Customer Reviews

Smart Girls Marry Money: How Women Have Been Duped Into the Romantic Dream--And How They're Paying For It

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

There's a lot of truth in this book. The author shows that men are judging women by their looks, and throwing women away as they age. Sad to say, society in general is doing that. So, why not take advantage of your looks. The author states there is a 15 year window for women to take advantage of their looks. Let's face it, women do romanticize marriage way too much. It starts when they are children with mooning over a boy, to writing their name on a piece of paper with his last name, to the white picket fence fantasy.

I don't get why men are so angry with women who go after money. Men judge themselves by power, money and how many women they can get. So, when a woman judges you for your money too, you get angry. What's wrong with this picture? I don't ask why women judge men that have the money, I ask why not. You're doing it!

I don't feel sorry for any man that fall for a woman that wants you for your money. If you are superficial to judge her for her outer beauty then you deserve what you get. Now, you have 2 superficial people. Ta da!!


There's a statement the author says at the end of the book, which is

"For now, it's a pretty safe bet that men are going to keep us out of the really high-paying jobs. If it's so important that they win and they won't level the playing field, then we'll work around it. We'll realign our values with theirs. If they're after money, status and power, then that's what we'll "love" them for."

Makes you want to think.

I give it a 3 star because in a way it's true, but I don't want a world like that. Unfortunately, that's the world we have right now.

I am a man and can find no fault with the book.

I work in business with a lot of married men. I am frequently shocked by how sex crazed married men are. We are choosing women who are young and pretty, and when they age on us if we can, we trade them in on a younger model. So I saw nothing wrong with how the book was presented and men really have absolutely no leg to stand on when it comes to being shocked. I know a high number of successful but unattractive men who actually think that young woman they date are attracted to "them." Isn't amazing how men "fall in love" with women that have fit bodies? I have no idea why almost any man, no matter how physically repulsive thinks they deserve a super model. Secondly, most money "earned" by successful men is not much earned as stolen (yes I am talking to you super attorney and physician who is on big pharma's payroll and prescribes for cash.)

Go on girls, control us as you see fit and as Johnny Depp said in Pirates of the Caribbean "Take all you can, and give nothing back."

Well, the core advice they give is poorly reasoned and has potentially awful consequences if followed, but the authors did include a couple of home truths and the writing was pretty entertaining - so two stars. I read it in the bookstore, lying the front cover flat on my knee so that people wouldn't see the title.

Agreed with the part about how romantic love isn't enough to sustain a lasting relationship. Agreed that you must take into account a person's financial security to some extent before making a decision to commit to them. And that goes, by the way, for men as well as women. Agreed that women still have it tougher in the workplace than men do.

But I'm a little confused about the leap from those truths to the conclusion that a woman's best route to success is marrying rich.

The authors employ some really shoddy reasoning to make their point. So, it's great if you marry a rich guy and he divorces you and you get millions in alimony. But then they include a whopper of a sentence that made me giggle out loud, about how the female ex-CEO of Hewlett Packard got fired after a few years on the job and this was proof that the business world was still a boys' club (because male CEOs never get fired) and then: Carly Fiorina "struggled to piece her life back together, after receiving a $21 million severance package."

Huh? So a multi-million dollar "severance package" from a divorce spells success, but the same severance package from Hewlett Packard does not? In what world is the failure of a marriage more easily recovered from than the loss of a job, given equal financial gains from each?

I suppose if you see your marriage as nothing more than a ticket to Park Avenue, then this makes sense.

And while they emphasize, underline, italicize the continuing existence of the glass ceiling, they do admit that women can attain mid-level positions with comfortable salaries without needing to bust that ceiling. So, a woman can make a comfortable living these days, although she's not as likely to make partner as her male coworkers are. I dunno - if you really live your life for Prada and mansions, then I guess it still makes sense to latch onto a rich husband. But life isn't the filthy rich vs. broke dichotomy that the authors present - there's plenty of middle ground that women can access by themselves, and personally speaking I'd rather bump along on a salary I'm responsible for earning than trust my financial well-being to the good graces and continued financial success of another person.

Also, what about pre-nups? I'd like to see what the authors say about those.

