How to Marry Rich: It May Just Take a Little Class and $39

She is a woman who knows exactly what she wants. She wants a sprawling Spanish-style mansion in San Marino. She wants a $99,000 Mercedes 500 SL convertible. She wants to take extended vacations next year to Tahiti, the Orient and South America. And she knows exactly how to get what she wants--marry a man with a seven-digit income.

What she doesn’t know is how to find such a man. That is why she is sitting in a South Pasadena classroom on a Thursday night attending a seminar entitled: “How to Marry Money.”

Meeting men is not her problem. She is in her early 30s, attractive, well educated and, as a certified public accountant, is surrounded by men. But most men she meets simply do not appeal to her--once she discovers their annual income.

She was looking for “a focused approach” to find a rich husband, and the class, she says, has provided that. The teacher, Brenda Blackman, a small, energetic woman dressed entirely in purple, discusses the rich with the same sense of awed curiosity as an anthropology professor lecturing a group of freshmen about a lost tribe of Pygmies.

“What do they eat?” Blackman asks. “What do they collect? How do they live? What is their language? How do you recognize them?”

The 20 students--15 women and five men--paid $39 for a three-hour lecture by Blackman, who breaks down the rich into three categories: old money, new money and money minions--those who assist or serve those in power. She provides handouts that detail what to wear to a croquet match, how to address a limousine driver and what luggage to take on a private plane. She tells them how to walk and talk and mingle and stand.

“Hands by your side,” Blackman snaps to one man. “Hands cupped in front indicates a lower socioeconomic level.”

As the students furiously scrawl notes, Blackman tells them where to meet the rich and rattles off a series of 800 telephone numbers for golf schools, country club associations, tennis camps and professional tennis tournaments. She builds their morale by leading a chant numerous times during the evening: “I want to be rich! I deserve to be rich! I am rich! I was born to be rich!”

She offers helpful hints, such as how to rifle through prospective mates’ checkbooks, study the deposits and assess their income levels. And she intersperses her lecture with inspiring testimonials. After instructing students that wrangling a job with a top executive is a good approach, she tells of a friend who once worked for “a big movie mogul.”

“She ended up meeting a man who is now building two houses for her. And one of the houses has a cedar-lined closet,” she says, leaning on the lectern and pausing for effect. “Just for her furs.”

Another testimonial about a friend does not have such a happy ending. But at least the woman showed the moxie and discipline to cut her losses.

“This friend of mine met a guy in Morro Bay and he was everything she wanted,” she tells the class. “But one day she happened to notice that his checkbook was open . . . and he just didn’t make enough money. So she went elsewhere.” Blackstone shrugs. “If you’re really serious you have to do these things.”

During a class break, the woman looking for a husband with a seven-figure income acknowledged that she might be willing to compromise. What if she met a man who only had a low six-digit income, she is asked. Say about $100,000 a year.

“No way,” she says.

What if he was perfect in every other respect?

“If he was young and I thought he had the aptitude and ability to make a lot more money, I’d consider it,” she replies. “But if he was in his peak earning years and he was maxed out at $100,000--forget it.”

Blackman holds a variety of singles seminars, but her “How to Marry Money” classes at the Independent Adult Learning Center in South Pasadena is among the most popular. This class might not be as well attended in other areas of the country, she says, but in Southern California, where the streets are filled with Mercedes and BMWs, where conspicuous consumption abounds, people tend to be more materialistic.

And Blackman sees nothing untoward or crass about coldly assessing a prospective mate’s income level and then, based on his bank balance, deciding whether to marry him or cut him loose. Finding a mate with money is the hard part, she says; learning to love that mate is easy by comparison.

“How could you not love someone,” she says earnestly, “who is doing all these wonderful things for you?”

Blackman acknowledges that she has been “dating a money minion for 10 years,” but has been remiss in following one of her own key principles, which she advocates to students under the category “Reeling Them In.”

So, for all her expertise, all the techniques she has taught to countless students, Blackman still has not succeeded in marrying for money.