I have a friend whose twin sons go to the same school as my ds. Whereas he has his breakfast at home and takes a packed lunch to school every day, she gives each ds £5 every day to spend on breakfast/lunch as they see fit (and doesn't ask for any change back). This gets spent on fizzy drinks/crisps from the corner shop and whatever they get at school.
Now, I'm not going to discuss whether or not this constitutes good/bad parenting, and have said nothing to my friend about this. The reason this has become an area of contention is that the other day I was round her house for a chat when she started talking about money (you can see where this is going). Her and her dp do not earn much, but the main problem is that they are very wasteful with their money. They don't go on holidays, buy hugely expensive gadgets or rack up debt, but they have takeaways too frequently, use taxis far more than they need to, have their heating up high all the time, and so on. And, of course, they spend about £200 a month on their sons' weekday breakfast and lunches.
She got onto the subject as she was concerned that they weren't spending much in Christmas this year as they couldn't afford it. She spoke a lot about how her twins would be so disappointed and that she did not understand why they always seemed to have so little or know how to improve the situation. I, genuinely trying to be kind and thinking that she was asking for some real advice, mentioned that to me it seemed like they could find ways to save money. She asked me what I meant, I used the breakfast/lunch money as an example and, well, let's just say things blew up very quickly and she has not spoken to me in over a week.
Was I being unreasonable to have said that and instead should I have just sympathises with her and said nothing of substance. At no point, btw, did I say anything about her parenting etc, I just mentioned she could spend less there.