The quit-your-career-and-marry-rich thing would lead to some pretty ugly consequences if a significant number of women did it. The authors actually summarize the history of feminism without denouncing it, all the way from the first struggles for the vote through the decade-by-decade gains in the workplace up until the present day. It should be clear from their summary that women today are closer to equal than ever before because of a large number of women over the past several generations who did NOT marry rich and retire to tennis and shopping instead of carving out careers and agitating for their rights. If a lot of women suddenly dropped their careers to focus on marriage, you can bet that we'd see diminishing opportunities for women overall, and then less political representation as women lost financial power. That may be water under the bridge for women who manage to find kind rich men willing to support them for the rest of their lives and who don't actually aspire to more than that, but it's not particularly wonderful for the majority of women. And if women ignore the bad advice and keep on with their careers, then it's probable that the glass ceiling will grow less and less restrictive over time - as has been happening up to the present day.

This book really caters to the jaded part of women - after experiencing enough misogyny and romantic woes, it's tempting to think "Hell with love, men are bastards, I'll marry rich and get what I can out of it!" The authors also do a good job of convincing the reader that pretty much anyone can get a rich, wonderful man to take care of them. But though the message is nice and pat, I know that I couldn't be happy practicing it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

That's not even saying anything about how unfair it is to entice a man into marriage by pretending that you truly care about him when you're only there for his money. There's nothing praiseworthy about "succeeding" in doing that, and the "success" stories in the book were truly cringe-worthy when I took into account that the other person in the story was a real live human being.

The romantic idealist who believes love can conquer all will be offended by this book. The woman who has been through a failed relationship or two and wasted her time with dreamers, schemers or Peter Pan's will appreciate this book. It's filled with information about the divorce rate as well as the chemical process of "falling in love," which is akin to drug addiction with this "love high" lasting about 18-24 months. It puts forth such concepts as "Don't squander your beauty" and "Don't marry a man for his potential." I found it to be a very fascinating and worthwhile read. I only wish I'd read it five years earlier.

I shake my head at the young lovely women I know who have crap for boyfriends, who are in the same age bracket. They all claim they want "love" and turn down the older man with money who treats them well for a boy with a hot bod. The young men often try to mooch off of my friends and they settle for so much less based on "chemistry". I married for "love" the 3rd time around and regretted it for the seven long years I was married to this man, who did not want to work. I did get out and married money. The man is someone I loved and his assets helped a lot. I would not have married again if I was back to the same grind: working massive overtime to barely get the bills paid. Women, you can live alone and have that lifestyle. Too many older women are living on next-to-nothing while the ex-husband's have their trophy wives or trade in hot girlfriends while living an upper-class life. I learned a young 23/year-old got engaged to her boyfriend in law school. He is the same age. I cannot congratulate her at all. I can see her dumping her schooling to get the young man through law school. His own father is a lawyer who fooled around on his wife once he became successful The ex is also an attorney but alone in life after supporting this man during the lean law school years. I see the same with my young friend but I got to stay out of that one. Other friends will get this book as a late Xmas Gift. I do hope my 20'somethinger friends take the good advice in the book. I am tired of seeing these lovely women settle for men in their age group who are almost living in their cars due to being that broke or have an apartment but ask the girlfriend for expensive gifts while giving so little in return. As for my friend who is engaged, she will be the dumped wife just as her soon-to-be mother-in-law. Shaking my head. Thumbs up on this book. We are not set back 100 years. At least, 100 years ago, most men did honour their vows and take care of their wives. A lot of feminism has sold us a lie and made it OK for women to trot off to work while the man stays home and does nothing.

This is a book which should give any man pause. The authors lay out a chilling yet convincing case for the woman about to make the "mistake" of marrying for love.

The not-so-funny counterpoint, of course, is that the man who makes this same mistake is about to hand control of the rest of his life to a calculating liar. ("Liar" is the nicest term I can think of to describe someone who feigns love and sexual attraction in order to lure someone into a legal trap -- for the "smart women" of the title certainly aren't being open about their reasons for marrying. Marriage contracts are the only contracts which courts don't dare voiding for fraud, and this book persuasively lays out how grotesque that double standard can be.)

The pink cover notwithstanding, the authors inhabit a dark world. You can't help thinking that "smart" women should be careful what they ask for. The "Rules" authors, of course, wound up divorced. And as brilliant as Machiavelli is regarded as being, it's worth remembering that he wrote "The Prince" in exile.

Sometimes smart people outsmart themselves.

I was feeling pretty discouraged looking around at the state of society recently, then I stumbled upon this book. Now I'm absolutely certain we're doomed.

Yes, it's all true. They love us for looks and we could really use the money and stability. Fantastic!

Unfortunately, I still believe "For better or for WORSE". In my opinion, if you can't say to yourself, I'll be here for this person even if they get sick and lose their money/looks...you shouldn't marry them. Also, if you don't believe they'll be there for you in similar situation, please don't walk down the isle.

