timhortonsbitchass

I have loved all of your advice so far but I’d disagree with the latter point about financial stability. You shouldn’t be barred from dating, relationships, and love just because you’re poor or struggling financially. Just be explicit and honest with your date/partner and let them know you’re kinda broke right now so you’re only up for cheap dates. Maybe they’re not ok with that, so they pass on the date. Maybe they’re completely fine with it and they’re happy to go on a hike and get McDonalds. Maybe they’re also broke and they’ll be glad you brought it up. Or maybe they’re better off and would happily treat you.

When I met my husband we were both broke. So we went hiking and to local free events, we got fast food or cooked, we rented movies and played video games.

Poor people deserve happiness and love just as much as financially stable people do. You don’t need to have a cushy job and a house and a car to be a good partner.

By “their own place” do you mean be a homeowner? Because yeah, that’s crazy unrealistic. But I think it’s pretty normal for someone in their mid to late 20s to have their own studio/1-bed rental, a used car, and a cat or dog... and if you live in a high COL area I think most people understand having roommates.

Fwiw, I grew up in a crappy old house with so many mice that, at one point, my dad basically cracked and started keeping a BB next to the couch to shoot them with. What really helped to lessen their population to tolerable levels (they'll never 100% go away, sorry) was something called a "rat zapper". It's this little plastic tunnel that electrocutes the mouse to death. We used dog kibble as bait, as the machine recommended. It was very humane and clean; you never actually had to touch a nasty little mouse corpse.

Suddenly very glad that I have a Millennial boss. At the start of the pandemic when companies were worried about remote capacity on their networks, he suggested setting up a peaceful Minecraft realm for our small team so we could use the text chat LOL. Minecraft almost never goes down!

Hi Marissa,

I'm a woman in finance, and I feel totally supported at work. My coworkers and my boss encourage work-life balance, I am never encouraged to "behave like a man" or adopt male-slanted "success behaviours", I have never been treated disrespectfully, save one or two flip comments. It's at home that things are different.

My mother is an engineer, and my mother in law is a healthcare executive. My mother is the picture perfect negative stereotype of a female engineer -- tries to act like a man, very "not like other girls" vibe -- and my mother in law has given me several copies of Lean In. They both expect me to be a powerful corporate woman and to outearn and outdo my husband. They are only ever proud of me for my accomplishments at work and are always pushing me to take on more and more training. If I don't do this stuff, they view me as repressed, traditional, weak, and somehow "un-feminist". These expectations can feel onerous and crushing. I love my current job but I just don't like working that much. I have no desire to be a manager or executive; I just want to earn a decent salary for 8 hours a day, go home, and hang out with my husband and friends. I would love to one day take a lower-ranking work from home job, or move down to part-time, but I know everyone would be ashamed of me.

Did women in your family ever make you feel like this? Like you weren't a strong woman or a good feminist if you didn't "Lean In"? How did you cope?