How Much Would You Pay To Find Love?
Posted by Kevin McKee on March 24, 2011They say money can’t buy happiness. Maybe not, but what if it could buy true love?
Apparently some men are willing to pay $20,000 to find their true love. I would be hesitant to spend $20,000 on anything, much less a dating service. Especially since Match.com is only like $20 a month. However, the article claims that 88% of the clients meet their eventual spouse in the first nine months. If I have a 90% chance of meeting the person I intend to spend the next 60 years of my life with, it just might be worth it.
Before I go any further, I need to mention that I have a girlfriend (sorry ladies) and am not looking for a new one. However, I’d like you to humor me for the rest of the post as I pretend I am single and completely unattached.
It Makes Perfect Financial Sense
From an economic point of view, this could be the best investment I ever make. My perfect woman is almost certainly going to be one with a job. If I marry a girl with a good job and we combine our income, I should have my $20k back in just a few months. Then anything she earns for the rest of our lives is straight profit. Who wouldn’t want to get in on an investment that pays you back in under a 
year and then provides up to 60 more years of gains? Although if she is loaded with debt, this kind of changes the equation.
Maybe I would make that one of my prerequisites; I can tell the agency that I only want to be introduced to ladies that have a net worth of at least $20k or more. This way, as soon as I marry her I will have at least my initial investment back, and possibly more.
I’m joking here, but only partially. Honestly, marrying someone and adding a second income is one of the best ways to increase your net worth. From a financial perspective, unless they fix you up with someone loaded with debt and children, anyone should make their $20,000 back pretty easily.
How Much is Love Worth?
What if I signed up for the service and they told me they had found my absolute dream girl except for one thing; she doesn’t have a job and never plans to have one. Maybe she is 100% committed to volunteer work or has a full time job taking care of a disabled family member or something. The point is, would it still be worth $20,000 to find true love?
Well I plan to live until I’m about 85, which gives me 60 more years to live. If they can introduce me to my soul mate tomorrow, that means I will get to spend the next 60 years with her. If we take $20,000/60 years, that comes to $333 a year for the best thing in my life. That’s about how much I spend on food in a single month. Now I’m a big fan of food, but I really can’t say that I should be spending 12 times more on food than I do on LOVE.
Let’s take the other scenario. Pretend I’m going to die in a year by some horrible, freak accident. In that case, I’m probably even more willing to spend the $20,000. If I only have one year left to live, you bet your ass I want to spend that year with the girl of my dreams.
A 12% Chance of Failure
I’ve talked about this service as if there were a 100% rate of success. I’m an optimist, so if I see something working for 88% of people, I’m just going to assume it will work for me. However, there is that small chance that you haven’t found your match after a year. I guess your options would be to pay for another year or cut your losses. While you would be out $20,000, I’m certain you would have learned a lot about what you are and aren’t looking for in a woman. It’s not worth $20k to me, but at least it’s something to walk away with.
Love is Definitely Worth $20,000
As I mentioned before, I do have a girlfriend and I’m not looking. I’m actually relieved that I have Tag, because if I didn’t there’s a good chance I’d be calling into Selective Search and getting ready to drop $20k. To be honest, if I hit 30 and was still single, and I did some more research on the company and thought they were truly legit, I might spend up to $100,000 to use the service.
If you are single, what is love worth to you? How much would you pay for an 88% chance of meeting your soul mate in the next year?
This post was included in the Carnival of Personal Finance.
I’m not single either, but I’m well aware that dating costs money! Well Heeled did a post about this a while back. http://www.wellheeledblog.com/2010/11/04/high-cost-dating/
I don’t spend as much as is mentioned in the article, but I know I’ve spent my fair share to make sure a certain someone is always proud to be seen with me! Not to mention the money I spend on airplane tickets. Long distance isn’t cheap, but it’s totally worth it to get to see him! Some of the money could be written off as general up-keep, but some of it is spent to impress him more than anyone else. I wonder what it would all add up to if I really sat down and did the math. Then again, maybe I don’t want to know!
That’s a lot of money to spend maintaining a relationship. I’ve done long distance, but never when it is outside driving distance. And good for you that you spend money to impress your man. I’m sure he recognizes the effort and it makes him feel special.
The only thing is, you’ve already found love and you’re spending money to sustain How much do you think you would be willing to spend just to find love if you were single?
Holy moly that’s a lot of money! I’m a cheap bastard so I ended up joining a free dating service. And I found my frugal girlfriend whom I’m still dating.
@cityflips, I do long distance too! I’ve been trying to get plane tickets for fre lately with credit card bonuses but I’ve run out of cards to apply for now lol.
I’d hate to see what all those new credit cards are doing to your credit score. Although, I’d rather take a temporary hit on my credit score than pay a bunch of money for flights.
Free dating services are nice (I’m used them in the past) but sometimes I feel like you get what you pay for. I never found anyone worth dating on those sites. I’m glad to hear you found a good one.
I would pay $20,000 to find true love. But that is much much different for paying $20,000 to some service that introduces you to a few people.
$20,000 is a lot of money but what else do you spend that kind of money on? Housing, education, maybe a car (I suppose you could say “retirement savings” – over time). Actually I wouldn’t be amazed if lots of people spend that much on a wedding. I think what you said makes sense “if I hit 30 and was still single… I might spend up to $100,000.” If you find you didn’t just bump into the right person as you lived you life you might decide it was worth some money. The problem is I can’t really believe those companies are very useful. I am sure they can find plenty of success stories (just like I am sure I could find random people who didn’t do anything special and found happiness. That any of these companies actually help most of the people I question. I don’t doubt that some do – but figuring out which one would actually help you is daunting.
I agree that there’s a big difference between 88% and 100%. It just depends on how much faith you have in the company. it sounds like they have a good system going. The CEO is a former corporate head hunter, so I think she has some interesting experience in matching people up.
I can’t say I’d definitely use the service if I were looking, but I can say I’d definitely consider it.
OK, I’m going to offer another female perspective here. I’m single and live in New York City. I would never in a million years spend $20K to be set up with a guy, even if he was The One. In NYC I’m surrounded by rich, hot guys and I can’t say I haven’t thought about how marrying one of them would really turn around my financial situation, but I would still rather be pursued than meet through a dating service. Maybe it’s because I don’t feel ready to settle down with anyone just yet, but I’d rather invest the $20,000 in myself – improving my appearance, education, and generally being as happy as I can be with my life. I think that makes me a more attractive partner to any guy worth dating.
I can see where you are coming from. However, I don’t see it as settling. I see it as doing everything you can to find your true love.
Also, if you did want to work with this service, you should know that girls are free. They just add you to the pool of potential candidates for the dudes dropping $20k. Although, you aren’t guaranteed any dates like the guys are.
Interesting! By the way – you’re right about getting what you pay for on dating sites. I met a nice guy on Match, but no one good on OKCupid. It’s like the MySpace of dating.
I know I wouldn’t spend that much up front, but it really depends on how you date I suppose. I’m a bit old school, and always brought up that the guy pays. I know my last g/f cost me more than that over 3.5 years with 2 cruises, and a trip to china, not to mention all the green fees, dinners, bar nights, overnight road trips, expensive gifts [ expensive for me that is ] etc. I was madly in love with her, but she was merely taking advantage of my generosity, and once she got tired of me, conned me into a spat, with the obvious intention of having a good excuse to break up with me so she could be free to con the next sucker.