Singapore — A woman with a rather frugal boyfriend has asked netizens for advice on whether she should marry him or not.
In an anonymous confessions post, she said her boyfriend was older than she is, and works full time, while she ran her own business. “However my income is about 3-4 times more than his”, she added. She did not think at first that their income gap would be a problem, but as time went on, they began arguing more and more about money.
“When we go for meals together, he will always tell me restaurants are overpriced, we should stick to hawker centre food. I am okay and happy with it. But… it was so rare for us to eat in restaurants.
“Sometimes, when business is good and I want to reward myself, I would suggest eating out at a fairly expensive restaurant (bill maybe adds up to about $60-$80). And it hurts me when I see him looking through the menu & not really happy to eat there because it is expensive,” she said.
But when she offers to pay at such restaurants, her boyfriend would often complain about the food but also order more than usual. She was taken by surprise one day when he  started documenting their expenses in table form, right down to the cents in order to divide them equally. “I was also initially okay with this arrangement. And also thought that he is very nice to offer to pay 50% even though he earns significantly lesser. But what I couldn’t accept was that every single expense was 50-50,” she wrote.
Noting that he rarely treated her or her parents, she added that when he did, he would highlight these occasions when they argued. She has spoken to him about this “but he hasn’t been receptive towards it and he thinks his way of doing things is fair”, she said. He sees his lower income as a limiting factor for him, and since she earns more, she should pay for her own things.
All this left her confused especially after he proposed marriage. “Just last week, he popped the question.. I do love him a lot but these thoughts will always be at the back of my head. What should i do?” /TISG