High Debt and Soaring Costs Turn Financial Habits into the Ultimate Dating Dealbreaker

Driven by ongoing economic pressure, nearly half of adults in the United States now evaluate a prospective partner’s balance sheet before embarking on a serious romance. TD Bank’s 2026 Love & Money Survey of 2,000 adults revealed that 46% of Americans allow a partner’s debt or financial management to shape their romantic choices—a figure driven higher by Millennials (51%) and Gen Z (49%) compared to Gen X or Baby Boomers (39% each).

This generational reversal directly challenges the longstanding assumption that younger demographics approach monetary matters with greater leniency and fewer expectations than older cohorts. Ashley Weeks, a wealth strategist at TD Bank who works directly with clients on the survey’s findings, said the shift reflects economic conditions rather than a change in values.

“There’s a pretty big divide between Gen X and Boomer responses versus Millennials and Gen Z,” Weeks told Fortune. “What we take from that is likely these are just a response to the existing stimuli that are out there in the economic space.” That includes things like student debt, inflation, and housing costs that have made personal finance inseparable from other parts of younger people’s lives, including who they choose to date.

Weeks said he sees the pattern firsthand. TD Wealth advisors often meet separately with older and younger generations within the same family, and the conversations diverge sharply. “The conversation for younger individuals does seem to focus more around the fact that someone’s ability to survive and be financially independent is an important factor now when evaluating the long-term prospects for a relationship,” he said.

He added that older relatives don’t always grasp the pressure younger people are under: “Sometimes senior generations—it seems like parents or grandparents—fail to grasp what the younger generations are going through.”

Prenups go from taboo to standard practice

More than half of respondents nationally (54%) said they would consider signing a prenuptial agreement, a number well above what prenups have historically polled at. Weeks attributed the shift to generational exposure to divorce. “People have seen their parents, and maybe their grandparents, go through a divorce, and the situation might not have transpired in a way that a younger generation thought was equitable,” he said. Weeks noted this dovetails with broader coverage of the trend—millennial and Gen Z women in particular have driven a cultural shift toward treating prenups as a wealth-planning tool rather than a sign of distrust.

Historically, prenuptial agreements were utilized by only a small fraction of wealthy couples—often estimated at under 10% in previous decades—primarily to protect inheritance or corporate assets. Today, as younger workers enter marriage later in life after building personal savings, acquiring retirement accounts, or managing student loan liabilities, financial experts view prenups as a standardized tool for establishing personal asset isolation and debt protection.

“By at least considering it, that’s one way you can create your own rules,” Weeks said. “Versus essentially having to live with the default rules in the state you happen to be living.”

Anecdotally, he said, clients who go through the process of drafting a prenup seem less likely to divorce. “I don’t know if that’s because they have the communication skills on the front end to actually have that conversation,” he said. “That portends a healthy relationship, but that’s what I’ve observed.”

Miami feels the most pressure to keep up appearances

The survey oversampled six metro areas—New York, Boston, Miami, Philadelphia, Charlotte and Washington, D.C.—and Miami stood out as the most financially anxious city surveyed. More than seven out of 10 (73%) of Miami respondents said they feel pressure at least sometimes to appear more financially successful in their personal lives, the highest share of any metro in the survey. Miami residents were also more likely than the national average to say they have at least one financial secret (65% vs. 56% nationally), and 58% said they’re at least sometimes scared or embarrassed to discuss finances with a partner, compared with 48% nationally.

Miami’s elevated financial anxiety reflects acute regional economic pressures in recent years, marked by rapid population growth, escalating residential rent burdens, and sharp cost-of-living increases across South Florida. As luxury real estate growth outpaces local wage growth, residents face heightened lifestyle comparisons and compounding economic strains relative to other East Coast metro areas.

That pressure appears to be reshaping life decisions in Miami more than almost anywhere else surveyed. Eighty-two percent of Miami respondents said they’ve delayed at least one major life milestone because of their finances, compared with 69% of New Yorkers. Miami residents were also considerably more likely to have received financial help from family—75%, compared with 59% in New York.

New York, notably, reported lower rates of financial secrecy and delayed milestones than Miami, but New Yorkers were still more likely than the general population to say they make financial decisions independently: 30% of New York respondents said they mostly make financial decisions on their own, compared with 21% nationally. More than half of New Yorkers (56%) said they’d consider a prenup, in line with the national trend TD documented.

“I don’t think humans have changed,” he said. “I just think that the economic environment is such that that’s the obvious thing to do when it takes so much to buy a house now, or to save up, or to get credit, or to pay off loans.” He connected the dynamic to reporting on young adults increasingly relying on family for financial support and a labor force participation rate that has fallen to its lowest level in 50 years outside the pandemic—both signs, he said, that the financial stakes of any given relationship are higher than they used to be.

“If you’re commingling finances with someone, their debts become your debts. Their spending habits you’re largely tied to,” Weeks said. “I think it’s an awareness of that. The fact that that is going to have a major impact over your relationship satisfaction and your life satisfaction.”

Financial secrecy is widespread and hard to explain

Nationally, 30% of respondents admitted to hiding a purchase or financial decision from a partner or family member, and 11% said they keep a bank account hidden entirely from the people closest to them — a number that stood out to Weeks. “That takes some level of subterfuge to, especially if you’re married and filing a joint tax return,” he said. “That level of deviance. That one did stand out and surprise me.”

Weeks said credit card debt, gambling and bad credit scores were the most common things people admitted hiding from partners, and attributed the pattern to a fear of judgment rather than deliberate deception. “There are concerns about sharing with a family member about spending habits, and obviously there are issues with communication, where people feel like if they’re upfront about what they’ve done, there’s going to be some judgment,” he said.

Support flows both ways

The survey also found that financial help within families isn’t one-directional. Roughly two-thirds of respondents said they’ve received financial assistance from family or someone close to them, and about 70% said they’ve given it—evidence, Weeks said, that money moves across generations rather than strictly downward from parents to children. “As people grow and as they age, they both receive help, and then when they’re in a position to give it, the data suggests that a vast majority do,” he said, pointing to examples ranging from parents funding a down payment to something as small as keeping an adult child on a family phone plan. About a third of respondents identified as part of the “sandwich generation,” supporting both children and aging relatives at the same time.

This dynamic highlights how financial interdependency has become a core mechanism for navigating economic volatility across age groups. Rather than simple downward inheritance, households are relying on multi-generational financial safety nets to offset high living costs, turning family support into a routine strategy for personal fiscal stability.