LOVE AND MONEY: What Your Finances Say About Your Personal Relationships

What your finances say. . ."" is pretty much what you'd expect: if he handles the checkbook, it's a traditional marriage; if the house is in his name, she'll get shafted in the divorce settlement; and so forth. What the title doesn't specify is that this is largely a feminist's book for protecting other women, though men do come in for a little sympathy when they can't meet the ex-wife's demands (particularly if there's a second wife watching her husband's salary vanish in alimony and child-support payments). Journalist Colman studies the problem of dividing the paycheck in dual-career marriages, in live-in arrangements, etc. (When money mingles, in the latter instance, it's usually a sign of more serious commitment.) She discusses the perennial quandary of who picks up the tab on a date: clear issues of dependence and independence are involved, but ""the overwhelming majority"" of women still expect men to foot the bill early-on. There's more about special situations--divorce, reconstituted families, retirement; but what the advice mostly comes down to is sitting down and discussing needs, spending habits, plans for the future, and so on. The subject also lends itself to beating quite a few dead horses, particularly as regards the effects of women's liberation on the old ""breadwinner/breadmaker"" dichotomy: The ""hundreds of people throughout the country"" quoted from ""off-the-record interviews"" are often people who behaved stupidly and lived to regret it. Little more than a graphic series of warnings.