Written: Winter 2012, New York

Occurred: Summer 2001, London

Over the summer of 2001 I worked as an intern at an American investment bank in London.

After work, I would frequently join my co-workers in a pub down the street that we had locked down.

One evening while hanging out with my usual group, a guy I recognized from Lazard walked in by himself.  This guy was quite handsome, always dressed impeccably and had the assured self-confidence of a natural alpha.

He ordered a drink and then turned his back to the bar and surveyed the room.

A noisy gaggle of English girls next to us almost immediately caught his attention.

He sized them up, retrieved a napkin from the counter of the bar, wrote a number on the napkin and casually slid it over to the most attractive girl of the bunch.

It got her attention.

“What’s this? Your phone number? You really expect this to work? You haven’t even…”

“It’s my bank balance.”

They left together ten minutes later.

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Now, lest readers draw the wrong conclusions from the above story, be aware that the above technique is almost certainly appropriate solely for dedicated golddiggers.  And my Lazard acquaintance had plenty of tight game to work with already.  In the above case, he correctly took the measure of the English girl he was interested in and simply applied the best method to achieve his objective.

On balance, men almost universally overestimate the importance of money in attracting women. This is probably so because the relatively chaotic, amorphous nature of psychological game is harder for men to comprehend than is a hard objective metric like money. It’s much simpler to say to a man: “First you make the money, then you get the power. Then when you get the power, you get the women.”

The problem with this plan of action is that, one, it’s highly inefficient, and, two, most women — and this includes hot women — aren’t aroused by a man with money nearly as much as men think they are. Women are attracted to an alpha attitude which can be correlated with money. But money is not a necessary condition for embodying the alpha attitude. There are easier ways to attract women for sexual congress and loving long term relationships than slaving for years in a corporate gig saving every penny to afford a monster mortgage or risking prison in the drug trade.

Furthermore, there is this misperception out there that money automatically equates to power, which is something that girls do indeed find very attractive in a man. But we all know souped-up IT and finance nerds making well into the six figures who struggle with their dating lives. Power is more a state of mind, or a will to attitude, than a blessing that flows from big bucks. The shiftless badboy with the motorcycle and smirk has more power over women’s hearts than the well-paid CFO who sucks up to women by throwing free meals and unearned gifts at them.

Naturally, all else equal, having money will help your pickup more than not having money. But the “all else equal” is the key qualifier. If you are looking to get more bangs for your buck, so to speak, working longer harder hours to amass bank is not the way to do it. When you realize that most women worth fucking don’t care all that much about how much money you make, you understand that the road to gratification leads away from the path laid down by conventional wisdom.

As long as you make a decent living (i.e. don’t live in a cardboard box), have a car (unless you reside in the heart of a major urban center or lead a traveling lifestyle), have some stylish threads, and keep a clean, cared-for home, the money factor evaporates for all but the most die-hard golddiggers. Remember, a man’s ambition is one of the traits women love. Whatever financial reward he has earned from his ambitious undertakings is almost irrelevant, like icing on the cake.