Your 2016 Guide to Money Etiquette When You’re Dating

Tara Fields was recently quoted in STYLECASTER. Read the original article here. 

Few topics in life get awkward faster than money. (Except maybe talking about sex with your parents or explaining why you’re a die-hard Democrat to your 90-year-old grandmother.) People can be famously neurotic about money, whether they have a ton of it or are trying to save more. And on a first date—already a delicate, nerve-wracking situation—trying to figure out who should pay for what, and when, and how much, can be confusing and stressful.

When it comes to money etiquette in dating circa now, says couples therapist and relationship expert Tara Fields, Ph.D., author of The Love Fix, there really aren’t any hard-and-fast rules. And that’s what can make things so difficult to navigate. Everyone has different values around money—how to spend it, how to save it, and what role it plays. The most important thing is to gauge whether your values are similar, because that can help you figure out whether this is someone you should keep seeing, she says. “It’s about compatibility,” she says. “Money is important in relationships right from the get-go. It’s really symbolic of emotions and an area that can have tremendous meaning.”