Note: To protect the identity of the financial dominatrix in this column, she will be known as a Carolina Dinero for the purposes of this article.

Time is money, this I know. For all my employers tell me so. But if I could, I’d have my way. I’d seduce, humiliate, and shop all day.

For those of you who recognize that melody from your Sunday school days, I apologize.

Last week I entered the world of financial domination, and to be honest, I didn’t want to leave.

For a split second, I considered abandoning my degree and getting into the business full time when I saw my assignment lineup. Needless to say, last week was long and hard, and not in the fun way.

Lucky for you guys, my dirty talk is nowhere near dirty enough for this business.

The fetish of financial domination involves submissive men, often referred to as ‘slaves’ or ‘pigs,’ transferring sums of money or sending gifts to women for specific dominatrix services.

A relationship can cost anywhere from a mere $20 a week, or can extend to a man bequeathing a large portion of his salary to his dominatrix each month. As with political parties, fetishes have extremists and moderates.

Regarding the extreme side, the term ‘big spender’ doesn’t even cover it.

Extreme financial domination demands total control of the submissive’s finances. The dominant female budgets her slave’s spending and can require that all expenditures be approved. Submissives are often penalized financially or given humiliating tasks to complete if they step out of line monetarily.

The most common form of financial domination is dynamically identical to traditional BDSM relationships, with an emphasis on humiliation and worthiness.

“Basically they just want to be treated like shit all around,” said Carolina Dinero, a financial dominatrix and college student.

Dinero began her dom career online two years ago and is currently taking a break from the financial domination world due to time constraints. She said that while each interaction with a client is unique, her clients ultimately seek degradation from her.

During our conversation, I discovered that the majority of the battle is language. Dinero said that in the beginning, she had to get used to talking dirty to people.

In fact, talking is pretty much all she does on camera, via instant messaging and email. Interestingly enough, most financial doms never strip down for their slaves. Dinero said she thinks it has to do with slaves’ mentality.

“They have the feeling that they don’t even deserve to see your naked body,” she said.

Dinero explained that costuming runs the gamut, but that there is a lot of tease and denial.

“There are a lot of skimpy thongs and bikini bras, but there’s no nudity as a general rule,” she said.

Dinero acknowledged that there are exceptions. No two doms are the same, and neither are their financial wants.

Although Dinero usually receives gifts through Amazon, she recently created a Nordstrom wish list and had gifts sent directly to her. An unknown man purchased $600 worth of merchandise in response to a tweet along the lines of ‘buy me things.’

I’d like to see how that would pan out with my followers.

Dinero joked that anyone who stumbled upon her twitter without the knowledge that she was a financial dominatrix would deem her crazy. And after looking at it, she’s right.

Her twitter is full of choice words such as pigs, sluts, weaklings, loser, sub-human, and scum.

Who are these sub-human Santa Clauses?

“The people doing this are, in general, pretty intelligent and reasonable people,” Dinero said.

Her clients worked in a range of fields, but are often men in high-power positions who enjoy role reversal.

Neil Cannon, Ph.D. sex therapist and licensed marriage and family therapist, has worked with clients who have financial domination fetishes in his practice. Cannon said submissives are predominantly men. In fact, he has never seen a female submissive in a financial domination relationship in his practice.

He also explained that financial domination isn’t confined to professional relationships.

“It’s easy to just see what’s online, but it happens in real life situations too,” Cannon said. “It might happen with professional dominatrices or in intimate relationships.”

It’s actually fairly simple if you think about the diagnostics of BDSM altogether.

“It’s a sexualization of a worthiness thing. You’re not worthy enough to be dominated by me unless you buy me a purse,” Cannon said.  

Cannon explained that BDSM relationships in this small subset are just like conventional submissive and dominated relationships, having both hard and soft limits.

“They’ve agreed to the extent of what financial domination is going to look like,” he said.

Although it might not seem like it, these relationships are actually centered on respect and compromise. That said, in light of this country’s current divorce rate, we could stand to learn a thing or two from financial domination relationship.