Mind The Finance Gap: Are You Being Priced Out Of Your Friendships?
Aika* has just got back from a hen weekend in Barcelona. Is she upbeat? No: she’s skint. The eight other hens had wildly disparate incomes, darkening every club-entry fee and cocktail with the shadow cast by their eye-watering cost. One hen was so skint she couldn’t go at all; the others sucked it up out of love for the bride, silently grateful that the wedding was in the UK, and the hotel was paid for by her prosperous parents.
In tough economic times, we need our friends. But what if they’re partly the cause of said tough economic times? While it would be overstating things a tad to blame your friends for the UK’s cost-of-living crisis (unless they’re ex-Tory ministers, of course), it would be naive to imagine that the ever-widening gap between rich and poor isn’t affecting our friendships.
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But your life stage, as much as your lifestyle, plays a part. For those accustomed to living their lives out on social media, the pressure to maintain appearances can be a cute – and financially draining. TikTok trends such as ‘money comes back, memories don’t’ only fuel the pressure. ‘I’d rather meet at my flat to keep costs down, but Shola loves going out to spenny places that look good on the ’gram,’ says Katie*, 28, a styling assistant from south London. ‘I’m that person who orders a half pint and fries. She’s that person who orders an Aperol spritz and can’t have her fries without truffle. I hate mentally totting up the bill as we go, but I have to budget. She doesn’t.’
‘Money changes everything,’ sang Cyndi Lauper, the Charli XCX of her day for those whose memories don’t extend much beyond a Brat summer. If countless songs have been written about love, almost as many have been written about lucre, from the toxic financial relationship described in Destiny’s Child’s ‘Bills, Bills, Bills’ or The Beatles’ claim that it can’t buy you love (God bless their sweet-hearted naivety). But the subject is still almost as taboo as death, and one that can increasingly sound the death knell for friendships.
A study last year by Credit Karma found that more than one third of Gen Z and millennials have a friend who drives them to overspend, leading many to take on debt or end the friendship to protect their bank balance. Around 43% of millennials say that they tend to overspend on dining out, while 28% simply don’t know how to say ‘no’ to them, wanting to please their friend or keep up with their lifestyle.
If socialising can be anxiety-inducing, it’s nowhere near as fraught as the buying vs renting divide. Louise*, 35, an interior designer, knows that she’s lucky to own a two-bedroom house on the outskirts of Edinburgh and thought she was being considerate when she invited three friends round for dinner. ‘They’re all struggling financially, so I cooked, thinking it would be a cheap night. It was lovely, but after one too many jealous comments, it started to rankle. It made me wish we were back at uni again, and all in the same boat.’
As we grow, so do our careers, and it’s true that we can suddenly find ourselves in a wildly different place to our peers. At university, I was so afraid of being over-drawn I’d write down the cost of every pint, Dolmio jar and stamp in a notebook. After I left, I crawled up the career ladder, beginning with a low-paid job in my local council’s pest-control department and peaking some 20 years later with a six-figure salary as the fashion editor of a broadsheet. At which point, you might imagine that I started bathing in unicorn milk, a chilled bottle of Krug and Diptyque candles by my side. Nah. When my two kids got to the ‘where’s Mum, and why is she always in Paris’ stage, I went freelance. Whether you know what self-employment is like will depend on your experience (and whether you’re single, the breadwinner or have a wealthy partner). It’s the antithesis of security in every respect – other than the fact that no one can fire you.
Decades later, I’m fretting about money again. Not because I’m poor (nothing is worse than a middle-income earner pleading poverty), but because I’m blessed with high-achieving friends who chose more lucrative, financially stable careers than me (plus a few who married men in finance long before the song made it a Thing). It’s not uncommon for me to end the night in tears, not from a surfeit of tequila (though sometimes that, too), but because of their quiet generosity, which is like quiet luxury, only with money instead of cashmere. They’ve discreetly picked up bills or bought tickets, pretending they’re cheaper than they are or even refunding my bank transfer.
Sure, I’d do this, too, if I were them. But I never will be. This, perhaps, is why a sense of pique exists among older friends who lack financial parity. Gen Z have their entire lives in front of them to redress the balance and pick up the tab. Gen X are trapped by their own decisions. Our income is only going to go down. The embarrassment that I feel now is far worse than any I felt in my twenties when every-one else was penny-counting, too.
My kids are teenagers now, and it hurts my heart to see them navigating the same financial minefields that I did. Only theirs are magnified because they live in London; their friends have private jets and panic rooms. Once, my eldest recounted a story about a friend of a friend who couldn’t be bothered to make a coffee with the family Gaggia, so she Deliveroo’d one from Starbucks. My daughter’s friend feels hurt when she won’t go out for dinner. ‘She has a trust fund,’ she told me. ‘But if I say I can’t afford it, she’ll offer to pay, and that feels wrong.’
Managing such delicate situations is rotten at any age, never mind as a teenager. But my kids’ friendships act as a reminder, too: the concept of ‘wealth’ can only ever be relative. While my eldest’s school friends were well-off (or rather their parents were, either through generational wealth or hard work), my youngest’s are less so. ‘OMG, your house is so massive,’ said one. ‘What do you need all these rooms for?’
Charlotte York might have opined that‘ money and friendship don’t mix’, but as they’re often hard to separate, all we can do is be honest and never forget the magic of compromise. Sure, it’s important to understand the value of money. But the value of friendship? You can’t put a price tag on that.
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