Vol. 50: Who's footing the bill? Friendship and finances

There’s a video going around on TikTok by Corporate Baddie, DeAndre Brown, where he proposes that when someone invites their friends out to dinner to celebrate their birthday, the birthday person should pick up the whole bill. His reasoning here is that when we* were kids, our parents paid for birthday parties rather than offloading costs to the parents of the kids you hosted (*it’s worth mentioning here that while I grew up with parents who could afford to throw me a birthday party, not everyone did).

Let me be clear this isn’t an attack on DeAndre - he’s a young, Black gay man and his relationship to finances and class is impacted by that context, just as mine is influenced by the fact that I’m a white cis lesbian who grew up with two physician parents. I love his other content but really disagreed on this.

I debated even sharing my take for hesitancy that it's dripping with class privilege but I hope it’s useful for those who share my background; and for those who don't, I hope you call me on any bullshit.

I will never forget a lesson I learned my freshman year of college. I quickly established a friend group that spent all our free time together - shopping at American Apparel or Wet Seal for frat party outfits, going out to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, drinking, partying, college shit. Like me, many members of the group were going to school in our hometown, Ann Arbor, but some were from out of state.

Halfway through October, when it had only been a month and a half but felt like we had been and would be friends forever, we were getting ready to go out to a nice vegetarian restaurant for one of the girls’ birthdays. As most of the group left the dorm room, one of our new friends started crying and said, “I just can’t keep up with you guys.”

While I regret that my class-blindness led her to feel pain at that moment, I’m so grateful for this friend and the impact she had on my life. I’m grateful I learned this lesson so young. She called me to pause, to not assume even financial footing, and to build space because I don’t ever want a friend to feel they have to overextend themselves to spend time with me.

I think financial transparency can be a beautiful thing in a relationship. And as the person in this situation who had more class privilege, it was and is on me to open up loving and nonjudgmental dialogue about what is and isn’t in budget, to craft a relationship with someone where they feel comfortable saying, “I can’t afford this.” See also: ASK if this works for their budget before they feel forced to bring it up!

If they can’t afford it and the price for two of us is in my budget, it’s my treat (if they're comfortable with this - it's ok that not everyone is). Or we could go on a walk together, have them over for a home cooked meal. I just want to spend time with you. I don’t want my friendships to be rooted in the same finances and class background. To make a terrible pun, my life would not nearly be as rich as it is if I only ever spent time with people who shared my finances. My problem with DeAndre's take is it encourages relationships where we're all on equal playing fields. That's not the reality of my friend circles now, nor do I ever want it to be.

I would love to be able to take all my friends out to celebrate my birthday. Right now, it’s not in my budget. My birthday brunch was at Lulu’s Wine Garden, where you order using a QR code - a brilliant COVID update that I hope sticks around because it easily creates separate bills, where each person can order what’s in their budget on their own, and my pregnant or sober friends are not paying for anyone’s alcohol. No splitting the bill or venmo calculations required.

I’m also writing this as a reminder and commitment to myself. Recently, my wife and I hit some major financial goals through a mix of hard work (mostly hers, tbh), and - because transparency matters here - inheritance. As our financial freedom grows, I never want my loved ones to feel how my friend felt all those years ago. Just as it’s on straights to build a culture where queer people feel safe coming out, it’s on those with more room in our budget to never assume, and to foster a culture of open, honest conversations about what is and isn’t fiscally feasible, and how that impacts our social outings.

Similar to candid conversations around money, I want my friendships to be able to have candid conversations about alcohol. About a year ago one of my oldest friends shared with me that they had gotten sober and that I was one of the first people to question them about their alcohol use, ten years prior. I take that shit very seriously. As someone who loves drinking but is constantly re-evaluating my relationship to alcohol, I don’t want anyone to drink more than they intended because of me. I’m trying to get better about this by calling out friends who pressure others to drink and proactively serving mocktails at our gatherings (so if you have any fun mocktail recipes, send them my way!).

That’s all from me this week. Next week, I’ll be in Italy - and the week after that, you’re in for a very special treat! As always, please let me know what resonated with you and share the newsletter by forwarding to friends if you enjoyed it.