To counter the claim that rich husband=rich wives...just because somebody's rich does not mean they want to share their wealth with you. Can you really be dependent on this person?

And last point...there are GOOD people out there...not many but some. It takes awhile to find them and they are not necessarily rich and/or beautiful..."quality" will recognize "quality". For everyone else...sure, this book is a must read.

But what else would you expect from a book on this subject matter. Certain ideas may be a bit exaggerated. Also, this book should be renamed to "Smart girls 27 and under marry money." Because apparently you could only use what you've got to get what you want while you're well under thirty. LOL.

First of all, I wanted to mention that I did NOT mean to give this book a five-star review. I don't know what's wrong with the Amazon star system, but when I clicked the one-star "I hate it" option, it kept registering as a five-star "I love it." I tried again and again to change it, only to fail every time no matter what I did. So, please know, I'm sorry to have added to the five-star reviews of this book when I didn't want to. In short: I HATED it, and I think it's poison for the female brain, if all too exemplary of the kind of "advice" being offered to women today.

Would I recommend this book to a woman? Not on your life! Far from being the witty, hilarious "feminist" (yeah, right!) tome or "satire" some reviewers have claimed it is (it doesn't come off as satire, it comes off as serious), this book tells today's "liberated chyk" (i.e., the young one whose idea of "feminine power" includes things like the power to get either a tattoo OR a Brazilian wax or both if she feels like it) that old-fashioned feminism sold her a bill of goods. In short, if she thinks she's going to be able to enter the working world and earn a lot of money on her own, she can forget it, because breaking the "glass ceiling" is so difficult as to not even be worth trying. As for marrying for love, forget that, because the size of a man's wallet is (they say) an indication of his character: the bigger the wallet, the greater the integrity the man has. Poverty is for losers, they imply, and if you marry a man with little money because you love him, all that's going to happen is either a) he'll live off your income for the rest of his life or b) he'll work hard, eventually become wealthy and successful, and then dump you and your kids for his trophy wife. Even a man who doesn't do that will stick you with raising the kids and taking care of the house, whether or not you also work 40 hours a week. I mean, it's not like you can get him up off his butt and make him contribute equally. Like breaking the glass ceiling, the "equal marriage" is also an unachievable dream, the authors say, so you might as well not even bother trying for it.

So--what's a girl to do? Preferably while she's young (because, we are assured, youth and beauty are the only real assets a woman ever has)? Find a man with lotsa moola and marry him--fast! That's it! Problems solved for life! After marrying rich, she can kick back, enjoy life, spend as much money as she wants and never have to lift a finger to work again. Because even if her hubby dumps her--and they assure her this--no worries. I mean, she married him for his money anyway, right, and she's sure to get half of everything he's got. So she can take that and move on to the next man. Easy!

The authors then advise every woman to drop her other interests and focus exclusively on making herself the most beautiful, youthful-looking woman possible, so she can attract money. After all, men are visual creatures and just as women marry for money, men marry for looks. They assure even "fugly" girls and older women that they too can play the game: they just need to get with the program and start focusing on their looks above all else.

Of course, this is about the world's worst possible advice for women: it essentially tells them that working hard to attempt to achieve anything in the world (unless it's a prettier smile or a better figure) is useless, simply because it's difficult, and that having a marriage in which both partners love each other and support each other is a pipe dream not even worth attempting. It also teaches them that they need not work at all to justify their existence on the planet, and that the job of men is to work hard to support both themselves AND their women. It also teaches them that they need not love a man to marry him; he should be happy enough just having a hot-looking chick to poke that he pays the bills for her for the rest of her life. Yes, it's legalized prostitution--dressed in the guise of "do-me" feminism.

So, ladies: to you, I would say: Don't read this book. However, if you're a man with money, and you actually want anything like true love in your life, I would strongly advise reading this book. True, maybe you're happy enough getting to poke hot chicks that you don't care--but if you harbor any old-fashioned notions of settling down and having kids one day with a gorgeous honey who actually, deep down in her heart, LOVES you for who you are and wouldn't drop you like you're hot if you lost all your money and success tomorrow--you would do well to open your eyes and read. It may hurt when the scales fall from your eyes and you realize that beautiful babe snuggling in bed next to you really IS only after your bucks--but forewarned is forearmed. If it's not already too late, you can make a phone call to your lawyer and make the necessary arrangements to ensure she doesn't clean you out and leave you brokenhearted AND broke. Good luck.