We love our friends. As a society, we spend time with our friends, we lean on and comfort our friends and we can’t live without our friends…but sometimes, we want to pull our hair out because of our friends! Now, I cannot claim to know all of the reasons our friends make us a nervous wreck, but one of the big ones is money.
Most of us at some point in our lives have been in the position of being friends with someone who either has more money than us or at least spends like they have more money than us (this is bad, of course, cause they are spending money they don’t have). They are constantly wanting to go out to new places. Ladies want to go shopping at expensive boutiques, get massages or mani/pedis etc. Men want to go play golf at expensive courses, watch football, basketball or baseball games in person. Unfortunately, they don’t realize what kind of effect this has on their friends who make less money or don’t want to spend a lot of money. They are costing YOU money! You agree to go out, and then they pick a very expensive restaurant, where you end up spending $75 on 2 glasses of wine and a salad. Now, as much as you value their friendship, and as much as you love spending time with them, you dread their phonecall/text because of the impending monetary dilemma.
So, how do you stop them from costing you more money in the future? Well, this is not a popular way to do it, but doing things the right way is rarely popular…tell them you’re broke! Tell them you don’t have the money to go out. You might feel uncomfortable doing this, but when your checking account starts to recover, I have a feeling that you’ll be happy! I know that it feels weird to say something like that. To be honest, the first couple of times we said it when we were getting out of debt I was wholly embarrassed. But then, I started to notice how people stopped expecting me to go along with their expensive plans, and started to ask what I wanted to do. This gave me the option of saying “yes” to going out, but “no” to the expensive stuff!
Saying “I’m broke” not your thing? Well, luckily, “we can’t afford it right now”, “money is tight right now” and “we’re trying to save more money these days, can we choose a less expensive to do?” all have the same effect. They all tell your over-spending friend to back off on the luxury when you hang out together. If you just say “no”, that opens the door for them to pressure you on the subject, where you might cave in. Telling them that you don’t have the money usually makes the friend conclude that further discussion is out of the question.
Hopefully, this will set you on the right track with your friends. It’s all about personal responsibility. Remember, it is grown up to take control of your finances and childish to let others decide what you spend your money on!
