A frequent point made is that women wish to delay their marriage phase until their thirties to pursue their cock carousel period, and optimally settle down just before they hit the wall such that they still can snatch a high income beta bucks. While I certainly agree with the logic behind this argument, there is another reason why women prefer to settle down in their late twenties that is not so often heard.

Modelling Marriage Payoff

From a financial perspective, a marriage contract today is a nothing but a contingent claim on the future income stream and assets from the higher-earning spouse to the lower-earning spouse, i.e. typically from the man to the woman. (In previous times, the payoff also depended on the lower-earning spouse not committing any dealbreakers such as cheating, but these payoff conditions have been dropped with the introduction of no-fault divorces).

Such derivatives have two values: An exercise value (payout now depending on current value) and a time value (the potential value increase the payout may have in the future).

Now consider a young freshman at university. His future income stream can roughly be estimated depending on his field he will study, but with a high variance. From a marriage perspective, he has a very low exercise value, but a high time value.

This holds true until he graduates and even a few years after, but within a few years of work the volatility of his future income decreases and starts to become predictable with a much lower variance. This is roughly when he is in his late twenties or early thirties. He now has a high exercise value, and a much lower time value (as his path is basically determined).

Pricing the contract

In a no-arbitrage world, the time value of the freshman is already priced in his marriage contract, and thus the marriage contract for a electrical engineer student should have a high value (i.e. he should be able to choose a hot chick). Since most EE students are not aware of this, they are willing to sell themselves at a much cheaper price than what they in theory could do.

Optimal strategy

Now what is the ultimate strategy from an investors (or a womans) perspective? You build relationships with guys that want to sell these contracts when they have high time value (beta orbiters), agree on a price below market value (you), wait a few years till you see which one have the highest exercise value and obtain the contract on the previously agreed price (you marry him).

Conclusion and TLDR

By pushing the marriage towards 30, women will have a much better grasp of what type of man she is going to marry. While in previous times a woman may have had to hope that her man becomes something, women today hope to catch a man when he already is something.

This shift in female mate-seeking behaviour serves as another explanation as to why beta tendencies (in the sense of stability etc) were good in previous times, because they were a future indicator of your provider capabilities, whereas today it only matters that the Beta makes the bucks.