@Madison85 @MassDaD68 I have thought about the debt thing also. We will be huge Auto Merit chasers, D graduating debt free is extremely important to me. As I want her to start max contributing to her retirement right away, savings, etc. I would hate for her to have a significant other who took on a large amount of student loans.
I will add “no college debt” to DS’s profile.
@Mansfield: Perhaps our sons should meet. Ha!
I like the CC match idea, too. Anyone have a sweet DD who would be interested in a tall, athletic, academic, good-looking (mom says so) West Point officer with no debt? 
ETA: Dang. Didn’t I just post that I would stay out of his love life?
S2 is also looking for a policy-wonk sports fan!
Who would have thought that baby kiddo is highly marketable because of no college debt? 
@BunsenBurner, I know! On a more serious note, my niece recently married a man with significant college and law school debt (and without a job that can easily service that debt) and I know my SIL is concerned. Her D has no debt and while legally his debt is not her debt, it will have a significant impact on their financial situation for a long while going forward.
My DD, referred to above, is debt-free :). I guess I should add that to her hockey-loving, policy wonk, corporate lawyer profile!
Really. I would not encourage any of my kids to have “debt free” as a marriage requirement. There is far more serious baggage people could bring to a marriage. It would be wise for both partners to not quit working until it is paid off but to use that as a serious consideration not to marry feels alittle narrow-minded in this day and age and could shut off plenty of potential soul mates.
I’m not saying it should be a marriage requirement. From my perspective, it’s valuable information, but not necessarily a deal breaker.
On a lighter note, I’m treating this thread as just that - a lighter note…for parents who love to help solve any and all of their offsprings’ issues, whether related to college, travel, jobs, or the myriad of other topics discussed on this board, including the search for significant others!
Perhaps. But having debt is not necessarily a deal-breaker.
At the time when my son-in-law proposed to my daughter, she had a staggering amount of debt from her MBA program. I would have expected his parents to be appalled. But either they don’t know or they don’t care.
DH and I both had modest UG debt, but he incurred significantly more once we were married and he then went back to school. We referred to it as the mortgage on his brain. Sure, it kept us from buying a house til we had been married 14 years and the kids were in elementary school, but a deal breaker? Nope. That what people whose parents couldn’t/didn’t help pay for college have do to break the cycle. It was an adventure. It has also enabled us to weather the medical expenses incurred when I developed an incurable illness at age 41.
Well I’ve got 2 sons available. One owns a home, prospects must love living relatively rural and enjoy outdoor activities. Ability to ski is high on the list. Ability to swim is a must. Low maintenance is high on the list. I married my husband after a decade of renaissance men who couldn’t do anything but call maintenance workers, I just wanted someone who didn’t need ME to fix the toilet guts and other minor things that break or don’t function and knew how to feed themselves. My boys are pretty self sufficient needless to say. #3 is already taken. #1 and #2 have decent jobs and are paying off their student loans with no issues.
It’s not the debt, it’s the attitude towards it. My husband and I were both working to pay off our debt when we got married. My sister nearly called off her wedding because her husband just didn’t care he had a mountain of debt. (She should have. And it’s not just the debt that’s his issue…)
Awesome 33 year old son. Musician…outstanding cook. Kind, caring, soft spoken, hard working. Free spirit.
Lives in Phoenix.
No debt.
Wow, @thumper1 . He sounds like a keeper.
He really is a great guy…but he isn’t wealthy…and likely never will be.
But kind, nice, hard working…and an awesome cook.and no debt!
Needs a SO with a strong appreciation for varied kinds of music!
Daughter will be graduating this year without debt. She wants to attend med school but plans to work a year or two to minimize debt. That is the only way I know to make it work out.
Meanwhile I have a brother that is 33 and single. He is the youngest. After having four elder sisters, seeing us get married and go through relationships and watching his nieces and nephews grow up I think he would make a caring husband to someone special. He would also be a cool dad. I think he knows how to treat women with respect because he is so protective of his four elder sisters and his nieces… He has an MBA and is very social and likes going to sports events. (basketball, baseball, football) He enjoys traveling and enjoys trying out good food. Every time I meet my parents they tell me why don’t you convince him to get married. I keep telling them when it is meant to be it will happen. I am hoping 2018 is the year he meets the one. Meanwhile he keeps attending weddings of his friends or visiting married friends that are now having children.
During the holidays I made sure to call him and just check in on him since I am thinking he was spending them alone. In another thread I mentioned that he sent my D and I a beautiful flower arrangement for Christmas which I felt was really thoughtful of him.
My brother and daughter are closer in age then I am to my brother.
@raclut My MD-DD (who happens to be single and looking) would tell your DD to take her time, take that year or two, have some fun, travel, do some stuff you want to do. My Dd took one year, but wishes she had taken longer as it will be difficult, with liability insurance and industry attitudes, to take breaks from working. The people paying you like to see continuity of work, so, yah, enjoy that time before med school.
The thing about profiles and surveys is that they turn a bunch of qualities that are (or should be) negotiable into non-negotiables. Relationships change the people in them; it’s not just a matter of fitting two pre-cut puzzle pieces together.
I think the successful online dating services know that. My daughter met her fiance through OK Cupid a little more than four years ago. There are some obvious interests that they share, but when we met him we were stunned at how much about him we would have assumed was anathema to our daughter, except it turned out that they weren’t, at least if associated with the right person. For one, he was (and is) a competitive athlete. Our daughter never had any interest in sports, other than purely intellectual. (She prides herself on knowing the rules for football and baseball, despite never watching or caring about either.) Her preferred form of physical activity was dancing. She did that seriously, and essentially never had to play a sport. Apart from some very brief “anthropological socializing” in her first month of college, she rarely if ever even spoke with male athletes.
And yet. There she was, playing touch football in his regular co-ed weekend pickup game. That’s when we knew it was really serious. He was wrong in all sorts of objective, but ultimately trivial ways, and right in some deep way that is not associated in any obvious way with tick-list qualities. But there’s no question that each of them has been changed by the relationship in ways that have brought them much closer together than they were at first.
Somehow, though, the algorithm put them in touch with one another. Good for the algorithm! I doubt her friends or her parents would have tried that match, or his friends or parents. Of course, I don’t know how many lousy matches the algorithm made --our daughter never shared that information with us!
@JHS Love your story of your D!!!
@somemom I have the perfect guy for your MD DD!!