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- Kara Stevens
Fabulous N’ Frugal started a three-part series on 3 Financial Losers To Avoid. I already introduced you to ‘Toine The Deadbeat, the dude that borrows your money, is averse to work, and has absolutely no ambition.
What gets you sucked in, for a little while, is his charm. But that quickly wears off when you are digging in your purse “to pay his way…and sometimes his cousin’s way.” (Thanks, Erykah).
Today, we are going to focus on the second financial loser: Maurice The Miser.
My apologizes in advance if you had the displeasure of dating Maurice.
Maurice The Miser:I think the name says it all. By definition, a miser is a person who is reluctant to spend, sometimes to the point of forgoing even basic comforts and some necessities, in order to hoard money or other possessions. So unlike ‘Toine, Maurice is actually in the financial position to fund an active and adventurous dating and social life.
So what’s keeping Maurice a financial loser and a man that you should avoid?
The Money Mindset of Maurice
For whatever reason—be it childhood experiences, cultural influences, or adolescent trauma— Maurice is operating from a place of scarcity. He believes that there was never enough for him, so there definitely is not enough for you. All that he has in the way of possessions and money are just enough for him. He always feels that he is one purchase away from being homeless and hungry.
How Maurice Manipulates His Women
His scarcity mindset leads him to be a controlling and self-absorbed man. Not only that, Maurice is extremely vain, and ironically, loves to be lavished with gifts and flattery. To train you to simultaneously not want anything from him and to take care of him financially and emotionally, he has to manipulate reality through complaints and campaigns of suspicion: “Everybody wants something from me, but you are not that kind of girl, right?” “You are not that materialistic type of woman that expects that we have to go out all the time and spend lots of money.” He may even hide behind spiritual beliefs and political principles to cover his straight-up stingy and twisted ways of viewing spending and generosity.
And there begins the slippery slope if you try to be what he wants you to be. You get stiffed on experiencing the fullness of love and live—which includes in the sharing of gifts and in the sharing of affection. At least with a ‘Toine the Deadbeat, you have a chance for a good time and a laugh because of his Peter Pan ways, but with a Maurice the Miser, you are likely to exchange your juicy, plump happiness for a diminished and deferred life sentence.
Maurice The Miser Gone Wild
You know that you have had the bad luck of meeting up with a Maurice when you see him in action. Besides sucking on all of your happiness behind closed doors, Maurice The Miser has a particular talent of sucking all of the happiness anywhere he goes, especially when it comes to dealing with waitresses and sales representatives. It is all about him, what he can get for free, and how he can get over.
My Run-in With Maurice The Miser
I was dating “Maurice” for two months until I picked up on his miser ways. He worked for himself and had managed a couple of well-established hip-hop groups. After our first real date, meaning pre-planned and focused on getting to know each other, we spent subsequent dates running his errands, which included returning salad dressing to Wholefoods (no lie!), him plotting to buy a book for Barnes & Nobles, read it in its entirety and return it for a full refund the next week, or plotting to go to a pizza place before it closed so he could haggle for the price of a pepperoni slice. (why not just freakin’ dumpster dive. It would have saved me the embarrassment. Eww.)
But here is why I stopped seeing him: It was around Christmas time. He said that he had a surprise for me. In a little Macy’s bag, there was with a bottle of Dolce & Gabana, one of my favorite scents at the time.
I was excited and said, “thank you.”
“Don’t you already have one of these, though?” he asked.
I was thinking, “Yeah, because I like it, Dumb-dumb, but instead, I said, “ Yes, you know that I wear it.”
“Oh, I guess you don’t need another bottle.” He took the little Macy’s bag, the box that the bottle of Dolce & Gabana was in, and neatly repacked it. (Swear to you!)
“Here”, he said, “take these.” He dropped threefree samples of perfumethat he had copped while at Macy’s that day, like loose change, in the palm of my hand.
Not okay for me. And NOT okay for you.
Frugalistas—Life is all about juiciness. Don’t date or marry a miser of a man. You will regret it. Have you had the misfortune of dating a miser? What was your breaking point? When was it time to call a “spade a spade.”
