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Comment by EatingWithForks | Hacker News Reader

I think definitions of "a finished person" are being mismatched here. in my experience most people just want a partner that is a functional adult. Knows how to eat properly. Understands taxes. Can speak intelligently about cost of living topics like budgeting groceries and entertainment. Can drink moderately on a weeknight knowing they have to go to work the next day.

Edited to add: In my experience, if you don't date someone who "can adult", you will have to parent your partner, which doesn't go all that well if you're not kinky like that.

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Yeah, and all of that sounds totally reasonable until you have a working knowledge of lots of interactions between tons of real people you've actually spoken with and had connections with to learn how life actually works.

Your requirements per a "functional adult" are an example of people asking for too much because they have no practical understanding of reality:

Americans don't eat properly. The average American is overweight.[1]

Americans don't know anything about taxes.[2]

Americans don't understand cost of living. Barely anyone knows what the CPI-W is or how it differs from the CPI-U.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/body-measurements.htm

[2]: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/americans-dont-know...

I wouldn't consider weight to be a good indicator of capacity to make meals. I know thin people who I wouldn't trust to make me a cup of water and I know fat people who can adhere to a strict diet for their children.

I also wouldn't consider CPI-W and CPI-U to be cost-of-living concerns. I consider being able to say "hey, honey, we can't spend 500$ on your mobile game because eggs cost 7 for a dozen at the grocery store this week, we need to revise our budget" to be adult behavior.

Missing the forest for the trees.

Fat people truly adhering to proper eating don't stay fat. Cost of living and budgets are two separate but related topics.

I think you're kind of missing the point I'm trying to make. There's no point in someone who can define a term for broader trends if they cannot balance a personal budget. The capacity to define a broader trend can inform budgets, but I wouldn't date someone who is shocked when they have no money left for food because they spent it all on a shoe sale. I wouldn't consider that person a functional adult even if they happened to be thin and understood nuances between cost of living statistical measurements.

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Personal swipes will get you banned here, so would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make your substantive points without any of that?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I never said people don't get budgets wrong. I merely said it's reasonable to try to prioritize dating people who can sensibly budget according to their income and their cost of goods and services in their area. It shouldn't be a consistent problem that you run out of rent money because you didn't budget for paying rent. I think you're misunderstanding my words because you're conflating these sets of preferences like some kind of demand for idealized humans. I think I'm pointing out that people's desires aren't unreasonable and exaggerating them is just strawman behavior.

Savings rates being at all-time lows doesn't mean that people don't know how to budget. It might be that budgeting has become much harder. Similarly, I don't think someone being fat means they don't understand how to cook a healthy meal. It might be that keeping thin has become much harder.

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