Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

An article appeared in my newsfeed a few days about stating that the topic of age gap relationships has been going viral. I first saw it on BuzzFeed, which tends to pop up with its listicles in my news app, though a bit of further reading I did on the topic today shows that it's a reprint of an article that appeared in Huffington Post a few weeks ago. I'll share the HuffPo link here: Gen Z Is Particularly Weird About Relationship Age Gaps. Here's Why (12 July 2025).

Okay, so what is the answer to the question posed in the article's headline? Well, having read the article twice now (once at HuffPo, once at BuzzFeed) I'm honestly not sure there's a there, there. The author cites mostly social media hullabaloo about specific celebrity pairings but then opines, in a journalistic aside, that collective real opinions are generally more nuanced than what gets likes and retweets on services like X.

People having negative opinions about age gap pairings has been a fact for probably as long as there have been age gap pairings. Literary works from the 1800s wrote of "May-December romance". In the late 1900s terms like "gold digger" became popular, particularly when the relationship involved a significantly younger woman and a wealthy older man. The modernism of shaming women goes ways, BTW. In the early 2000s we heard the term cougar for older, financially stable women who pursue younger men for their looks and physical stamina.

My 2 cents on the matter is that I refrain from judging a priori but instead caution a couple, if they ask my opinion, "Are you in enough of the same place in life?" Because aside from egregious cases, like where the younger partner is underage or the older is in mental decline, that's the biggest challenge: the age gap makes your needs too incompatible.

I faced this question myself years ago. When I was about 22 I met "Jackie" through an online precursor to modern dating apps. Internet tech was primitive back then, so there was no easy filtering on things like age. Jackie and I hit it off as friends and hung out with each other, both in larger groups of friends and alone, several times. But Jackie was 10 years older than me. While we got along as friends we never clicked as romantic partners. And yes, I definitely was asking myself, "Can Jackie and I be romantic partners?" Cuz, duh, we met on a dating forum. I think she was asking herself the same thing, too, and waiting for me to initiate. (Internet wasn't the only thing more primitive back in the 1990s. 🤣)

Anyway, I thought long and hard about it, and decided No. We were good as friends, but I figured things would never work as romantic partners. Not long term, anyway. In a few months I'd be earning a degree and beginning a big job search to launch a new career. Whereas Jackie had already been doing her own thing for 10 years and had settled into a rhythm— one that wasn't exactly great relative to where I planned to take my career, BTW. I didn't see us being compatible.

The point of this anecdote isn't to establish 10 years as the cutoff for age gaps. Obviously it's going to depend on the question I posed— where are you each at in life? Plus, the number of years that put you too far apart in life is relative. 10 years is huge when you're 22 and meeting a 32-year old. 10 years is a lot less of a chasm when you're 52 and 62. When you're 22 even 5 years may be too much of a difference. As one of the people in the news article was quoted, "At 25, I wouldn’t even date a 21 year old."

Update: What's normal for age gaps? Here's one recent scientific study I found.

Continuing with my theme of how couple should manage their money together, my topic today is how many bank accounts a pair of people in a relationship should have. After "How should we share expenses?", which i wrote about yesterday, it's the next most common question I see in financial advice columns and blogs. And the two questions are related. How you set up your bank accounts is closely tied to how you share money and split expenses.

When Hawk and started living together years ago the modern advice was to have 3 bank accounts: one for each person in their name alone, and one joint account from which shared bills can paid. The idea was this preserved each partner's independence, via money and fiscal control that was theirs alone, while also making it simple to share common expenses. That was different from the more traditional arrangement, where couples once married would have a single household bank account. Often the woman in the relationship would have little control over the money.

As an aside, I can only shake my head at how the 3-accounts strategy that was the new advice 25-30 years ago still seems to be the new advice today. So many questions or stories on this topic in financial advice blogs are from women who are trying to avoid, or recover from, loss of financial control.

Anyway, back to what worked for us.

