Selfish friend expects me to pay high price when on low income

[Delly9]

My friend is quite selfish. She always expects to go to expensive restaurants when we meet up. She has a 38k a year job and 12k rental property income - she told me this. Her parents also paid a large chunk of the 4 bed house she lives alone and she told me this. She does not have a mortgage.

I am only on 27k. Why does she thinks it’s acceptable to expect me to pay £30 for a meal at a restaurant. The one time she had this ‘voucher’ and I still had to pay £25 for the meal.

This time round she found this ‘Table’ scheme where you pay £8 fee to get 50% off the meals. Well it’s not 50% if you have had to pay a fee. I looked at the menu and it says there is a 12.5% service charge on the menu. It’s doesn’t say it can be removed. She said it’s too late to cancel. I am seething. I feel like just getting a bowl of soup as that will end up being a reasonable price. Most meals are £30 at this place.

I am really annoyed with her. She always says she has no money but goes to a concert or gig every month and stays in a hotel which all of this costs hundreds of pounds and she goes abroad a few times a year. She isn’t poor as she can afford this and these expensive meals. I think she forgets what she tells me.

I am not jealous but she has lots of disposable income but expects me to fork out when I am not on the same income and I have to pay bills and mortgage.

"(reading between the lines) they think I should be paying for them since I earn more."

That's your own creation. OP doesn't give that impression at all.

I think the OP comes across ok. A friend should know if her friend can afford prices, even if deemed as standard. OP shouldn't need to spell things out.

Exactly. It’s £500 more than the average UK salary for full time work. Hardly rolling in it!

Her friend isn’t wealthy so not quite sure what the relevance of this post is.

Kindly .. £30 really isn't an expensive meal it's a very standard price so I don't think she is being unreasonable. She wants to spend time with you and it looks like she's been trying to find ways to make it more affordable for you.

You need to be more direct with her. Invite her to yours for a meal instead , or suggest nandos where you know what the price is first
You sound very hostile towards someone that wants to spend time with you.

Suggest other things to do that's more affordable

Based on your posts it really doesn’t sound like it’s her that’s being awkward.

She’s tried to accommodate you by booking with vouchers to make it cheaper, being sensitive to your financial situation. They may well have told her that 5pm booking was the only option when she booked so she asked you if you could leave work early to make it work at the lower price, for your benefit. You agreed: nobody made you do so. The restaurant may well now have had booking availability open up later at the lower price with the discount that wasn’t available at the time she booked it, if it’s a quiet night. They will try to fill these tables at full price first, obviously. I doubt she’ll continue bothering particularly wants to eat dinner at 5pm! This seems to have been arranged to try to help you and you haven’t told her it doesn’t, or suggested an alternative plan to go somewhere else where you believe you can eat decent food for less at a later time, or suggested to do something else entirely. Do you expect her to read your mind?

Your assertion that she’s “trying to be awkward” when it seems she’s gone out of her way to find deals that are cheap for your benefit, organised taxis there to facilitate eating early to make it cheaper for you, and you have agreed this yet “sit there seething” because there is a 12.5% service charge on the bill when this is a completely normal tip to expect to leave as a minimum in a restaurant unless service is terrible whether automatically added to the bill or not, shows that this is a “you” problem not a “her” problem.

She sounds like a very kind and understanding friend trying to make things manageable for you. You admit you’ve never told her you can’t afford to go out at all even on an earlybird deal so how is she meant to know? It seems very unfair for you to be blaming her for your inability to arrange things yourself that fit your preferences or state when you’re not happy with a proposed plan and your comments about her personal circumstances show your jealousy very clearly: why, otherwise, did you even mention them?

You seem to resent her simply because her financial situation is better than yours and you have implied that she should be subsidising your meals and “you shouldn’t pay the same as her”. You are the one who hasn’t been capable of dealing with this in an adult manner and admitting you can’t afford to go out at all even with these cheap deals she has found to help you make it more affordable, and for some reason you’re directing your anger about your own financial situation into resentment at her.

