It sounds like this guy in the article tried to tell his friend what was going on, and the friend was way too self-involved to adjust his expectations. Yes, they were friends at one time, and it’s harsh to say they never were, but I don’t think it’s too harsh to stop making the extra effort in a friendship that isn’t going to survive one or both of you changing. If my spouse and I didn’t work with each of us changing, we would have divorced within the first year or two, and it would have been a good thing if that’s how immature we were. We’ve been married 8 years, it’s probably because we just accept that we’re both still changing and won’t stop.

On the flip side, I find that being more frugal has reopened some friendships that were on hold. One guy I gave a lot of static too for being “cheap” now looks a lot wiser to me. It’s me on the other side of this one, but now it’s a few years down the road where I realize what happened now. If he had lectured me a few years ago, I’m sure I would have thought him a sanctimonious prick, regardless of how true it was then that I spent like a fool. But the reality is that he just stuck to his guns to not blow money he thought was silly to spend. Guess what, I learned that I could always count on going to his house, having a few cheap PBR’s, give each other crap, and have a great time.

So what’s the point? Let the friendships go where they may. Don’t be surprised if someone you “write off” comes around in a few years. Don’t be surprised if you are the one easing up in a few years. A good friendship can weather this. A casual acquaintance cannot.

Want to share what you’ve learned with your friends? It really is a lot like religion: don’t cram it down their throat, or make passive-agressive comments about the ‘unsaved’. Just live out your new philosophy and share it with anyone that is interested enough to ask you about it.

On a whole other note, being frugal really makes you see your older relatives with new appreciation. That’s a whole other story to write…

1) He felt judged.
2) After you rejected his offers several times, he may have felt you no longer wanted to be friends and later, didn’t really believe that it was about money.
3) He felt that you no longer had the same interests (golf and drinking, which require money but are not the same as simply spending money for fun).
4) Your discomfort when you went out made him uncomfortable.
5) Your need to save made him uncomfortable because it brought up his own fears about deprivation.
5) He’s addicted to spending money and wants you to enable him.
6) A billion other possibilities.

We can’t get inside Dave’s head to know what he was thinking when he didn’t call you back. What we can know is that you decided to interpret his behavior as “Dave doesn’t really like me for me. He’s addicted to spending money and only wants me to help him do it.”

You could call Dave and try to connect with him by attempting to understand: “I’m really bummed that we don’t hang out anymore. What happened? Did I do something to offend you? I got the feeling that you didn’t care to be around me unless I could spend the same amounts of money I used to spend, and it really hurt my feelings. Is that what you think happened? Even though we can’t do the same things we used to do together, our friendship is really important to me…”

Etc.

In my experience, the willingness to have vulnerable, honest (and sober) conversations like this is what separates the real friends from the drinking buddies. Maybe Dave was never really your friend, but it seems to me that you may have bailed before you knew whether that was true or not. Maybe, what happened instead is that you projected your fears that if you didn’t have a lot of money to spend, people weren’t going to like you. Dave acted in a way that could be interpreted as you did and, thereby, confirmed your belief that people don’t love you, just the money you can spend.

In my case, the relationships are being hurt by my money-centeredness involving SHAME and self-worth connected to income. I started a business and my income has dropped drastically. Meanwhile, many of my friends are/are married to engineers, technology people, specialty nurses, MBA types, etc. We used to go camping, and now they fly to Colorado for ski trips. I can’t do that. They have parties at their houses. I can’t do that — because I am now ashamed of my house. They get custom-made furniture. I throw out a broken chair and don’t replace it.

I do not think these folks are living in debt. In fact, I am 100 percent sure they are not.

But I am jealous, and even more, embarrassed. It is a HORRIBLE reason for avoiding people who care for me, but I do it more and more. However, I will spend the money to celebrate birthdays and holidays. It is my way of showing I do still care.

By the way, I quit drinking alcohol several years ago and continued my friendships with my drinking buddies. It was just not a big issue to me, and I never said one word in judgement about their boozing. Not one word, and that includes passive-aggressive sermonizing about DUI laws or things in the news. People are not stupid and they know when they are being criticized indirectly.

Well I didn’t really address the thread topic directly, but I hope this adds to the discussion. I found this page by Googling “too frugal.”

Thanks.

Anyway, we soon settled into our regular routine again, I just don’t spend as much money on drinking and shopping. But I do have a newfound respect for those friends who I used to ridicule for being savers and drinking in moderation.

I don’t want to sound too preachy but the one thing I learned from AA was that we have to learn to accept people for who they are and choose to not stress over it.

I’ll even say you’re cheap, because that’s the fact of the matter.

I have quite a few friends and we’re all the same age getting ready to start families and get married, but I would find it highly insulting if they couldn’t make it “once in a while” to one “wasteful” golf outing.

Sometimes frugal people are just plain cheap and this is one of those moments.

I know how it feels, I’ve lost many friends to similar things. I had friends who drank, until I decided I didn’t like how it made me feel, then I had friends who smoked, and there again, I couldn’t deal with them, and now I am going to lose a very good friend over $. She asked me if she could borrow about $100 to pay her cell phone bill. She said it had been shut off but then she picked up her cell phone and appeared to be sending a text msg.

