I feel like I’m the exact opposite of what this article proposed however the entire thing confuses me.
I’m not rich but relatively well off, and, without doubt in the best financial position of my immediate group of friends.
If I happen to be the one that picks up the bill I often have people chasing me to pay me. I actually think that is a problem because they feel obliged to do the right thing, however I’m unmotivated because I don’t care about the outcome – I don’t need the money. This is my fault and I feel poorly for it but the reality is that after I’ve had a nice evening I don’t really care. In terms of the debt: honestly I probably wouldn’t bother asking.
The very concept of asking someone for 4 bucks seems abhorrent to me. To be clear, I say this personally; I’m not struggling to pay rent/mortgage/utilities/whatever. If you’re in a position where those are concerns then please absolutely follow up.
Chasing a $4 debt won’t make you rich, ever. Even if you do it all the time. Anyone well off chasing this kind of cash is deluding themselves.
Generally speaking my friends and I operate over a long term fairness principle. “Bob got the last round, I’ll get the next”; they won’t be even but our assumption is that it’ll balance in the long term. That applies to more than just the pub.
This isn’t any sort of real explanation of anything. It’s just someone’s opinion. They call her an “expert”. She’s a certified financial planner with no formal schooling or training. She passed a test and runs a company where she advises people who have suddenly come into a lot of money. That’s her only expertise. She has no background in psychology or any information beyond “it rings true” to back up her statements.
Grew up in a resort town known for its plethora of rich people.
Rich people are near universally the cheapest group of people I’ve ever encountered.
Cool. Would you go to the news media and claim to be an expert on the behaviors of rich people for a story?
This is what’s known as ‘anecdotal evidence’
‘Struggle with generosity’ is to greed, like ‘died as a result of an officer involved shooting’ is to murder.
I would say there’s a distinction.
“I want more” is different from “I don’t want to share”.
The American heritage dictionary definition 1: ^ An excessive desire to acquire or possess more than what one needs or deserves, especially with respect to material wealth.
Seems that both fall squarely within the definition of greed.
Well the definition of greed is:
intense and selfish desire for something, especially wealth, power, or food.
Both “I want more” and “I don’t want to share” are a type of greed. Even if the definition is more like needs more of something, not wanting to share feels like a form of needing more time than you need with an object. At least that’s how I’m looking at it.
True. I guess I’m guilty of “I want more” as much as the next guy. But I don’t suffer from the “I don’t want to share” part. If everyone gets more, we all rise up. A good tide lifts all ships.
I think the answer is simply “people who have more money pay more attention to their finances in general”. I mean, people who don’t pay attention to how they’re spending money tend to not stay rich, even when they have a high paying job. But then again, is there any actual evidence that the premise is true? Or is it just a bias that people take more notice when a rich friend asks to pay them back?
There was a program many years back that discussed this issue. It showed two kids, young girls, one was fairly well off and had all the things you’d expect a young girl to have and some to spare. The other was a young girl living in an impoverished nation and had a very poor family. Think tin roof on adobe walls kind of poor. She had a single stuffed animal that was in dubious shape handed down from child to child. The well-off girl had a small army of stuffed animals.
Point of the segment in the program was how difficult it was for the well off girl to share anything and how possessive she was for her material things, whereas the little girl that had very few things was willing to share her one stuffed animal quite willingly.
Wish I could remember the show. But it demonstrated quite handily that even at a young age people who had more, wanted more, and were unwilling to part with even small things vs the people who had very little.
Seems like a vicious cycle with the wealthier people. Since they can buy anything their kids need, there’s no need to learn to share. It’s all “yours” or “mine”, nothing ever “ours”.
Friend making $450k as a software engineer
I’m a software developer. If I just start calling myself an engineer, can I have 450k?
Just change your email signature and you’re good to go :)
Well in that case, I’ll change it to CEO. Wish me luck!!
I had to read a bit to understand what this meant because I didn’t know what venmo was, but I have seen people change from being weirdly generous to making more money and fairly quickly becoming irritatingly stingy to the point of nitpicking the rounding when pennies were discontinued.
I didn’t know what it was either. If someone wanted me to send them money remotely, I’d probably use Google Pay or PayPal or something. Hooray for being out of touch with the world today!
A huge reason I don’t use venmo is because it just feels like Facebook Banking. I don’t need status updates on money my friends are receiving or sending to other people nor do I want other people to know what I do with my money. That shit was so weird to me.
IDK why people make their transactions public. I changed my default to private for that very reason. I don’t give a shot what other people are doing and no one needs to know what I’m doing either.
I’ve been using Venmo for like, 10 years? I would laugh out loud if someone asked me to PayPal them back for dinner.
Good for you but they are the same company
It’s not about that, it’s more that nobody uses PayPal in a casual social setting. It’s like writing a check at the bar.
My SO worked for a very rich man, and in some ways he was generous, inviting me along to events for example, or paying a heft year end bonus to his staff, and he spared no expense on his business. I halfway like him. But also he just wouldn’t pay very well, and at a dinner for his high end wealthy club members who give him a lot of money for his products, gave a speech complaining bitterly about the downturn in his industry. I was embarrassed for him, I mean inflation is hard on most people and we’re mostly all cutting way back, but he seems to have that millionaire narcissism where he is not in touch with the reality of those with less. A few dollars raise and some better behaviour to his staff and he’d likely have kept most of them on, but they move on a lot.
We brought him a cake for his birthday once because we’re like that and he barely said thank you.
As someone whose situation in life has flipped (not ever really that rich, just had family that was worse off) and has suffered it, I can confirm that:
“They don’t want to be taken advantage of or to feel like, ‘I have money and that’s why people hang out with me,’” Bradley says. “It feels very invalidating.”
