Do you think occasionally buying a meal for a small group requires being rich?
Yeah. At least, doing so without genuinely feeling it in your budget, certainly requires being rich. (Heck, dining out with your friends on a regular basis, even paying only for yourself, is not exactly budget-strain-free… unless you’re rich.)
Here’s the thing (and this is a concern that, if you’re rich, you might not be familiar with, but I assure you that it’s real): one of the worst things about not having very much money is that many fun group activities cost money. If your friends invite you out for [whatever], and you have to think about whether you can afford to accept the invitation, that’s painful and depressing. Actually having to turn it down is even worse.
Your proposal creates a scenario where not only do you have to think about whether you can afford to join your friends for a meal at a restaurant, but you now also have to think about whether you should pick up the whole check (after all, you haven’t done that in a long while, and it would really suck to end up looking like the one poor or miserly person in the group), or, if not, whether you’ll end up in a situation where your rich friend pays for your meal again, thus underscoring, once again, that he’s richer than you are.
I do not find any of those prospects pleasant. I like my friendships to be relationships of equals. That means, among other things, that (except in certain rare and unusual circumstances) everyone pays for their own meals. It’s not because I’m comparing the cost of the meal to the value of the friendship (indeed, it would never even occur to me to think like that); it’s because I want group activities to not be a source of anxiety and shame, rather than being pleasant and fun.
Ah, we may just have different definitions of rich, or perhaps I’m a bit of a spendthrift! Or, I suppose, I might just go to cheaper restaurants. I’m thinking of checks in the like, $150-$200 range for the party, which isn’t nothing but as an occasional splurge doesn’t really fuss me. I guess if you do it 5x per year on a 50k household income (about the local median in my city, I think) that’d be about 2% gross. Not cheap, but also not crazy, at least for my money intuitions.
Yeah. At least, doing so without genuinely feeling it in your budget, certainly requires being rich. (Heck, dining out with your friends on a regular basis, even paying only for yourself, is not exactly budget-strain-free… unless you’re rich.)
Here’s the thing (and this is a concern that, if you’re rich, you might not be familiar with, but I assure you that it’s real): one of the worst things about not having very much money is that many fun group activities cost money. If your friends invite you out for [whatever], and you have to think about whether you can afford to accept the invitation, that’s painful and depressing. Actually having to turn it down is even worse.
Your proposal creates a scenario where not only do you have to think about whether you can afford to join your friends for a meal at a restaurant, but you now also have to think about whether you should pick up the whole check (after all, you haven’t done that in a long while, and it would really suck to end up looking like the one poor or miserly person in the group), or, if not, whether you’ll end up in a situation where your rich friend pays for your meal again, thus underscoring, once again, that he’s richer than you are.
I do not find any of those prospects pleasant. I like my friendships to be relationships of equals. That means, among other things, that (except in certain rare and unusual circumstances) everyone pays for their own meals. It’s not because I’m comparing the cost of the meal to the value of the friendship (indeed, it would never even occur to me to think like that); it’s because I want group activities to not be a source of anxiety and shame, rather than being pleasant and fun.
Ah, we may just have different definitions of rich, or perhaps I’m a bit of a spendthrift! Or, I suppose, I might just go to cheaper restaurants. I’m thinking of checks in the like, $150-$200 range for the party, which isn’t nothing but as an occasional splurge doesn’t really fuss me. I guess if you do it 5x per year on a 50k household income (about the local median in my city, I think) that’d be about 2% gross. Not cheap, but also not crazy, at least for my money intuitions.