Grinder in your 40s, designer everything on a credit card. Avoiding your retirement savings like a bad date or an ex at the bar. Let's talk about how gay culture of Instagram gratification, image obsession and money shame is wreaking havoc on your financial future and what we can do about it here on Queer Money, episode number 591. Now, just to be clear, this episode is not about blaming, it's not about shaming.
There's going to be a little bit of finger wagging, but remember, whenever there's finger a finger pointing at you, there are three pointing back at the person. Who'S at least judging. Yeah, we are culpable for as all of these as anybody else. And really what this is to do is just get the conversation started. Because especially with our new Yahoo.
Finance show, I can't tell you how many people have told us after we've interviewed them, from like Tim Gunn to David Collins, just we don't have these conversations. And we're all struggling with very often the three topics we're going to cover today. So let's start to have the conversation, put it out in the open, and let's see what we can start to do as a community to just maybe improve a little bit.
Not to like change who we are, but to just prepare ourselves for our long term financial security. So we're going to dive into that today a little bit. Yeah. So we're going to start off by talking about Grindr, gay sex and instant gratification. I am kind of glad that Grindr was just a little bit after our time. I think we both had Grindr accounts for a minute. And I think originally it was when we were traveling, traveling abroad. And we were trying to use it as, hey, where's the bar to go to?
Or where's a good place to go eat? And we're like, I don't know how many you guys aren't using this right. You can come to my house. And we're like, that's not what we're looking for. I have a salad you can toss. So the reality is that swipe and hookup culture is a pattern that is in our community, a pattern of impulse impulsivity. And it's actually attached to some of our financial and emotional feelings. Right. The things that we. I think it's like the gerbil going to get the water.
I think we're constantly going up there and just trying to get that. That drink. So it's like a dopamine hit. Yeah. It's almost like A drug addiction in a way. Right, right. Did somebody respond? Did they give me my. Did they. They actually send me the dick pig. You know, and we actually. All those little micro dopamine hits, they just kind of like. It's like an addiction. And ultimately, if you land the hookup, then score.
But, you know, of course, as we've heard, the hookups are few and far between. Yeah, but what are we giving up? What are we trading off for this? Sex and gratification. Instant gratification. And this feeling of I'm being seen on the app. Right. Well, it's interesting because we as gay men use dating apps three times as much as our straight counterparts. This is per a Pew research study that was done in 2020. I'd be curious to see how that skyrocketed even more so in the pandemic.
Yeah, no doubt. But now that you just say that, my. One of my questions is, are straight men using their dating apps to actually find dates and hope and maybe life partners? Whereas very often gay men are using dating apps just have sex? Yeah. Well, and I think that's why we actually. We originally called these hookup apps. Not a lot of us did not call these dating apps. I was. I'm not looking for my husband on Grindr, like, so. It's interesting.
Seven park data found that Grindr users spend, on average, about 165app hours. I'm sorry, minutes per week. That's about 2 1/4 hours per week on Grindr. That's crazy. It's. When you think about it, it seems like a lot of. A lot of time. But let's. Let's. Week after week, though, let's spread this out. If you do this every week, then you're looking at probably around 11 to 12 hours a month. You're looking at about 143 hours a year. And that's more than most of us get in vacation time.
Yeah. From our jobs. That is about a day and a half worth of work that you're spending on Grindr. If you got a day and a half off every single month, you'd be like, well, that's pretty sweet. Yeah. The next. Yeah. Having that extra time. So what is it doing to us financially? Well, let's just say all of those hours are hours that you would get paid at the average hourly wage in the United States. Well, in April this year, 2025, that amount was $36.06 per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
So on a weekly basis, you're basically giving up almost $400 and on an annual basis, it's over $5,100. That time is you're trading away from potential earnings. Right. And you're obviously not going to be necessarily working during that time. But it's just, it's an idea of how much more productive could you be. Maybe finally start that small business or, you know, put in that overtime, or, you know, it's just. And of course, sometimes you need sex. So go have your sex.
We're not shaming you, right? You know we're not. But, you know, I was thinking back, you made the comment, we, we kind of. We were around before in the dating scene, around before Grindr. But I remember back in the late 90s and early 2000s, there were plenty of nights where I was sitting up on my computer until 1, 2, 3 o' clock in the morning having these sexualized conversations in chat rooms and on AOL chat rooms. David. AOL chat rooms, yes. That's how old I am.
But, you know, I was sitting there having these sexualized conversations, hoping that somebody would send me a dick pic or maybe I would actually have a hookup. And plenty of those nights were nights where the next morning I had to be getting up at 7 o' clock to go to work. So if I'm staying up until 1, 2, 3 o' clock in the morning and then I have to be up at 7 o' clock, there's no way I'm getting enough sleep if I'm not getting enough sleep.
We all know the more sleep that you deprived you are, the more likely you are to act as if. Or your body acts as if you're drunk, right? So how effective was I really at work? Especially because I had a very highly intensive knowledge job where I needed to be interacting and reading information and putting information into the computer. I can't imagine that I was as efficient as I could have been.
If you, I think, you know, if you go to the office and you're not performing at your best, you're kind of lower vibration. Even if the people who you work with or your boss can't necessarily articulate it, they're maybe getting these vibes, like if David's constantly low energy or he's just a little bit slower than you would think he should be, maybe he. Maybe they're not short, less slower, but. Maybe, maybe, maybe there's a problem there, right? And so maybe you don't.
