First things First.

Most women use more brains

picking a horse in the third at Belmont

than they do picking a husband.

Meet the modern woman. Okay, yeah, we’ve already met her and she

prefers to be called “girl.” That’s cool. We dig.

We’re girls too. And as girls, we’ve got some vital info to report.

After attending a few class reunions we noticed many lady lawyers, doctors

and MBAs were still slaving after forty, while lots of less brainy gals were

taking long vacations from their day jobs, shopping at Prada and enjoying

more than their fair share of hot-stone massages.

We asked ourselves, “Why do (some) bimbos fare better than the smart

chicks?”

Smart Girls

Having taken a whirl or two in the love dance, we found ourselves wishing

that someone had warned us of the pitfalls of falling in love, marrying the

wrong guy or the agony of divorce. Why didn’t Mom tell us? If your

mother did bother to give you any solid advice on life, like most daughters,

you probably weren’t listening.

Since we think of ourselves as smart girls, we often like to support our ideas

with research. And one of our favorite well-supported observations is this:

People are more likely to take advice from strangers than from their friends

or family.

So listen to us, because we care, we really do. Here’s the bottom line—

whether you’re drop-dead gorgeous, skinny, fat, or even if you think you’re

just plain fugly h—we girls have one big obligation to ourselves and our

families:

Find your fortune while you’re young and Buttressed by experience, we use cold hard facts, real science and true

stories that back up the case for what we call:

The Gold-Digging Imperative—“The GDI”

h fug•ly [fuhg-lee] Slang: Vulgar. As defined by UrbanDictionary.com,

“fugly” is a term used when someone is “more than just ugly.”

We don’t think “gold-digging” should be frowned upon.

Why, we wonder, does society applaud a girl who falls for a guy’s “big blue

eyes,” yet denounces one who chooses a man with a “big green bankroll”?

What’s the difference? Earning power is, after all, a reflec-tion of his values

and character. Big blue eyes? Not so much.

The average guy believes most gals are only looking for money, but the

truth is too few of us are interested in their income at all. The modern gal is

earning her own cash and is looking for emotional security.

Too bad it doesn’t exist.

What’s worse, national statistics1 show women suffer far more

economically than men when marriages fail. With this in mind, we have

some advice, and please take it in the gen-tlest possible way: Girl, get your

head out of your ass. Instead of looking for love, let’s look out for our own

security, the kind you can count in dollars and cents.

Now we’re not saying that money equals happiness. Everyone knows even

the very wealthy can be downright, even bitterly, miserable. This is not

about “happily ever after.” It’s about being smart and avoiding economic

disaster by clinging to old paradigms about love and marriage.

Marrying for money isn’t new. In fact, throughout history spousal

arrangements have rarely taken any other form. In the past, marriage was

primarily a system to promote the financial, social and political aspirations of the families involved. But these days

society is pretty much disgusted at the thought of a mercenary marriage. A

smart girl needs all the facts, and she’ll have them when she finishes

reading this book.

But money means nothing without our soul mate, right?

Most smart girls long for it. From the day we’re born we’re immersed in a

culture that elevates romantic love over . . .

pretty much everything else. And with true love as our highest goal,

marrying for any other reason has come to be seen as just plain wrong.

Immoral even.

We’re not all down on love. We know falling in love is yummy . . . all you

need is love . . . love is patient, love is kind

. . . love means never having to say you’re sorry. Unfortunately, instead of

strengthening the bonds of matrimony, social commentators predicted that

marrying for love would drive the divorce rate right up around 50%.2 And

they turned out to be right.

When couples started to marry for love, soon afterwards they also sought

the right to divorce. The reason? If being in love is a valid reason to marry, then being out of love is a valid reason to divorce. Turns out, romantic

marriage and divorce are just about the only pair that’s still together. If this

trend continues, the term “lifelong partnership” may soon be retired—

except when referring to certain animal species, like wolves.

To prove our case, we present a lot of data and statistics, but if that’s not

your thing, feel free to skip ahead to the naughty parts—there are plenty.

You may ask, “Why so much sex in a book about marriage?” Because sex is

the reason for our existence. It’s the primitive biologic act, driven by our

ever present animal instincts that color and influence almost everything we

do. The more we thought about it, the more everything seemed to boil down

to one thing: the F-word.

Or, as you’ll see: F-words.

Don’t just be smart, act smart. Get to work!

Dust off those gold-digging tools and marry well.