It’s a luxury hotel, expensive meals and a last-minute upgrade’ Our friends earn far more than we do. My husband and I are in our late 50s and had reached what I thought was a comfortable place financially — good jobs, a nice home, no debt, solid retirement savings. We don’t live extravagantly, but we can travel, eat out and enjoy ourselves.
Then we became friends with a couple who have an entirely different definition of “comfortable.” They’re successful, and I don’t begrudge them their money — they’re also generous, funny and thoughtful, and we genuinely love being with them. The problem is that everything they do costs a fortune. It’s a $300-a-person restaurant.
A weekend away isn’t a weekend away. It’s a luxury hotel, expensive meals and a last-minute upgrade because, “why not?” They fly to Paris on a whim. They just bought another car, even though the one they had was barely a year old.
When we mentioned we were thinking about moving someday, they asked why we didn’t simply buy a $1 million house in the neighborhood we liked — as casually as if they were suggesting a new sofa. For a while, we tried to keep up. We told ourselves these were the people we wanted as friends, and we didn’t want money to get in the way.
We went to the restaurants. We took some of the trips. Then we started putting things we wouldn’t otherwise have bought onto a credit card.
That was our wake-up call. Don’t Short Yourself offers weekly money tips to help you earn it, stack it and grow it. I would like to receive updates and special offers from Dow Jones and affiliates.
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