I’ve got this friend (we’ll make it Jane) who is horrible with money. She’s in her later forties, just quit a modest state job (argh, pension! pension!) to take an even more modest non-state job and is deep in the hole with credit card debt. I don’t want to be judgemental but it’s frustrating when I see her commit to trips I know she really can’t afford and go to the mall when she’s talking about bankruptcy.
Latest insanely bad financial decision:
A mutual friend is moving away permanently. Jane and another friend (Tom) decide to throw a big going away party involving a boat rental. They figure they’ll just charge everyone $25 a head and it’ll work out. If everyone had shown up who RSVP’d (and the invitation did not make it clear that RSVPing was a firm financial commitment), $25 a head still wouldn’t have covered the total bill. About five or six people didn’t show up. Tom has called Jane and told her they are short on the boat bill by $600 and she owes him half. Part of what make the bill so high is that Tom insisted on having a three hour rental instead of the standard two hour rental.
ARGH. My friends are idiots. Tom and Jane want to send an email to our entire group hoping people will feel guilty and chip in which is stupid. A lot of people specifically didn’t RSVP to this party 'cause it was so pricey (the $25 didn’t even include drinks or anything, it was BYOB). I went only because our mutual friend is such a close friend, otherwise I think the price was too steep. Another issue is that our group (on a club level) interacts with this company sometimes and they have in the past donated equipment/time to us. We don’t want to screw up our relationship with them and this bill needs to get paid.
Yet another friend (Grunehilda) called to give me the scoop and ask advice since Jane is freaking over money she doesn’t have. Neither Grunehilda or I could think of anything to tell Jane yet we absolutely do not feel responsible for the money. I’m heartsick over this because Jane is a genuinely great person but, dang, when is she ever gonna use some commonsense?
Can anyone can thing of anything I can do or advise? Do you think Tom owes a greater share of the bill since he was the one that kept insisting on extending the rental over Jane’s protests? I’m thinking of telling her to pay in installments and offering to buy her groceries one week (which is kinda shifting the responsibility but makes me more happy than just giving her cash out right).
You sound like a very nice person, but I would like to recommend being careful about helping Jane out when she gets in financial trouble. Maybe people have done that in the past, which would not have helped her embrace reality when it comes to money. If she is addicted to spending money she doesn’t have, helping her out could be enabling behavior, like cleaning up after an alcoholic.
In my opinion, Tom should pay the entire difference between the 2-hour rental and the 3-hour rental (assuming things happened as you describe them) and then the two of them should split the cost of whatever is left.
Getting him to agree and keeping all the friendships intact is going to be a lot harder, and I don’t have any real advice for you on that. Except maybe not to take sides.
If she agreed to get a three hour rental, she can’t reneg on it now that the bill has come in. Did she and Tom decide ahead of time that they were going to split the difference? When they did the math and realized that $25 a head wasn’t going to cover the whole bill, what was their solution then? ALSO- why would Tom, knowing this woman’s history with money, go in on such a big financial commitment with her?
This woman is 40-something. She should know how to handle her finances by now! You shouldn’t be responsible for one more penny. You gave her the $25 cover, and now it’s up to her. Why were she and Tom the people who were organizing this party in the first place? Seems to me that she shouldn’t be responsible for the finances of ANYTHING other than her own personal budget, regardless of circumstance, ever again.
I don’t know what the hell either of them was thinking. I thought it was a bad idea from the beginning but didn’t say anything. They probably just both cavalierly thought “oh, everyone loves our departing mutual friend, I’m sure a lot of people will show”. I bet no math was actually done. (I did the math, when I heard the story I looked up the rates and was horrified) They’re both kinda flighty people which is, of course, how all this crap happened. Tom (and most people) don’t know how horribly in debt Jane is since she keeps up a good front.
Argh. I guess there’s not really a good solution. I don’t want to see my friend suffer but it’s not like she’s getting unfairly shafted, she was just stupid.
Let her be stupid then. Pops Mercotan always told me “never help a lame duck over a fence. They’ll crap in your hands every time.” I have discovered there is much truth in that saying.
I can relate. I recently decided to drastically reduce the amount of time I spend in the company of a certain friend. (Subsequent pronoun ambiguity is intentional) I just can’t watch them make stupid choices anymore. Saying something or offering advice is out of the question. So I am choosing to quietly withdraw.