“NEITHER A LENDER nor borrower be” was drummed into my head by my parents as an adolescent.
To be fair, they were less concerned with how much money I lent out – no doubt because I had so little to part with – and much more focussed on how regularly I extended an empty hand to friends and family in the hopes that it may be filled.
The term may have rattled around my head for years, but I never actually internalised the message because throughout our college careers, it seemed like my friends and I had somewhat of a pooled income.
You rarely missed out if you were a little cash-poor because someone would always see you right, and vice versa. ‘You’re not broke if I’m not broke’ was our unofficial motto.
Indeed, there was a time when I’d have known my friends’ paydays, earnings and any other income they may have accumulated, and then we left college, and as is to be expected, we became a little more discreet about our finances.
Salary expectations and realisations were spoken about in ballpark terms, savings were referred to in a relatively vague manner, and in-depth money talk was consigned to the annals of history.
If you’re of a certain age, it’s likely you have experienced a moment or two when details of your friends’ financial situations – in the rare moment they happen to be disclosed – left you ruminating, comparing and perhaps generally despairing.
Money is a tricky, tricky subject; it has the ability to provoke tension and cause resentment despite everyone’s best intentions, so with that in mind, we want to know how you and your friends navigate the subject.
Do you openly discuss salaries and savings with your friends?
