One question I frequently encounter with online daters has to do with salary. Specifically, do you share your salary on your profile?

I know that most online dating sites have a spot to list your salary, but should you? When it came to giving advice to my clients, I always said to leave it blank. Why? Salary is a very personal thing. Putting your salary on your profile does only serves to give other online daters an impression about you that they won’t have the context to justify yet. In other words, someone has to get to know you first.

There are some wealthy guys and girls, like this airline pilot, who fear that listing their true salary would only encourage daters to either come after their money or intimidate them. Still others, who earn less, feel that listing their salary might turn daters off and prevent them from getting to know them.

What do you think? Does salary play an important role in online dating? And if so, what do you do to combat it?

Image from Morguefile.

1 comment

  1. Dating Headshots
    16. June 2008 – 6:04 pm Salary can play a roll in online dating but like you said, I think there is much more potential for it to play a negative role than a positive one. I think that spot in a profile is best left blank. You likely already list an occupation, which will likely give the person an idea of a salary range so I don’t see why to go any farther than that. Do you really want to wonder if every person who contacts you is doing so because you listed your salary as +100K? Or if you’re a teacher, artist, musician or social worker who has great qualities do you want to risk not being contacted because of your low base salary? I think it’s best left alone. If a relationship gets serious then you can talk about it if you want.