Enough Sexy Talk. Let’s Talk About Money (Exclusive)

When I first started talking about money, nearly 11 years ago now, I didn’t think anyone would listen. My personal Tumblr account, called The Financial Diet, was only meant to hold me accountable for getting my own finances under control after years of chaos. The fact that people actually read it — that now, TFD is a fully-fledged media company with a staff of eight and a monthly audience of over 3 million women — came as a pleasant surprise. While still remaining a taboo topic in many circles, there is clearly a growing appetite for financial literacy among women.

So by the time I published my first romance novel back in 2023, I had already shed my fear of addressing sensitive material. When you’re used to disclosing every aspect of your financial life online (you can easily find everything from my salary to the exact amount I paid for my apartment), the idea of writing a few sexy scenes about made-up characters felt like child’s play. Besides, I figured, my novels tend to max out at “two chili peppers out of five.” 

What I didn’t expect, though, was just how much these two crucial areas of literacy for women — money and sexuality — tend to diverge in our current cultural moment. On the one hand, you have the romance revolution, a genre so immensely popular and lucrative that much of the beleaguered publishing industry depends on its success. It’s a genre that treats sexuality, specifically female desire, without an ounce of shame or judgment. No matter the niche, no matter the level of detail or spice you seek, you can find a book to meet your needs and a massive community to help you find it. There’s also good evidence that this candor and ubiquity around pleasure is helping women navigate their own sex lives in new and empowered ways.

Yet, as it pertains to money and class, romance (and romcoms in media more broadly) still remains a bit of a rocky terrain. There are some titles that deal thoughtfully with financial issues, yes, but the “benevolent billionaire sweeps normal woman off her feet” trope remains one of the most popular in the genre.

The particulars of heroines’ lives are often totally decoupled from financial reality, like the endless NYC-based romcoms featuring entry-level twenty-somethings living in sprawling West Village apartments. Men are often the ones with power and class status, or at least they’re comfortable enough to make those issues fade from view for the duration of the story. And there is often an expectation of escapism in romance that precludes dealing realistically with money — or, for big media blockbusters, a cynical assumption that audiences won’t enjoy a romcom which also takes the logistics of life seriously. 

On the flip side, while financial media is no doubt reaching more women than ever, it tends to ignore the romantic realities that underpin women’s financial lives. Like it or not, most women will end up in heterosexual marriages (and have children in those marriages), which statistically will have a drastic effect on everything from their earning potential, to their reported happiness, to the amount of time they spend on domestic labor compared to their husbands. 

Much like in massively popular romances like Bridgerton or Jane Austen novels, love is a shaky economic proposition at best for many women, and for all our talk of closing the gender gap we are still woefully behind any real parity when you look at the numbers — not the least of which being women initiating roughly 70% of divorces. 

As there is a mandate of escapism in romance, there is a mandate of neutrality in the finance world which pretends we do not exist in our current system. It’s not simply a question of “If we teach women how to invest well enough, the problem will solve itself.” There is no true financial literacy or empowerment that doesn’t involve a candid interrogation of the cost of love, sex and marriage for women — one that men simply do not bear in the same way. In order for women to experience real independence in a heterosexual partnership (the dominant dynamic in both romance and finance), she must have total knowledge and comfort of both her sexual and financial well-being. 

That’s why, in my most recent romance novel, The High Dive, the subject matter is as much financial as it is romantic. It spends as much time dealing with the realities of budgeting and debt as it does the meet-cutes and swoony pillow talk, because ultimately it is the former that more accurately determines how most marriages will play out. (Lest we forget, money stress is still a leading cause of divorce.) And although I enjoy a sexy summer getaway, I find that these two worlds I work in — money and love — feel increasingly like a venn diagram that desperately needs closing. 

Not only do I believe that women are discerning enough to enjoy love stories that approach money more realistically, I believe that part of a financial education is understanding how it intersects with the more emotional parts of our lives. Even marriage itself, often thought of primarily in terms of love or the details of the wedding, is the most substantial legal and financial agreement any of us will ever enter. And I believe that if we are ready for one conversation, we should be ready for both — because sometimes love isn’t enough, but then again, neither is money. 

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The High Dive by Chelsea Fagan is available now, wherever books are sold.