You don’t sound like a very pleasant person to spend time with if you sit at dinner and “seethe” about a perfectly normal service charge that is to be expected, and if you continue to behave in this manner rather than suggest any plans yourself that you’d be capable of participating in without “seething” at the person who made the effort to organise them, then I doubt she’ll continue bothering for much longer.

Do you have many other friends, OP?

No, it isn’t. Per the ONS the median UK salary for full time work was £37,430. It’s risen since then. OP’s friend seems to earn pretty much exactly the median average for full time work (much lower than the mean average).

Have you heard of inflation?

Figures from ten years ago are hardly relevant in a period where annual inflation frequently has been 5-10%!

They really must add economics to the national curriculum if there is ever going to be any sanity in discussions on such topics. Each £1 due to the cumulative effect of this inflation is now worth 72p compared to 2015, i.e. you need a 39% payrise for your gross income to be worth the same (before you consider the impact of higher tax rates on net income).

Sorry, that was meant to say it was £37,430 last year…

(Figures from Bank of England inflation calculator)

But if the friend isn’t getting it, she DOES need to spell it out. Whether she should need to is almost irrelevant.

If she needs to, then she's probably not the type of person worth being a friend, so I wouldn't bother with her.

How should a friend know that without being told? I’ve got no idea whatsoever what some of my friends earn, nor what their disposable income is. If I suggest a reasonably priced dinner out and they can’t afford it (in general or on that occasion) it’s up to them to speak up, not just attend anyway and then seethe about it!

Completely agree. I hate jo idea how much my friends earn, their mortgage payments ,disposable income etc. If any of us can’t afford something, we speak up like grown ups and don’t expect our friends to be psychic.

You invite her to other places? Xx

Surely you can offer to pay her the £4 she will lose from the booking fee. It's ridiculous, yes, but cheaper than not doing so.

Jesus H 🙄

QU

You are the issue here OP. You have not said “No”, and if you have you haven’t said it clearly enough. Tell her “No, I can’t afford to eat there, I’m on much less money than you with far more to pay out than you”. You need to be clear. How else would she know????

She’s clearly meant to be psychic. Just as she’s supposed to know the OP can’t have an early-bird dinner at 5 pm, because the OP hasn’t told her she can’t leave work in time.

For me, I would never presume anything and always ask if something is ok first. It's just basic manners.

"I hate jo idea how much my friends earn"

Surely you have an idea based on what their job is. If they're a call centre worker they probably earn less than a doctor.
If they're public sector workers it's public information (although for the exact amount you might need to know how many years they've done).

Pretty much all of my friends have office jobs in private sector sone local, some in town and so no although I could hazard a guess, I genuinely have no idea other than a ballpark figure based on location. I also don’t know the size of anyone’s outgoings either - it’s not a topic that’s ever come up.

If any of us couldn’t afford to do something, we’d say so rather than expect other people to presume.

You'd also need to know their grade, where they work etc.

But salary etc doesn't paint the whole picture. The OPs friend earns £38k. But is mortgage free and has income from a rental property. So they're likely to have a good disposable income.

But unless you've seen the incomings and outgoings of someone's bank account you have no idea of their finances. Someone on £38k paying rent probably won't have a lot of spare money.

even if you do know how much money someone earns, you shouldn't presume they're happy and able to spend X doing Y.

They might be trying to save a mortgage deposit could well be trying to spend as little as possible. They might prefer to spend their money on other things.

They might be trying to get out debt or not get into debt by restricting their spending, especially on things like eating out, which has got far more expensive, often for worse quality food and service, such that people are increasingly deciding its not worth it any more.

I’m on a similar wage to you and have 1 child.
Also have a friend like yours who is always trying to get me to do lots of things that are quite expensive.
You don’t always have to go overboard explaining.
I will often text back: “I can’t afford it’ or ‘sorry not this time’ or ‘I can’t fit this in today’ .
It gets easier the more you do it. Honestly you have nothing to lose!