AIBU to feel embarrassed after colleague’s comment about payday?

[Malteaser197]

My colleague said ‘’oh my wage slip has come through’’ I said ‘’oh yeah, payday has come round quick I think, thankfully’’ (pay day tomorrow). She said ‘’oh, I never think like that. I don’t even think about it, just stick my wages into an account, save it, spend it if I need too’’ felt embarrassed by this. As I live pay check to pay check, and obviously she was stating that she doesn’t and being paid makes no difference to her.

she might be the same and not wanting to let on.

Or even late Wednesday night now SEPA is so efficient😀

@Drats this resonated with me! I use to be oh so cool and pretend I didn’t know when payday was when I was drowning in debt at the time! I ALWAYS knew when payday was but I would have been mortified if my colleagues knew how bad my financial situation was.

I doubt any of my colleagues live like this but we wouldn’t discuss personal finances anyway as that’s a bit crass imo

I’m judging her. I budget payday to payday. I save £2k a month so it’s not hand to mouth but my available spends run out just before payday.

If someone made a comment like your colleague I’d assume they had no money sense. Even if you live payday to payday you can still be financially savvy and probably have great budgeting skills.

I remember commenting about the time your money comes into you account overnight and a colleague saying - Jesus are things that tight? I was in my early twenties, first job and I was really embarrassed.

Afew months later I commented that the ISA allowance had gone up and he commented I must be rich if I have savings😂.

People say weird stuff a you can’t overthink it. Yes there are people out there who aren’t living pay check to pay ch club. I am strictly speaking not, but I run my current account down pretty low at the end of every month because I maximize my savings.

everyone has their own ways of managing their money

Crass of your colleague really.

People i know will say thank god it's payday and I tend to say yes it's good, even though I'm not living payday to payday...

I thought this too. Like she’s overcompensating

I've been in both situations and felt embarrassed in both! Its embarrassingto live payday to payday for me but it's also embarrassing to be privileged not to!

Just style it out! I don't but that's definitely the solution.

You shouldn't be embarrassed. Being aware of pay day doesn't even mean you are worse off necessarily, as a lot of people manage their money in sign a way that they'd save some, pay bills and keep some spends. It's not indicative of how much money you have and suggests your colleague has a slack attitude to money actually.

Don’t feel embarrassed, plus your colleague may not have meant it like it has sounded to you.

years ago I had a full time job , not earning as much as I would have liked but preferably to the pt jobs I had previously. I was a lone parent. My wage paid the rent, everything for DC, food, clothes for work, fuel. There was nothing left after that, I struggled to even pay for school trips and would go without food one day a week to get us through. We never had holidays or anything like that.

Nearly every lunch hour I was around a group of female colleagues and I’d have to hear how they lived. One worked full time and her entire wage was spent on an extravagant holiday for her and her husband each year (my opinion on that is I’d have taken a nicer pt job instead and enjoy each day and not had a holiday). Another would complain as she had just walked out on her husband, was about to divorce and get her half of everything, was that I couldn’t possibly understand what it’s like for her and she was struggling to feed herself….whilst driving a fancy car and buying expensive new clothes. And the list goes on. Not one of them ever considered my situation and how on earth I managed…I’d just get odd comments like oh that’s what your husband must pay for? And I’d say no there is no husband. It made me feel pretty bad about myself, but then id go home to our cosy little house and a hot meal I had paid for to feed us and feel ok again.

So if your colleague is like any of them she means nothing by it she just doesn’t stop to think.

I went on to work with a group of men afterwards which was a whole lot nicer. Most of them checking daily how I was managing with my DC (they all had wife’s looking after the kids), suggesting how I might get a mortgage and so on. All like lovely stand in dads.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

It's totally going to depend on her dependents and responsibilities OP!

I mean, if you know you fritter on stuff that doesn't really make you happy, that's one thing.

But if you have a child and she doesn't, or are single and she's in a couple with someone who earns a decent salary - well, there's literally no moral lesson to be drawn from how easy she finds it to get by vs how hard you find it. She's thick to have even mentioned it.

If you're spending it all on coke and tweakments, well that's different

Person A: "oh my wage slip has come through"

Person B: "oh yeah, payday has come round quick I think, thankfully’’

Person A: "oh, I never think like that. I don’t even think about it, just stick my wages into an account, save it, spend it if I need too"

Neither person has said anything to be embarrassed or to feel badly about.

I used to work with someone who would boast that she only worked so she could spend her salary on nice skin care and treating her kids as her husband paid for everything else. At the time it was just after my divorce and I was struggling to bring up two kids on my own and there was another single parent in the office who was struggling even more. Neither of us had the money to treat our kids to anything and nice skin care was even more unreachable. How we didn’t murder her I’ll never know.

Where I work our bonus payments were on our payslips today… could she have meant the bonus part rather than the actual monthly pay?

This comment about pay day is regularly said at work “thank goodness it’s pay day” etc etc . I find people just agree even people who you know are well off . Her comment was a bit weirder but then again who actually cares . I guess she is just telling the truth . But you have nothing to be embarrassed about

You do know that the majority of workers don’t get an annual bonus?

I had a similar discussion at work recently. Myself and a colleague both don’t even notice our paydays, we assume the correct amount goes in every month and if we want/need to buy something, we buy it.

Another colleague puts in every overtime shift available and is still struggling.

People live very differently and have various different circumstances.

Financial hardship is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about, most people have struggled at some point in their life, others haven’t but might someday.

I wouldn’t give it a second thought.

How are you under the misconception that I live paycheck to paycheck? My response to the OP was in support of someone………..no judgement here!

Neither of your remarks are more than random office chat.

Your colleague's remark could mean equally that she is so rich she never notices her payslip; she is dreadful at budgeting and never knows how much money she has; or that she adopts a zen approach to life where if money is there she'll do something with it and if it isn't she just won't.

My ex was often heard saying things like that, it wasn’t even true

He was a twat as well

Demonstrates the vast differences between individuals.
I have always paid for everything out of my salary whilst for some colleagues, it was their spending money!
You may have been a bit sensitive OP but rest assured that there are several people living week to week.
Take care OP

People are so sensitive