My mother always told me it was just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is to with a poor man…

But then again, she also once advised against eating chocolate because it she claimed it would give me pimples (a myth, it turns out).

And apparently living in New Jersey means that it shouldn’t be that hard to find both chocolate and someone who owns a chocolate factory (or has a damn high position in such a company). According to the Phoenix Affluent Marketing Service, New Jersey, despite its reputation for organized crime, disorganized politicians and being trapped in the 80s with our alleged hairstyles, has the most millionaire households in the country.

Eat your heart out, poor New York.

Now I am certainly not a gold digger, but it certainly helps to live a more relaxing lifestyle…especially living in the area that we do (Hoboken has the highest per capita income in Hudson County…not a difficult feat). Having said that, I grew up with two parents who worked as teachers, thereby making me adjust to having an Atari 2600 when my friends were getting Intellivisions, or me sharing a phone line with my parents as opposed to my friends having their own line and a 70-pound answering machine. Of course, that also meant living in godforsaken upstate New York, where 120 inches of snow was considered a mild winter.

But for the people who grew up in Northern New Jersey, how does money affect them? Not sure if you noticed, but there is a fair share of shallowness to be found in our Mile Square:

Sushi joints popping up everywhere, SUVs dominating every parking garage, more Louis Vuitton bags dangling down Washington Street than ever. And if you don’t have a flat screen 1080i HD plasma, get to a church or temple and start begging for forgiveness immediately!

Getting back to the study, The Garden State moved up from No. 2 in 2005 and 2006 to No. 1 last year on the index. According to the service, in 2007 a little over seven percent of New Jersey's 3.2 million households had a total of $1 million or more of liquid assets.

Of course, it would be interesting to find out how many of these folks reside in Hoboken. No such figures were available, but I don’t think real estate would be rapidly expanding with all of those new or renovated apartment buildings in almost every part of town if gravediggers and waitresses were moving here.

In 2006, 6.46 percent of New Jersey households met the $1 million standard. The figure was 5.89 percent in 2005. Hawaii ranked first in both those years, but fell to fourth in 2007 (really, who needs to watch an NFL game at 8:00 AM on a Sunday?). Maryland was second last year (they do football and crab cakes best) and Connecticut (despite losing the Hartford Whalers) was third.

Mantoloking, future retirement home of Mayor Roberts, is the wealthiest town in New Jersey

"It's obviously hard to pinpoint what the major driver is," David Thompson, managing director at Phoenix Affluent, told the Associated Press. But he added a theory that many New Jersey residents work for the financial services industry in the New York metropolitan area and therefore received large bonuses last year.

Ah yes, the BIG bonus. Size really does matter. Having worked at a large investment bank, I remember the day my boss asked me to cash his 26 MILLION dollar bonus check (he told me to pick up any size cup of coffee I wanted on the way back…on him, of course). Granted, he was the CEO of the company, but regardless, when you have people in their 20s or 30s cashing bonus checks of six figures and up, you could see where one’s sense of perspective becomes skewed.

I once asked my attractive widowed grandmother why she didn’t consider remarrying.

Her answer?

"I have my money, what do I need a man for?"

Other than the obvious reply, it occurred to me that many women of both my mother and grandmother’s generation did marry for money because they felt they "had" to. With many women now earning nearly as much as men without having using a pole to do so, does this mean the "gold digger" stigma no longer exists?

Eddie Murphy of Englewood, NJ really liked his leather back in the ‘80s

From what my guy friends tell me, many of them feel sharing their salary is worth the trophy wife. However, I wonder how they will feel about that when the wives get, to quote Eddie Murphy, "half your shit". But if a woman equals or exceeds her spouse’s pay, then that only makes the man a half-millionaire. Are guys okay with this kind of status, or is my grandmother’s old-fashioned DNA simply coming through?

What’s your take on this survey? Do you know many people in our age range that have hit the million-dollar mark?

"Money can’t buy you happiness," the old quote goes, "but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery."

Email questions, comments or dating proposals along with W-2 and photo to realhoboken@yahoo.com or use the message board on the home page.