<prompt> Human: Just had an interesting conversation with some of my friends. We talked about how one of them met a girl that he invested 1 years worth of time with only to bail at the end when he found out she had a whopping 180K student loan debt and 30K in credit card debt with a degree in something like Basketweaving. He regretted the time to say the least. You could say hes a superficial person but I personally think hes just looking for a responsible person. Cant fault him for that.So that made me curious. At what point did you break the ice about finances when you really like a potential partner? Sometime during the relationship phase? Before marriage? Or you didnt care and went balls in?  <response>: Usually when dating someone you will be able to see the result of spending. New fancy car? New clothing? You can see evidence of spending in what that person does.A lack of showing spending could be a high savings rate or crippling debt. The difference can usually be discerned in the partners stress levels. However, the partner can show no stress levels despite crippling debt sounds like your friends case in which case I wouldnt want to date that person anyway. If they dont respect their own finances, why would they respect mine? What other elephants in the room are they ignoring?Whatever the person does in their alone time will come out in their time socializing. So usually you can discern a financial situation within a few months. Id say once you start talking about marriage but you havent popped the question that it would be a good time to talk about assets. 