CHOOSE MONEY OVER LOVE? NOT FOR A MILLION BUCKS.

Byline: > MELISSA HECKSCHER

Patti Stanger does not approve of my new boyfriend.

Why? Because he's broke. Totally, completely, can't-even-buy-me-a-movie-ticket broke.

And as the founder of The Millionaire's Club, a Los Angeles matchmaking service that pairs rich guys with the women seeking to date them, Stanger believes that not only can money buy (or at least, encourage) love; it should be a prerequisite.

"A woman has to have a few non-negotiables and one of these non-negotiables is that he must be financially stable," says Stanger, whose reality show "The Millionaire Matchmaker," based on her business, premiered Tuesday on Bravo. "He's got to have a decent job."

To join the Millionaire's Club, of course, he's got to have a little more than that. Men must have at least seven digits in the bank and pay Stanger anywhere from $15,000 to $150,000 a year for her apparently infamous skills as Cupid (she's brokered more than 300 marriages).

Being listed in the catalog of would-be wives is free for women. Not surprisingly, more than 25,000 women, about 10,000 of them in L.A., have signed up for the club since its inception in 2000.

And while it's easy to call them gold-diggers (I did), Stanger says they're merely "traditional" women who aspire to be stay-at-home moms and need the corresponding matrimonial income to make it happen.

"I don't know about you, but at the end of the day, when I have a child, I don't want to be married to the surfer who can't make two nickels to rub together," Stanger says. "I want to be married to the president of the company who gives me insurance, who has my financial security set up, who can buy a nice home, send my kids to good schools."

Maybe she's got a point. My singer-songwriter (rock star?) boyfriend can't even buy me dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, let alone the house, the white picket fence and the private school tuition for the two kids I've had pictured and named in my imagination for as long as I've had working ovaries.

But he is sweet. And smart. And sincere. And cute. And wait a minute -- this isn't the 1950s. Women can work; men can stay home. Lots of couples do it.

Granted, on my salary we'd be living in a studio apartment with enough money for a dog, not a kid. But still, isn't it a little antiquated and unfair to say the guy has to be the breadwinner?

Not according to William Harley, author of "His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage" (Revell 2001), who says many marriages suffer when the woman is the head of the household.

"In a significant amount of couples I see in my practice where the woman makes more than the man, she feels used, like she is responsible for everything," Harley told WebMD.

I didn't used to care. I remember when I was 18 I met a 26-year-old guy who spent every day playing beach volleyball. He didn't have a "real job" and I didn't care. He was broke and tan and cute and I wanted to date him.

If I met that guy today, I'd probably say something sensible, something like, "Yeah, but you're going to get a job eventually, right?"

Wow, that proves it: I am officially old.

But smart, right? After all, financial disagreements consistently rank as the No. 1 reason for divorce in the United States. And that's despite all those "for richer or for poorer" wedding vows.

Maybe that's why a study conducted by wealth-research firm Prince & Associates found that two-thirds of women surveyed -- and half of the men -- were "very" or "extremely" willing to marry for money, with the average fit-to-be-a-spouse price tag being $1.5 million.

As for me, I'd like to think I'm in the minority. That I'm in that dwindling faction of L.A. women who would never marry for money because they're still hoping to marry for, oh I don't know ... love?

Crazy, right?

OK, love plus $11.75. You know, just enough for a movie ticket.

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Patti Stanger plays Cupid to the "financially stable" on the Bravo reality show "The Millionaire Matchmaker," which is baased on her business.