3 Accounts, in Spirit if not in Practice

When we moved in together we embraced 3 accounts idea... in spirit. We each had our own accounts but no shared account. One of the other of us would pay each bill for shared expenses (rent, utilities, food) then about once a month we'd figure out the difference and one person would write the other a check to even it out.

Why no shared account? Frankly because bank accounts are not free. Even the credit union I belonged to had a monthly account fee that was only waived if you had either direct deposit of your paychecks or a certain minimum account balance— a minimum that was high for people just getting started out. Having a third account would've meant paying fees. Evening it up ourselves once a month, even in the old days of adding stuff up on calculators and then writing a check, was easier than paying a fee. BTW if we were starting out today we'd do the same thing— though with a tool like Venmo or Zelle to even out the payments.

If 3 is Good, 6 is Better!

As we built up our finances we did open a third account... once we had enough money to meet the minimums across multiple accounts. And then we opened a fourth account, and a fifth, and more!

We opened the second trio of accounts specifically as savings accounts, separate from our checking accounts. In terms of discipline, checking accounts are for regular expenses. We auto-deposit our paychecks and pay bills there. Savings accounts we only touch for bills if they're major, planned purchases. More importantly, in terms of financial structure, the savings accounts are high yield. We hold them at banks that pay great interest rates. Most banks and even most credit unions pay essentially 0% interest on checking account balances. The best high-yield accounts are paying close to 3% today.

Advice You Can Bank On

My advice to people starting out (or starting over) today is three simple recommendations:

1. If you're in a long term relationship, use the 3-accounts approach— in spirit (like we did for several years) if not in practice.


2. If you're living mostly paycheck-to-paycheck, focus on finding a good checking account with as low fees as possible.


3. Once you're able to start saving, open a high-yield savings account and start transferring there whatever money you don't need for regular expenses. (Note this isn't investing. Investing is the next step, and it's a major one.)

Is the US in a recession?

Many people are asking that question since the Commerce Department reported yesterday that US GDP contracted in the 2nd quarter at an annualized rate of 0.9%. That comes on the heels of a 1.6% annualized contraction in the first quarter this year. The commonly understood technical definition of a recession is "two consecutive quarters of negative growth", so it would appear we're there. But it's not that simple.

Officially, recessions are determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a nonprofit organization. And within the NBER the Business Cycle Dating Committee, a group of 8 economists, decide when recessions happen. Generally the Dating Committee only determines that a recession began months after the two-consecutive-quarters definition was met. Largely that's because GDP numbers get revised all the time. Think of the figure announced yesterday as the preliminary number. It could be revised higher or lower as more data from Q2 becomes available.

In addition, the simple definition "two consecutive quarters of negative growth" is not just simple, it's simplistic. Many other factors determine whether the country is in a recession— a label that is fraught with social and political meaning.

A common ingredient of recession— and a key part of that social and political meaning— is unemployment. A recession is a time when unemployment rises, job growth is flat, and wages are stagnant. Right now none of these are the case. Unemployment is 3.6%, still low by historical standards. New jobs are still being added to the economy at a healthy pace, and wages are up a lot this year. Just look at all the stories in the news about how people are leaving jobs because they're being offered more money somewhere else, and employers are struggling to hire. Numerous government officials, from the Treasury secretary to the Federal Reserve chair, have pointed to labor data as a reason why we're not actually in a recession right now.

Keep reading: But most people think we're in a recession....

Today I saw the hashtag #WorstFirstDate about, well, people's worst first dates. It's promoted by TV host Jimmy Fallon, presumably to share on his show, or at least remind people he's still relevant. My worst first date was quite a number of years ago... so it's apropos I saw on Thursday, aka #TBT - Throwback Thursday. For this story set your wayback machine to 1994.

BTW, when I told my wife I remember my worst first date after all these years, she asked, "Is it the one when I threw up?"

Ha ha, no. That wasn't a first date. It was a third date, depending on how you count it. And in the grand scheme of all dates it was only the second worst. 😅

( A story of Netflix and Chill, being wrong-numbered, and ghosting— all 1994 style! )