How we choose to be gay not only impacts who were are but how well we do - financially. Let's look at some of the strategies we seem to choose - and their bottom lines.

- The Closeted Gay

In the classic closet gayness gets segregated as a singular sexual pastime - with sexual partners but not with domestic partners. Whether or not it involves that age-old refuge, the straight marriage, it's usually based on a split between love and sex. Gayness stays in the shadows, part of a silent community that stalks public lavatories and public parks at night ironically making the prospect of costly arrests, scandal, ruined careers, divorce, and lost children more likely. The real cost of course is personal. Gayness not only doesn't seem to matter at work but eventually disappears. Gayness gets neutered with neither the benefits of being straight nor the advantages of being gay.

- The Invisible Gay

In camouflage gays are tempted to buy a straight image by blowing funds on America's straight consumer images. They can get trapped into A-Gay overreliance on label and brand endorsement and barricade themselves into home fortresses crammed with creature comforts to offset what's out there.

- The Ghetto Gay

The price of admission and costs of maintenance for gay ghetto lifestyles can be all-consuming - with prices at a premium. While this can be exhilarating to an isolated teen and during coming out, it can result in gayness becoming a definition - not just a difference. The ghetto can lead to extremes of addiction. It rejects economic participation in the mainstream. Ironically, ghetto lifestyles may be more socially determined than elsewhere, spending money and time on gay obsessions, games, and displays.

- The Professional Gay

New are the professional gays. The body-builder couple, the Congressman couple, the revolving circle of people who lead gay organizations. The full-time gay, better than straight. Yet few of us could or would follow such a path. The costs of proving ourselves this way can be staggering.

- The Inner Gay

Gay shouldn't make any difference to them, only a difference to us. Being gay, like personal financial success, is an inside job. Both depend on what we do, not on what they do. To place that power with strangers rather than with inner strategies is the flaw in all external tactics. The best invisibility is privacy: the freedom to be. This can't to be purchased; it's Gandhi-type power that takes the focus off of them and puts it back on ourselves.

True security, strength, and success comes from our own definitions of what kind of career we want, what overall categories do we want to spend on, what kind of financial relationship do we have with the one we love, what we want to save for, how much we'll invest in ourselves, what kinds of legal safeguards we're willing to undertake, and how much insurance backup we want to have.

The inner gay, knowing our financial path is unique, takes inventory, tests possibilities, compares only against the self - not society. The inner gay sets economic goals that come from inner vision, constantly refining them, getting to know them like friends, never letting them be the boss. The inner gay looks at life as a process, knowing that things always change, and ponders particularly the decades ahead. The inner gay makes some kind of peace between gayness and straight society, but directs action from inner values around outward obstacles. As inner gays we own our own lives: we integrate the personal & professional, compromises on the inconsequential, and hold fast on the important. When this tailoring becomes a habit we see being gay as a necessary - but not sufficient - condition for our success - at all levels.