Talking about money on a first date has always been a little like discussing your bowel habits over the starters: technically a normal human topic, socially a disaster. So it is reassuring that a generation of daters has finally found a solution to the awkwardness, which is to stop talking about money entirely and let the stars do it. Consider the case of the person who, according to a recent piece asking how soon into dating you should reveal your salary, told a partner they had no idea what the other person earned. Nobody in that relationship knows the figure, and nobody has yet asked the planets for permission to find out.
The mechanism here is simple. Your salary is a number that affects how you split rent, whether you can afford a holiday in Lisbon, and how worried you should be when your partner says they are “just going to sort the boiler.” Keeping it secret for months is less a privacy choice than a slow-moving audit nobody agreed to. Yet the sensible advice, that you share the basics once you are planning a shared future, has begun to sound too reasonable for a culture that prefers its romance with a side of astrology.
So here is the timeline the stars apparently recommend. Aries, who are impulsive, should disclose their salary on the first date, ideally before the bread arrives. Taurus, who value stability, should wait until the second anniversary and then present the figure in a laminated spreadsheet. Gemini should reveal it, then retract it, then reveal it again on a different day. Virgos will need eleven months and a formal budget review. Pisces will tell you everything, including their salary, which they will also have miscalculated.
The joke works because it is recognisable. Most of us have a friend who has been dating someone for a year without knowing where they bank. What to do with that information is straightforward: share your rough income before you move in together, not because a sign on a calendar demands it, but because a relationship you are about to build on money should not have a blind spot in its foundations. Stars are for weekend reading. Payslips are for the kitchen table.