:mad:
When you are a kid, birthdays rea fun. Presents! Parties! Friends!
In short, profitable.
In your (gulp :() mid thirties? Your friends start “suggesting” that we should all totally go for lunch. And yes of course its at the super expensive new French place. And lets get other free loader…:D, ok I’ll admit I have done this myself, but come on.
Are you a hobbit? Do you have to get them all presents as well?
Culture here is decidedly that the birthday person doesn’t pay, in fact, the other guests normally split their bill.
My former housemate once walked out and left me to pay his bill when he was a guest at my birthday dinner. I actually owed him the money for the electric bill and, being a massive troll, he thought that would be a funny way to get me to pay it. The other guests, none of whom really knew him, got remarkably angry about me having to pay for him, even after I’d explained that it was money I owed him and if I didn’t pay it then I’d just be walking home then giving him the same cash.
Are you in an Asian country perhaps? Where such is the custom, and where you may have already enjoyed being an attendee once or twice, but now it’s your turn to be the celebrant (and payer, as a result.)?
It could be worse: The department birthday money for my birthday in January 2017 was blown on a Trump party, I had a new manager and he didn’t realize that he now had a January birthday in his group.
Turn off? I don’t even give Facebook a true date. None of their business. If any of my friends think that my birthday is really January 1, 1900, then they can spring for my birthday lunch. I also don’t give it valid family status. Again, none of their business.