With a good leg and a good foot,Uncle, and money enough in his purse,Such a man would win any woman in the world,If he could get her goodwill.— Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

The line that resonates with me in that above quote is ‘and money enough in his purse, such a man would win any woman in the world’. Rather a cryptic statement to make, and imagine, from as far back as the days of Shakespeare too.

Why should it take money in his purse to win any woman in the world? It seems that money and women, women and money, whichever way you put them, always have a connection, correlation, corroboration, bonded together inextricably like conjoined twins.

Separate a woman from money and she’ll be unhappy. Separate money from a woman and she separates from you. Is that really true, or have women got a bad rap when it comes to money? After all, the old sayings that diamonds are a girl’s best friend and other money-related phrases affixed to women such as ‘gold digger, ‘money grabber’ and such do endure. Even our own singers and DJs have sung about this. The line ‘Sharlene have pretty car eye’ is just one example.

Aha, but some women counter this, and it was American author Clare Boothe Lure who said, “A woman’s best protection is a little money of her own.” Is that why some women used to always travel with ‘mad money’ when they went on dates with men? In case they had a quarrel, she’d always have her own money to get home?

We’ll see what that’s all about — women and money — right after these responses to what I said about ‘Parenting pickney’.

Hi Tony,

Some parents today believe that loving their child means spoiling them by overprotection, not giving them responsibilities as well as freedom to make mistakes so they can learn from them. They do not teach them right from wrong and that there are consequences from committing these wrongs. The parents give in to the child’s every whim and the children get away with tantrums when they don’t have their own way. The children become rude and destructive and tend to rule the parents. It’s the tail wagging the dog.

Benjamin

Hey Teerob,

Parenting is a skill that has no handbook as every child is different. Even with siblings who grow up in the same household and environment, one turns out to be a saint, the other a demon. Despite this, the most that a parent can do is instil the proper values of humanity, love, respect, honesty and manners. Sadly, many parents nowadays have no use for such values and deem them old-fashioned and unnecessary. Society is paying the price for that.

Charles

It’s said that a fool and his money are soon parted. It’s also said that a woman and a fool’s money make a great party. It’s even said that a fool and his money who meets a party woman will soon be separated from his money. Well, the first one really is an old saying, but the other two were made up by me.

You have to admit though, they do smack of truth, so who knows, perhaps in a few years’ time they will be used as famous quotes about women and money. What has also been said for real is that, “More men have lost money chasing after women, than men who have lost women while chasing after money.’

Somehow that juxtaposition between women and money keeps on popping up. Any man who has a string of women in tow will tell you how expensive it is to keep them. That’s why many men have given up that practice.

“Man, times too hard and woman too expensive nowadays.”

Women are attracted to money, not to men. If the man happens to have money, then she’ll be drawn to him as a secondary attraction. Now, before you bristle at that statement, check out this scenario. A woman sees a man who is incredibly handsome, good-looking, a real Adonis, but he’s dirt poor. Then she sees another guy, ugly as an orangutan, but with millions of US dollars. Who is she going to be attracted to?

That’s a no-brainer. It can even be proven with a mathematical equation. Man alone equals one, man plus money equals two, man plus money plus woman equals three, subtract money, man is zero.

I remember as a child when Jackie Kennedy, widow of President Kennedy, married Aristotle Onassis, I couldn’t understand it and asked my parents how come. Then there was beautiful movie star Sophia Loren and her husband Carlo Ponti. Do you remember movie star Anna Nicole Smith and her 85-year-old billionaire husband? Why did she marry him? Because she loved him… of course. Fast-forward to the present day and tell me what you think when you see some of these beautiful women and the men they marry.

The list is endless — that of women who are attracted to not so good-looking men who are extremely wealthy. I’m not here to say what the motivation is, but you see for yourself. Take away the money and the attraction diminishes, slips away, fades to black like an old-time classic movie.

Math problem of the day: If George is 73 and his girlfriend is 20, how much money does George have? Women are attracted to money, it’s in their DNA (Dollar Notes Acquisition). Why do you think that those old, gnarled, ugly men manage to squire and marry those beautiful women?

But what’s a girl supposed to do? After all, money is not the root of all evil, neither is the love of money the root of all evil; it’s the lack of money that’s the root of all evil when it comes to some women.

Some who lack it will go after it with evil intent, as they plot and scheme to separate men from their money. For others it’s simply a means of survival. Many women realise that’s it’s a man’s world, dominated by males and especially men who wield money. It’s a simple equation, the man has it, she wants it, the man wants her, she knows how to get it from him.

And men surely do spend on women. It was Shakespeare who said, “There is money, spend it, spend it, spend more.” What he didn’t say was that it was to be spent on women. But he didn’t have to, for men have been spending more money on women or for women than on anything else.

If men had their own way, they’d live a most simple frugal life. That’s why we have man caves. But let a woman enter the picture and the spending splurges surge. He now has to dress to impress, get the right car for her pretty car eyes, acquire the fanciest house and of course satisfy her whims also. There’s this famous guy who said, “My wife ensured that I now have thousands in the bank, before I met her I had millions.”

That being said, there are women who really know how to use money in the correct way, how to work it, turn it, stretch it, make one dollar divide unto itself so many times that it defies all theories of economics. Somehow there are some women who know how to make a little money go a very far way.

There she is, having three children, all of school age, with no father in sight, or maybe a man who pops in occasionally. Her job is menial or a little above minimum wage, and yet somehow, by some fiduciary miracle, she manages to send those children to school, find lunch money, feed them, buy them clothes and make them comfortable.

That’s the power of a woman and money; it defies logic, it stretches the boundaries of credulity, and yet she achieves the seemingly impossible. I know of many children who have attended tertiary institutions solely by the efforts of mothers with very little money. “How you do it, Miss Pearl?”

“Me turn me hand, throw me pardner, buy and sell me stuff, do likkle juggling and such delight.”

Women and money come in all forms, with some being gold diggers, while others are worth their weight in gold.

Woe betide the man who encounters a woman who treats money as her god, but blessed is the man who meets a woman who knows how to make money work for the relationship. I know men who just hand over their entire pay to their wives and say, “Here honey, you take care of business.” I also know of men who have to now be taken care of because women really took care of their business, if you know what I mean.

“I don’t know what happened, she was so nice at first, then after she cleaned me out she just disappeared.”

Women and money can be a win-win situation, or you can lose more than your shirt.

More time.

seido1yard@gmail.com

Footnote: So the weekend lockdowns are in full swing with curfews starting at noon on Saturdays and ending 5:00 am Monday and, in the case of this weekend, 5:00 am Tuesday. What is baffling is the behaviour of many Jamaicans who went on a shopping spree as if the lockdown was supposed to last for two weeks. The supermarkets were jam-packed, with traffic snarling from as early as 5:00 am in some areas from Thursday. The crowds rivalled those of hurricane shoppers with shopping carts overflowing with goods. It’s as if the supermarkets were not reopening the following Monday. Why are we so prone to panic-buying and creating mayhem? Do people really consume so much over one weekend, or do they just love the excitement?