The Best Place to find Young, Spendy Professionals

Some people will continue to fall in love in online chat rooms, others in bars and clubs, but I’m envisioning a Cambrian Explosion of relationships sparking up in credit card-sponsored airport lounges. Young, attractive people with their matching athletic clothes and their sleek carryon luggage. Add the joy of free drinks and ceiling-high windows and you may as well have standardized prenup templates as placemats.

And this isn’t to make fun of anyone. I know that once my husband and I begin to travel more, I will try to convince him that exclusive lounge access will make sense. And to make matters more privileged, I want kids that play badminton and other low-impact sports, I want to have our future dogs professionally trained to be off leash, and I want to be someone’s plus one to their overpriced country club. I’m as basic as it gets.

But as I peruse promotional material, I can’t help but imagine airport lounge access as a starting point for becoming a less compassionate member of society. Both in terms of empathy as well as the propensity to give and to who specifically. I have no doubt that fancy credit card holders donate significant sums of money, but I imagine that they are donating to the institutions that they themselves frequent and directly enjoy. I’m talking concert halls, art museums, historical societies—all of which add color and meaning to people’s lives of course, but should be a secondary rest stop for wealth.

Certainly, seeing your name carved in the marble of a museum lobby sounds fantastic, as would invitations to white glove galas and exclusive unveilings. But I would hope that anyone who makes a large pledge to a museum would also remember to research the best domestic violence shelters or food banks even though they would likely never need the services themselves.

Even as someone whose livelihood depends on the whims of wealthy people and their desire to polish pretty cars, I still hope for a future where every nonprofit’s donation page is required to disclose how much the highest paid employee earns. I hope for a world where the Form 990 isn’t just buried on random government websites, but is instead genuinely used to gauge which charities need the most support. If there was just a little more transparency about who is legally making out like a bandit, I think we could all rest easier knowing that young professionals are in airport lounges discussing smoothies and credit card strategies.