Because it is true. The more money you have in a situation attracts the sort of people who just want the benefits of it, and if you are generous like my parents were, those sort of people will be the ones who will have no problem becoming stingy and refuse to help them out afterwards without a dollar sign. They’ve been trained to live off of you and they will still continue to expect to do so even as so far as to believe you are lying while they become the stingiest.
What this article gets wrong is that it isn’t because they value money transactions more, it’s that they attract the sort of people who only value them for it. Plus, it also skews your own development as a person because if they come the norm in your surrounding, it fosters an environment of making you a mark.
They do not have the same life experience as you, and you may very well be part of the problem is paying your fair share when you are with someone you consider wealthy (even when they tell you they are no longer doing that good or simply seems more bothered by it) offends you.
It is amazing how rich people deal with non-rich people. I managed to climb from poor to reasonable well off, but I cannot understand people who earn many times the money I get to be assholes over small money.
Last week, I took a student that I want to “groom” to work in our development department to an electronics fair. Train, hotel, and ticket were paid for by the company, but the deal was that he has to pay for anything else by himself. Eating out and other expenses are still quite some money for a student, so I paid for his meals out of my own pocket and told him that one time in the future, when he will be the one guiding a student through the same situation, he should do as I did.
I understand what you mean with groom, but poor choice of words. 😂
Mentor/onboard/fast track, or any other would have sounded better. Groom just sounded like you wanted to fuck him.
Thanks. Call me old, I come from a time where “to groom” had no sexual connotation.
The word has been used that way for a long time though.
And molest has been used to mean bother for some time. But I think most people shy away from using it that way now.
“Boner” is a clumsy error
It sure was in school when I got called up to the chalkboard.
I’m glad that’s never happened to me. They wouldn’t be my friend anymore.
The article talks about how this is not them being assholes, but because if they have more money then their peers, it tends to make them feel isolated and self-conscious and fears about being taken advantage of. They even quote the expert at the end who says “They don’t care about the $4.”
You would ditch a friend for struggling with someone? I find that hard to believe.
If they don’t care about my money, they shouldn’t ask for it. It’s just shitty behavior.
Poor people will just cover other people’s meals and stuff out of friendship and building community. You seem like a total ass
You’re right. I do cover other people’s meals when I can afford to do so. But I don’t send someone $4 for no reason. You keep bringing up irrelevancies.
And insults are not called for. I did not insult you once.
This is the first time I’ve engaged with you on this topic, idk what you’re talking about. “seems like an ass” is not an insult, please learn how to read or get thicker skin
So you’re telling me that if you told a complete stranger “you seem like a total ass” when you could look them in the eye, they wouldn’t feel insulted? Really? Because I think it sounds like a good way to provoke a physical altercation.
Nah, I’m not an invertebrate
Or they’re Dutch. Seriously we’ll send you a venmo (tikkie) for 3 cents.
There’s this joke about how dutch people will spend €5 in gas to drive to a place where they can get gratis (free) something that’s worth €2.
It really is a generic cultural thing and expecting all to pay their share even if supidly small is not at all personal.
People don’t usually get rich by giving money away or being bad at finances. Why is a wealthy person obliged to not ask you to pay back your share?
I’m by no means rich but I’m probably the wealthies of all my friends yet I live in a tiny house, drive a 15 year old truck and shop groceries at a discount. I’m extremely frugal and you can be sure I expect you to pay me back.
Are you, like in the article, afraid of your relationships becoming transactional? Do you think that if you paid for stuff for your friends every once in a while, they would start expecting it of you, and think of you only as a means of getting this free perk?
I simply don’t see why anyone would expect me to pay for their anything when I don’t expect that of anyone else either. If I buy my SO a dinner I pretty much assume her to pay the next time. It’s simple and fair that way and that’s how my (probably) autistic brain works. I can hardly justify spending 22€ on my own burger and a coke, let alone pay for someone else’s dinner.
A guy that can’t afford a burger and coke imagining he’s the affluent people this article talks about is peek American capitalism.
You don’t need to lick boots in the hope you’ll someday be wearing them.
I specifically said I’m not rich, I never said I can’t afford that and I’m not even American. Anything else?
So you’re saying that your situation is totally unlike the situation we’re talking about and your input therefore totally meaningless and your comment pointless and absurd.
Thanks for clarifying
What you describe is transactional. I pay for your meal, now you owe me a meal of equal value. The inability to treat others (even people you’re romantically involved with) without expecting reimbursement is a characteristic of narcissistic personalities traditionally found among affluent people.
I’m aware that my brain works differently from your average person in many other ways too. However in this case I don’t see my way of behaving as unfair or narcissistic. Quite the opposite. It’s objectively a fair way of dealing with it. A nacissistic person would be seeking to take advantage of other people and that’s the opposite of how I live my life. I give back in other ways.
It’s “fair” on a very shallow level. If the money spent is a small portion of your disposable income but would cut into the grocery budget of someone else it isn’t really equal. Relative cost, not objective cost, is a better measure of fairness.
One of the many reasons that I don’t have venmo or any other form of transfer app is so people can’t send me some nominal sum of money.
I’m not rich, but definitely one of the higher earners at my job. I don’t want some person making less than half what I do worrying about a slice of pizza or a cup of coffee.
To note: This is also not something I gloat over or continuously remind people of or any such thing. I’m just happy to have the resources to be able to bring the smallest smidgen of “make your day a little less shitty”
What if you eat at a restaurant with a large party and someone puts it all on their card?
“I’ll get cash to you later”
If they need the money immediately and/or digitally they shouldn’t have put it all on their card without discussion.
The key is to never go out and stay in the basement.
Then you wouldn’t have to split that appetizer from TGI fridays with your friend because you never met them.
