Gold Digger – Story 1 – Hi

Hi.

My name is Mila and I am looking for a husband.

Not like – eventually, when it happens, when the universe sends me someone and I feel it in my chest and my friends cry at the wedding.

No. I mean I am actively, deliberately, color-codedly looking for a husband. I have a spreadsheet. It has tabs. One of the tabs is called Acquisition Difficulty and I promise you that is not a joke.

Let me back up.

I’m 28. Dark hair, olive skin, legs that have gotten me places I’m not going to pretend they haven’t. I grew up in a flat where the heating worked about sixty percent of the time and my mum clipped coupons on Sunday mornings with the focus of someone defusing a bomb. We weren’t poor. We were careful. The kind of careful that means you learn from a very young age that nice things belong to other people.

I decided that was somebody else’s problem now.

Here’s what I know. I’m beautiful. Not polished – I still don’t know which fork is the fish fork and I laugh too loud at the wrong moment and last month I called a Michelin-starred restaurant’s signature dish “pretty good” directly to the chef’s face because I panicked. But I walk into rooms and they go quiet. I’ve known this since I was sixteen and men started holding doors open like I was made of something breakable.

So yes. I made a plan. Is it slightly insane? Probably. Am I doing it anyway? Obviously.

The spreadsheet has columns for net worth (estimated), industry, relationship history, and what I call “acquisition difficulty” – which is a measure of how many women are also trying to acquire them and how much competition I’m realistically dealing with. I sort by net worth descending. I color-code by urgency. Green means active pursuit. Yellow means warming. Red means I misjudged something and I’m cutting my losses.

I have never been in red. I have come close. I don’t like to talk about it.

The plan is not: marry someone terrible and be miserable with good shoes. The plan is: find someone wealthy, find someone I can actually stand to be in a room with, and build a life that doesn’t involve clipping coupons on Sundays. This is not the 1800s. Women have always married strategically. I’m just the only one writing it down.

My mother would be horrified. She raised me to believe love arrives like weather – uncontrollable, inconvenient, and you just get wet.

I raised myself to believe love is a decision you make with good information.

We haven’t talked about the plan.

Currently I have two active targets.

One sends cars.

One kisses first and asks questions later.

Both are becoming a problem.

The spreadsheet is updated weekly. The plan is sound. The execution is mostly going well.

Mostly.

Spreadsheet status:

Richard → active. acquisition: progressing.

Noah → active. acquisition: early stage.

Feelings → not a column.

Spreadsheet note:

I keep checking anyway.

– Mila

My friends think this is the funniest thing they’ve ever heard. They’re not wrong.