In my naïve youth I had some insights into how things really worked but overall I was just as blind and stupid as everyone else. But one thing I got right was I hid my money.

I knew that as a man one of the things women would want from me was my money. I made the mistake early on of spending my money as a beta orbiter on gifts, flowers, and other tokens of affection. That was a bad investment that earned no returns whatsoever. Fortunately I made that mistake early when my earning potential was very low.

This of course confused me at the time. If women want nice things, why aren't they more rewarding to the men who give them nice things? I couldn't see the forest for the trees.

Add to this the terrible example my father set in front of me. He got my mother everything she could ever want and plenty that she did not even ask for. She didn't care. None of his gifts earned him any real affection, just an insincere thank you and a roll of her eyes. Her lack of gratitude shocked and confused me for years.

These personal examples ran counter to what I understood. When a woman gets engaged, she shows off the ring. When a woman is on a date, she expects the man to pay. Women marry up. These truisms seemed false in the face of my personal experience up to then. Something was missing from the equation, or the equation was simply wrong.

There was no doubt that wealth and status attracted female attention. It would seem to follow that lavish gifts and expensive dinners would also get their attention but that was clearly wrong. But there is a mistake in that reasoning: having wealth and status are states of being, they are not overt actions with the intent to woo or to seduce. Gifts and flowers and candy and dates are all well and good, but they do not serve any purpose except as an attempt to display your status. And they fail.

In an article I found offering advice on how to date a stripper, the first thing the author pointed out was to never be her customer. You go the bar instead of to the catwalk, and look on from a distance. Once you are a source of income for her, you are nothing but a source of income for her. Applied abstractly: if you make yourself a source of gifts and material goods that is all you will be to her.

So gift giving is out, at least when it’s built into any attempts to seduce. Women want you for your status, not for what you have already given them. They want from you only what they have not gotten from you yet. Once you give something away to them, there is less of you materially to offer. If your gift is cheap she can smell poverty on you, and if it’s expensive she can smell desperation and debt.

But I went further than that. I didn't just stop giving things away. I actually started lying about how much money I made and how much money my father made. I made the numbers lower than they actually were. In my somewhat naïve mind I told myself that I wanted a woman that would love me for me and not my money, but the benefits are more nuanced than that.

When you intentionally discredit your wealth and earnings as status markers you are forced to play up everything else. You lift more. You engage in more hobbies and interests. You focus on having more things to talk about. When you don’t let yourself use money as a crutch you can finally use your legs and engage in real game.

And you will meet higher quality women. In fact I will say that this is the first filter in determining if a woman is worth the risk of marriage: is she still interested in you when you present yourself as having less as opposed to playing up your assets.

I did not meet my wife until after I started hiding my money. I kept the facade up for a year with her. It didn't break until a friend of mine (who is a terrible wing-man) broke it for me by talking nonstop about my parents gigantic house. I almost lost her then, but when I explained that I wanted a woman who loved me for me and not for money oh good God did that work well with her.

Did that mean that I stopped hiding my money? Oh hell no. I may be married, but we have Trusts and LLCs and other vehicles that make it extremely difficult for my exact worth to be completely known. I highly recommend that even if you just cohabitate that you put your home in a Trust (not an LLC, a Trust) with you as the beneficiary followed by your descendants then next of kin. If you have a mortgage (and taxes, we all have taxes) then pay the Trust rent money then have the Trust pay the mortgage. This way you are a tenanted beneficiary, not an owner. This and other tricks of the trade are how you can keep on hiding your money.

So in short: hide your money when looking for a woman so that you emphasize your other assets (education, appearance, physical fitness, and personal tastes) and so that the quality of women you deal with increases (no gold diggers). Then keep hiding it in clever ways so that if a low quality women slips past your radar she can take as little of your material wealth as possible.