I [36M] am a bartender and earn a lot less than my girlfriend [35F]. On top of that, my child support absolutely drains my bank account to the point that I'm consistently late on paying bills. My girlfriend is a high school teacher of 12 years and while, by no means wealthy, she is comfortable and seems to have managed her money a lot better than I have.

As someone with ADHD, my financial history is abhorred and I have very poor credit and I've learned to only buy what I can pay for in cash. I have no idea what her financial history is, but from what she's told me, and what I can gather, she has very good credit and can afford to pay for things a lot easier than I can. Just the other day she mentioned her retirement account and alluded to how much was in there (she was considering dipping into it for a down payment on a house). I don't have more than $200 in my bank account right now and that's it. No savings, no retirement account - nothing.

We've been going out for a 4 months now and are pretty serious. However I'm beginning to be concerned that I'll end up bringing her down by trying to make up the difference of whatever I can't bring to the relationship financially in the future, whatever that may be.

So how have you dealt with being the one who earns less or more than your partner? I know that if you love each other, money doesn't matter. And we do, but at some point, I would imagine that relationships that have disparate incomes would hit a wall.

tl;dr: I earn much less than my gf and want to know how to deal with it.