You're not performing necessarily as well as your peer who doesn't stay up till 2 or 3 o' clock in the morning. To. To find sex in AOL chat rooms. And then when there's an opportunity for a promotion, they get it because they're always performing a little bit better. Yeah, that's quite possible. It could be the reason why I was passed up for so many opportunities at work. Number two is we're calling it Gucci and the queer need to be seen. Right?
Gay men have a long history of using luxury as armor. Right. I mean, I just think about the years we'd go to parties, cocktail parties, pride parties, fundraisers, and like, gay men are just dressed to the nines. And it was like this, oh, you've got these shoes, I've got these shoes. Oh, you've got those shoes, I've got these shoes. And it's always who's. We're all trying to sort of one up each other. And I'm as culpable as anybody, right? No, I think you are. Both of us.
I think that you did it a lot more with designer clothes, but I did it with a little bit with style and what I did with my hair and more so because you had hair, what I did with my body. We oftentimes use the things that we have or we add adornments to ourselves to make ourselves look better. And it just. It's. There's a trap of always putting up that facade, because the bigger the facade becomes, the smaller we become behind it.
Because we realize more and more and more that we are actually lying, especially when we don't really have the money to afford those kind of things. And that's the thing. There's the popular catchphrase, wealth whispers. Right? It doesn't scream. So if you're walking around with a Balenciaga T shirt and you've got the Gucci loafers with the big logo and the big gigantic guest belt logo. Yes, Gucci bel. That's an inside joke, folks.
But anyway, Gucci belt logo, I mean, you've got all these, like, logos showing to really, really, honestly wealthy people. It's a sign that you're faux rich. You're not actually truly wealthy. Right, Right. And we know, like, after the one thing we did get from this stupid tariff war, is China coming out and telling everybody, hey, we're making all these luxury brands in our factories for $30 or whatever. Right?
And then whomever Prada or Hermes is charging you $6,000 or something, exactly the same exact product, all because it has a logo on it. So we're spending thousands of dollars on clothing that's actually not even worth the money we're spending it on when we could be putting that towards better things. Right. It doesn't always have to be clothing. I mean, you think about the. You know, we kind of jokingly say this.
You walk into any gay man's bathroom and you're immediately going to see 500 to $1,000 worth of beauty products, whether it's shampoos or makeup or hair care products or anything like that. We are literally spending as much as and sometimes than what straight women are to try to win a partner or to look good for the other women, because that's usually who they're trying to look good for. We do that as well to ourselves and we spend money doing it right.
And we're putting a lot of that money on our credit card. Studies have shown this over and over again. Credit cards create this wealth illusion and we're masters of using it. Credit Karma study from 2022 found that gay individuals are two times as likely to struggle with credit card debt. So we're paying $800 for a bell that costs $30 to manufacture just for validation. Right. So we have to maybe just. You can't.
Not that you can have the stuff, it's just think about what are the consequences of the stuff that you're having in order to seek validation. Maybe go to therapy. Yeah. Work on that. And then you can save that money down the road and invest that money in the stock market so you can retire early. Let me use an economic term though, opportunity cost. An opportunity cost is. And we all know this, right?
Standing in the bar, there are two hot guys and you look at one and you're like, I want to have him. And then you look at another and you're like, I want to have him. And the opportunity cost is. Well, I know some of you probably would be able to get both of them. Reality. You can either get one or the other or if you wait too long, you're going to be the one on the sidewalk sale hoping to find anybody to take you home or go or. I only ever looked at one guy.
But I think that the whole idea of opportunity costs. What are we giving up with the trade offs? The time that we spend trying to get the attention or trying to get the sex. The money that we give up because we're trying to get the attention, we're trying to get the sex. The approval. Validation. Validation. Right. Yeah. And what's really. We're trying to make up a lot of pain. Yeah, I was gonna say that's what's really behind all this.
That's number three, that is guilt, shame, and a. And financial avoidance. And John and I are very, very, very well aware of how this works because it was what held us back for such a long time. We, so many of us as gay men, we feel so ashamed with who we are, especially if we are not like one of those a list gay listers, right?
The folks who truly do have the multiple six figure jobs, the pope, people who truly do have the home in the Hamptons, the people who truly do have the vacations in Mykonos and all of the different places, and they can truly do it. Those of us who don't, we get this feeling of shame and oh, my God, I can't do it. And what does it do for. It stresses us out. You were just gonna mention this earlier. 72% of LGBTQ adults say that they are dealing with a high amount of financial stress.
And that's actually higher than the general population. Not significantly, but it is higher than the general population. And what's so funny about it is everybody thinks that we're so fabulous, so we have more stress and we. Everybody thinks we're fabulous. What's going on? What's the disconnect there? Yeah. So your homework assignment this week is just analyze your spending and ask yourself, why are you spending the way you are? Why am I spending my money on this, that and the other thing?
And is it truly providing me the long term return that I'm looking for? If you want to see if you're on track for a basic happy or fabulous retirement, DM us the word fabulous on Instagram or scan the QR code here, I guess David somewhere putting it over his face and we'll send you a happy. Yeah, send you a free copy of our happy gay retirement calculator. And if you love this episode, please share with your favorite brunch queen.
Who needs to hear the message maybe from somebody else other than you, Right? Next week, we're sharing the top five places for gay people to retire in Spain. So until next time, stay fabulous.