LW, there is nothing wrong with the way you live your life. And there is nothing wrong with the way your boyfriend lives his, except for the fact that he's judging you for not mirroring it. The problem is the incompatibility, no? That you suspect this difference would prevent you from deepening the relationship in a way that you long for? I agree. I am not sure why you included the detail that he's 10 years younger than you, but 45 is plenty old enough for one's financial values to be well-entrenched. This is quite sad, and I guess the truly difficult decision is whether to seek another relationship where something beyond is possible, or stick with what sounds like a pretty good situation for where you are right now. If I were you, I'd stick--but I'm not one of the two people inside this relationship.

Honestly, I don't see any way this relationship can work if the LW and her boyfriend combine households. Both of them have completely different ideas about how to live their lives. That's not something they can work through - he'll criticize every purchase she makes, and she'll end up either living in his filth or, even worse, constantly trying to clean it up..

Here's my question for the LW - why get married? Share the parts of each other's lives that you both enjoy - the company, the sex, and whatever else. Just live separately.

The guy is not frugal - he has (serious) issues with wealth. Sounds to me like he's (violently) reacting to money and beautiful places (which probably arose from being wealthy). What's his family like? I wonder if his parents were wealthy and he's rebelling against that by being poor with ugly living spaces.

When one is frugal, one is usually orderly. He is not. Sounds like he has some issues he needs to deal with.

LW,

Your lifestyle sounds reasonable and enjoyable. You seem grounded, you know what you want and I want to ride in your sporty car and come over for dinner. You just sound like you've got it together girl!

However, boyfriend sounds uptight about cash. Since that issue belongs to him and could be a disaster if you lived together, maybe you don't need get hitched or change your relationship. Good sex, good times, and you keep your own space.

Sounds like fun to me!

6 - 8 months consecutive punctual payments can lower one's intrest rate with certain credit card companies. Your credit report would be evaluated plus your recent history of punctual payments. A single phone call might achieve this.

Unless there is a private lender, such as a kind wealthy person who lends below prime, if there is a better interest rate than "0% interest + Prime", would somebody please post it?

Percentages, exchange rates, appreciation, depreciation. etc.have been emotional blocks till recently. Nearly ready to buy Suze Orman's book, "WOMEN AND MONEY".

is miser.

These people can experience no joy, no happiness, no enjoyment of the moment: a good meal, a conversation, music, art ...

Lose this guy now. He will never change. Money will always be more important to him than anything, including LW.

All the misers I've known had lots of money. They were just as miserable as this jerk.

I remember reading a book, "The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues." It had a great chapter about those who never allowed themselves any pleasure, for fear it would be snatched away. Kind of sums up the miser mentality.

And, as a rich, non-miser female friend of mine once said,"Cheap guys are lousy in bed."

"Because we can't count on anybody to help us."

There it is.

...can be fun, for a while, especially if one has money; but living in clean and pleasing surroundings is one of those things normative humanism will not let slide by. There is something seriously wrong here, and if great sex and conversation are the high points of this relationship, why not find yourself an ambitious homeless guy? He might at least have some potential to appreciate a better quality of life, were it available.

There's something really wrong here, and I'm not so sure it's the weird boyfriend, although he's certainly got his issues.

It's apparent that from Cary's reaction and those of many of the commenters so far, the issue isn't whether the guy's a miser---because who's a bigger miser, this dude or the CEO of more half the corporations in the world, who consume vicariously through consumers, living off the life and labour of others?---but that he reveals the obscene supplement to their comfortable Capitalist lives: the destitute poverty on which it depends for its existence. In other words, the boyfriend wins the Capitalist game of life (i.e. make lots of money), but not by the same rules as those criticizing him on the LW's behalf. What's worse is he seems to be at least as satisfied with his life as she does, but on radically different terms.

I've been in this situation before, though I've always been the more frugal person in the relationship. One of the first guys I dated was much profligate than I and used to spend money on all kinds of extravagant things. Looking back, I don't quite understand why it bothered me so much--we dated less than a year and I was young enough that thoughts of marriage never were an issue--but it infuriated me to see him buying $70 cologne or buying a brand new Land Rover or going out to eat in overpriced restaurants. Maybe part of this came from jealousy? I wanted to be able to afford the same things? But it seems like a larger part of it came out of frustration that he didn't have the same values as me. I know that the man I'm dating right now, one of the (strange) things I love about him is that we're very similarly financially. Yes, I spend more money on clothes and he spends more money on food, but we're both basically fairly frugal but willing to splurge, especially on things like travel and eating. It makes it a lot easier to make both small and large decisions together--what to do with our free time together, where to live, what kind of wedding we might have, how to raise children. I know my sister--who's in a similar situation to you, dating a man much more miserly than her--has problems because her boyfriend is never willing to spend the money to go out. She'd be willing to pay but she makes less money than him and that creates all kinds of weird power dynamics.

So I guess my point is that being similar in the ways you spend money is important, at least from my experience. There may be ways to work around this, but (despite what Cary says) it seems doubtful that the situation will change (especially since, from your letter, your boyfriend doesn't seem to view his spending habits as problematic). It seems like you already know what to do about the situation: you need to start asking tough questions about how much this man means to you and how much you want to stay in a relationship that probably won't progress much beyond this point.