It’s left me with the odd feeling that they felt like they had to ‘pay’ for my friendship, which is untrue and very uncomfortable, and left me feeling like I ‘owed’ them.
People assume from comments about say, networking that it’s good to have people owing you things – it’s not. It makes people feel uncomfortable, and for networking, when you do someone a favour, it’s good to suggest/offer them something they can do back for you right away. It leaves you both feeling good about the exchange, and more likely to exchange favours in the future.

It’s also felt like it’s reinforcing that I’m poorer, but hey, I’m frugal with my money, so I can afford reasonable expenses – I just avoid going to pricier things. I feel uncomfortable when I’m pressured to go to something outside my price-range also, especially because there’s often no real difference in outcome between the cheaper and pricier options.
A couple of times, it’s seemed like someone was actually ’showing off’ by making us all go somewhere expensive and then ‘offering’ to pay. Not in all cases, but still, a couple of times, it was a weird, and I’d just prefer not to go than to have someone paying for me.

So i think that there needs to be a good balance between the two. But a good thing to remember is to pay yourself first. And to not spend more money then you have.

Stick to these two rules as a general principle and you will most likely be better off financially in the future.

Young Investor

http://www.investmentrealty.blogspot.com

Looking back, I don’t think she ever really respected me & I can’t say that I blame her. Rather than proving my worth as a potential mate, I was too busy trying to impress her by paying for everything.

Any guy who has never pulled out his wallet to buy dinner & movie for a girl, or a trip to the shopping mall, or a down payment on a car, in exchange for expectation of something more, is a liar. This has personally cost me dearly in real money. My goal is before I die to break even, and sucker out as much money from women as they have already taken from me. This will be a tough task though. Happy Valentines Day!!

All our relatives, friends, strangers, church people know her as the giver to everyone and anyone and they always ask of her. If you (anyone) visited our home (in Africa) you’d be amazed at the treatment you get. She treats everyone either as her own son/daughter or very good friend. People love this of course. One time she had guests from Belgium who she took out for an evening and the bill came to about US800. Now, I come from one of the poorest countries in the world but my parents have been blessed with resources. However, my mom happily paid the bill although she was a little shocked that alcoholic drinks were that expensive (she’s never had any!) but then again, she took them to a five star hotel. By the way she also has extremely expensive tastes.

Anyway, until two years ago, I always wanted to be like my mom in terms of giving but when I moved to N.America I started to think differently (change of culture, I guess) although I now see that I always lived lavishly because of what I grew up seeing. When I was in London as a fully-funded postgraduate student, I also took on two jobs to make money for myself. I never invested any of it but each time I’d go home to visit I’d carry 3-4 suitcases full of gifts for friends, family, and whomever! Isn’t that madness? Of course culturally, in my country we are a more communally-based society as opposed to the western world etc. But I now see that my parents might have to keep on working longer than necessary because of mom’s giving. And I am talking about tens of thousands of dollars at least.

After reading so many personal finance blogs last year, I decided to make a change in my life. But I can assure you, I get a lot of ‘real’ inner pain, heartache, confusion and constant struggles with not giving to others. I love to cover the bill, buy gifts for people, donate to charity (usually in hundreds per charity) but I know it’s not healthy to do it all the time. I almost ran crazy (or so I thought) between October and December last year because I had been seriously frugal until then. So, in that period I donated/gave away close to 6,000 dollars, in different amounts to people, causes, my church etc. Then in January 2008 I started to feel bad that I couldn’t control the obsession to spend on others, it’s crazy. Now I am telling myself to take each day at a time but to stick to my future goals. I have put myself on a tough budget and will also be moving out of my brother’s home so that I can live on my own to really figure this thing out. I was contributing towards rent. I have no debt (thanks to my parents) but I feel bad that to this day my mother loves to send us a couple of hundreds of dollars from time to time because she believes her children in the U.S and Canada might not have had enough to eat i.e might have gone to bed hungry!.

Interestingly, last night I was at church and a girl told me she liked the scent of my perfume and then I asked her when her birthday was. You see, I have an extra bottle that I bought on sale while stocking up as a frugal person and immediately I thought I could give it to her. On my way home I realized that if I give that bottle to her I will have to buy another one (expensively) for myself and thus my frugality will be wasted. I felt uncomfortable yet I want to stick to frugal living.

So far this week I haven’t spent any money (one of my strategies to spend less) but everyday is like hell although today is Thursday and I feel successful so far.

Honestly, Trent, what is this thing? Can anyone out there throw some more light on this? People, I am serious. I could have been a millionaire by now considering I’ve been working for the last ten years but always giving away. Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks, Trent, for the blog.

I’ve noticed that this happens less frequently now, especially since we go out to dinner less often. It’s becoming more common to have a home-cooked meal with friends, and if we’re not hosting it, we’ll just ask what we can bring.

We do insist on paying any time we go out to dinner with my husband’s family, who are near the poverty level. It’s our most common way to express our love outside of holidays (birthday gifts are usually “we will take you wherever you want to eat”).

But when some friends go from being engineering students to engineers, teaching students to teachers, and liberal arts students to all those jobs they tell you can get with a liberal arts related degree; a group of friends no longer has the same status or same pay. This change can make people uncomfortable and that can lend itself to the higher paid friends (or lower paid in some cases) try to level the playing field by paying the way for others. Or, it may be even a feeling of guilt if one friend in a group of like-degreed friends gets a much higher paying job (or one at all) and that friend wants to “make up for it” by paying for everyone.

And yet others may do this because they really like taking care of others, and this is one way they do that.

We’re both diligent about keeping track of our money and we’ve discussed this subject on numerous occasions, so I’m not concerned about this becoming an issue in the future.

I too feel the need to foot the bill for my siblings if we got out. Fortunately I’ve got too strong a grasp on how much money I actually have to do so regularly. I do often pay for the youngest who isn’t old enough to have a job or anything themselves though.

In my life, we’re generally on the receiving end of such things. In my family, everyone else is much better off, so they pick up the tab for things. Like next week, we’re visiting my parents who live 45 minutes from Disney and they are taking us there for the day. My part, though, is planning our meals so we eat out less and they can save money on that end.

My grandparents always paid for everything when we visited them. Now my parents are doing the same, so it’s not an issue per se. But it is nice to be able to contribute by asking my mom to make Rivel Soup (my favorite that I haven’t learned how to make) rather than naming a restaurant when they asked us where we want to eat.

Dad had financial trouble in his later years. He didn’t live in our town, but he would come here occasionally for work. We discovered later that he was here a lot more often than we ever realized. One of the reasons why he didn’t let any of the family know was that he couldn’t afford to buy dinner. It didn’t matter to us, but it was important to him.

I think it ultimately made him wonder if that was the only reason why people were around him. I think his fear about the answer to that question was one of the reasons why he avoided family and friends when he was in town.

He died pretty much penniless. There were many reasons for this, not just because of his need to pay for everything. But it certainly didn’t help.

That said, us going out these days usually means going to the grocery store and picking up ingredients for dinner, so I guess we’ve changed a few things about money!

It was kinda interesting to discover we both did it as expression of…. not love but care/concern for others. I’m not the most expressive person verbally, so paying for dinner was a way for me to communicate my feelings. Strange I know.

Trent, and everyone else, have any idea if this is a more guy than girl thing?