!
Wow! A blast from the past. My husband is far more fiscally conservative than I am these days, which is a little annoying. He acts like it’s his idea that we’ve saved enough money to retire before age 62. Sheesh.
I had also commented about a friend who spent thoughtlessly. She died a few years back and managed to save enough to leave her financially irresponsible sister a wealthy woman.
I guess my point is that handling money well is a gift. Some people don’t have it and some people do.
When choosing a partner, or friends, we should keep that in mind. I am old enough to have learned to hold advice until asked for it. Some people really never learn, and others won’t follow good advice to their detriment.
Happy to say my current husband and I are on the frugal train together in every way. My former one…not so much. His favorite every day splurges were Keeno, scratch tickets, beer at home and beer in bars. He would dive into his retirement savings whenever we needed money, never seeing that these every day expenses were what was getting us there. When I brought it up he would answer with “I’m not going to live like a monk.” Meanwhile, I worked plus made at home meals every day, bought second hand thrifted clothes for me and the kids, used the library for entertainment and took the kids to my father’s house to swim so they wouldn’t be bored. I’m not complaining about what I had to do…only that I was doing it alone and with no support. Finally had enough and am now in a “polar opposite” marriage. We share goals and the actions it will take to get us there.
Are you me??? Minus the beer and gambling, that was my ex. I used every possible tactic to save us money but not only did he not care, he sometimes mocked my frugality.
Fortunately, DF and I are both super-careful with cash. We delight each other with stirring tales of thrift. It’s such a refreshing change of pace.
My sister gave me a phrase recently. Financial infidelity. Significant other not being honest or full disclosure of their finances.
That’s a big one, all right. I know a woman who canceled her wedding because she learned her fiance had SPENT the money his parents had given him to help pay for the reception. But it was okaaaaay, he argued, because he had a plan to pay for those things: He was opening a new credit card.
Personally I prefer a yours, mine and ours approach: shared expenses/goals paid for with shared contributions, and the other person’s money is theirs to do with as they please.