She complains about being poor but recently bought an iPod and all the accessories. When I made a comment about how she should have waited until her bills were paid, she got defensive and said it was a gift. I know better! I can barely pay my own bills let alone hold the weight of a friend. I’m sure she thought that since I’m frugal it means I’ve got loads of $$ stashed away. Well she left sulking and I haven’t heard from her since.

It’s sad to lose a friend over something so juvenile, but at least you know how superficial the friendship was anyway. Your better off w/o him, he would only bring you down because even though you vow to spend less, on a subconcious level you would be trying to buy his friendship.

My former best friend spent extravantly (and still does) on such things as home renovation & decorating, designer clothing, gourmet cookery, eating out all the time, & the like. A serial marrier, her two previous husbands were very, very wealthy, and now that she was with the love of her life, as she and Hubby #3 entered old age she continued to spend as though she had all the money in the world.

After a tumultuous stint as president of her patio-home community’s board of directors, she (like all the other board members) sold a pretty house on which she had spent a ton of money and bought a fixer-upper in a tony neighborhood. She proceeded to spend something like to 80 grand in renovation & improvements, above & beyond the purchase price.

Just as the last of the contractors walked out the door, her wage-earning husband was superannuated out of the two jobs he held to support her spending habits. She, being resourceful, engineered a job with the university where I work, and she managed to negotiate a salary of about $50,000, in addition to which she hung on to the two courses/semester she was teaching as a part-timer, giving her a total income of about $60,000…more than an associate professor who had been there over 10 years was earning, and an astonishing amount considering that others in that job category are lucky to earn $35,000.

So about this time I was at a mutual friend’s house when Ms. Gotrox called on the phone. Our friend didn’t want to drop what we were doing to talk, and so she left the answering machine running. During the chatty message Ms. G. left, she said to our mutual friend, who was to be her immediate supervisor, “Don’t tell V. what they’re going to pay me, because she’s kind of funny about money.”

After our mutual friend let her know I had overheard this remark, she sort of apologized, & I was willing to let it go. After all, we had been like sisters for years. But apparently she couldn’t get past it, and the friendship soon withered away.

It was a mighty pricey sisterhood. She and I spent a lot of time shopping (and eating out, and drinking expensive booze), and when we were in stores we would resonate off each other. Her taste ran to designer clothes, and when she would buy Eileen Fisher, so would I. Sometimes I’d wait a couple of days and quietly slink back to Saks to return the stuff. But I still have a few of those outfits in my closet, which I wear…oh, maybe once a year, if I have a meeting with some powermonger that I really want to impress.

Though I occasionally miss the companionship of my erstwhile friend, I don’t miss a relationship with someone who thinks living within one’s means is “funny about money.” Our mutual friend (whom Ms. Gotrox shafted during the following year of career-building) has taken her place as the new “best friend,” and I’ve cultivated friendships with other women acquaintances who are very pleasant to be with and…guess what? also try to live within their means! Apparently there must be more than one of us out here who’s funny about money. LOL!!!

Friends really shouldn’t be about pressure, it should come easy.

On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with having social acquaintances, I bet there are lots of people that I hang out with now who wouldn’t want to hang out if my circumstances change but I’m sure I can find replacements.

This isn’t a Dave issue, it’s a Trent issue. You’re transferring your issues on to him, and from my perspective you’ve been unfair to Dave.

You chose to be a spend thrift, or were forced to by circumstance, he didn’t, and really he has no requirement to. Was Dave interested in any of the ways of socializing you’re now into before you made your change?

If he wasn’t, then why is this his issue? It’s not, it’s yours, and to insist that he was “addicted to spending money” is about as ridiculous a concept as I believe I’ve ever read in similar situations.

Trent this issue is all YOU. Maybe Dave pulled himself away because he sensed you guys were growing apart, but I’ll bet that you were sending him these judgmental vibes whenever you did hang out, probably without even realizing it.

You don’t need to defend yourself. I mean, come on. Anyone who comes over to brag about their latest gadget and rub it in your face is not a friend and they never were. You just woke up to that reality one day. Actually, nothing changed except that you recognized that he was never a friend.

Friendships do change and evolve over time, even those that at one time seem the most solid.

I think the issue here is that you’re projecting your old shortcomings onto Dave. Dave is still Dave and he probably wonders why you changed. Why must you disparage him? Try to look at this from his perspective. “My old buddy is suddenly no fun anymore AND he’s giving me crap about money? Screw him!”

There’s nothing wrong with that!

Show me a man who has the same friends for 20 years and I’ll show you men who haven’t grown for 20 years.

I’d call up Dave and say, “How about we play disc golf at the park?” or “I’ve got four free tickets to the I-Cubs – let’s go to a game!” and he’d basically hang up on me. Why? The activities I suggested didn’t allow Dave to flash his cash. When things like this happen enough, it becomes clear that Dave’s actual friend is spending money and doing expensive things, something I’m not interested in.