Being gay all began when it dawned on us that we're different. Likewise, our money issues become gay when it dawns on us that we're different financially. In both cases it was there all the time - but once activated there's no turning back.

Being gay is both an asset - and a liability. Since most of us don't have children, we're immediately hundreds of thousands of dollars ahead. Yet by not being able to marry, the Hawaiian courts tell us we're penalized in over 450 ways.

So the picture is mixed. Being gay is a plus in some jobs - and gets us fired in others. If closeted some of us survive vile workplace situations while others miss golden opportunities.

There are few rules when we've so different from each other. We need guidelines as to how to tailor the general and straight field of personal finance to our gay needs and wants. How our money matters differ from the 90% majority is where our bottom line is at.

Consider me a translator. For five years I've worked with over 500 gay individuals and couples to figure out what parts of personal financial advice apply to us - and what parts are mostly for the marrieds with children.

I started because one year - as for many of us - it seemed like all my friends died. I'd stopped my own venture-capital backed business and started problem-solving the financial fallout we face when we're sick.

After fifteen years of consulting with corporations, this consulting with individuals gradually taught me how our personal finances differs from the 90%. There's nothing like life-threatening illness to reveal the bottom line.

The common thread in all this is that our financial circumstances can be strikingly different from the mainstream. We have access to assets that few marrieds dream possible. We are hampered by economic obstacles that no one else in society faces - obstacles deliberately placed in our path.

Sometimes our ways of dealing with those obstacles result in liabilities that add financial injury to society's insult. That many of us survive this gauntlet and thrive is nothing less than an economic miracle.

How well we do financially is not the same as how well we do economically. The financial part is personal, the economic part is communal. To be successful as gays we need to make both parts work - so this is a book of personal agendas and agendas for us as groups.

Those groups are as diverse as society. We're everywhere. We draw from every group conceivable. Yet we're largely invisible. Yet money matters have little to do with demographics; any market research claiming to pin us down must acknowledge the great gap of our invisibility. Remember: those ballpark figures don't give us aisle and seat numbers.

What counts in finance is our individual behavior and our particular circumstances - not our characteristics. It's not who we are that makes us money - or makes us poor - but what we do with what we have and where we apply what leverage we have.

Perhaps lack of objective research on gays doesn't matter when it comes to personal finance. For example, in our world potential threats cost us more unexpressed than if their actual damage were carried out. Avoidance behavior like closet living can cost far more than most of the worst results of coming out.

In finance, opinion and potentiality count perhaps more than reality in gay finance, expectations and possibilities can be both more crucial than our stark realities - and our destinations more important than our departure points.