I know the more I make, more people expect me to just pay for everything because ‘I make so much’.
Ive had people demand I pay for their vacation (flight and hotel)…just because.
Oh they have a car issue “Can I pay you back later?” (They never pay back)
“Im a little short for groceries, I need food!” (Proceed to buy junk food and high quality produce they never get with their money) (And again Im an ass if I ask to be paid back, cause what I expect them to STARVE!!)
Oh shit, they dont have money for rent, how many times Ive gotten this one. Just 50, 100,150,200,250…and keep slowly creeping up. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU WONT PAY IT,ILL BE HOMELESS BECAUSE OF YOU!!!
Even had my neighbor demand (not ask, demand!) I pay for their car cause theyre 3 months behind and its about to be repo’d, and itll be MY FAULT! (with them yelling at me on my porch).
I know I had to stop being nice about lending, cause everyone else never wanted to stop ‘asking’. So yeah, I cant give an inch or people will just go for the full mile.
I find it to be the opposite, I make enough that I haven’t checked my bank account while making a purchase in a long time.
My friends are almost offended when I offer to cover dinners and nights out. I’m not trying to show off with my buddies, I just know $400-500 isn’t a lot to me and for them it’s a week’s pay but I really like hanging out with them.
So I try to compromise in that I’ll cover dinner if they cover bowling or something like that.
I wonder, did you come up from a poor family?
I did, and my outlook now (from a secure financial position) is very similar to yours. Although I view my generosity as a kind of twisted love language haha
How the hell do these people know how much you make?
Fuck’s sake, I don’t make $450k but my neighbor doesn’t ask me for shit because he has no idea what kind of money I make in the first place.
Either you live in the wrong neighborhood or maybe you need to keep your mouth shut? idfk lol
All my friends know how much I make, because I believe in pay transparency and all that. None of them ask me for money because they aren’t assholes.
The more I make… Well nothing changes.
We have helped friends out on various occasions to varying degrees.
Nobody demands shit from us let alone asks. Ok well, asking to donate to a school thing maybe.
Idk what kind of weirdos surround you but that sucks. Do you live in a gold plated house in the suburbs or something? Or are the matching Bentleys in the garage tipping them off? :)
I had a Vietnamese coworker who was the first in his family to get an engineering degree as a second generation family member. They absolutely treated him like that. He was making $75k compared to his parent’s combined $50k.
Oh hell yeah, this is what people don’t know about generational wealth. If you don’t have it, and somehow you make it, you will be subsidizing your poor family.
It’s like the opposite of the magnetic property of capital. It’s like, it’s so hard to get out from under the boot of rents. You’d think someone earning 50k is about 1/2 as worse of as someone earning 100k, but they may as well be in different countries, their situations are so dissimilar.
Anyway, I’m not saying don’t help out family. But I recognise how hard it can be.
They don’t expect you to pay for everything. Everyone who knows people like that also knows that they’ll easily get the money they need elsewhere.
It’s honestly kinda sad that people like you, who seem to be generally generous and willing to help out, get driven towards this mindset.
I’m pretty sure more than half of the money I give to beggars occasionally will be spent on booze and drugs, but I don’t really care. But when I do it I am the one who makes the decision to basically throw away my money. Plus if I lend someone money I consider it gone forever. But I never let someone guilt trip me into lending them money and I will aggressively call anyone out who tries. You seem to have a ton of really shitty people around you. Take care.
When I have had money, I made loans to people, with the knowledge that I might not get paid back, and if I wasn’t, well, generally the amounts were little enough that that one time cost of letting someone test themselves on repayment wasn’t that high. If it had been a constant thing, like you seem to be having, I don’t know that I could have kept that up. At the very least, I’ve been cutting out a lot of people over time. Sucks that you’ve been having to deal with that.
Yeah I worked a call centre when I was renting a flat with five other folks in the kind of bohemian part of town, and having even a shitty full time job put me in the position of being “the guy with money” and yeah if I had it to give I’d give, or at least share my peanut butter.
Anyway that’s all to say that what you’re talking about is real: if you’re in the money (even by a bit) and you start tracking everyone who owes you and ringing them up, you’ll make yourself crazy.
My dad had some great advice on this: if you lend money to a friend, never expect it back. That is, don’t give more than you can afford as a gift. If they get it back to you (which they usually will), well that’s a nice surprise. And if they don’t, well that’s a small price to pay to learn where you stack up in someone else’s priorities.
Your situation sounds exceptional though. I honestly have a hard time believing it. Are you just walking around with a diamond came and cash bulging out of your cargo pants? Wtf, why are so many people (acquaintances even??) hitting you up?
It sounds unreal.
In any case I bet you wouldn’t expect an actual friend to keep a back and forth ledger of petty expenses with you.
Setup:
- Good income
- Low cost of living area
- Dont live my wage
Result: Plenty of savings and investments
When people in a poor area who litterally dont have $50 in their bank account see you with 2 vehicles in the driveway (nothing fancy, just a car and truck) and do various projects to improve on your home, its not hard to put 2+2 together.
And when youve helped out friends in the past, they like to talk about how much you helped them.
And now youre a target.
You should never have spoken about your income or shown ostentatious purchases. Your problem is of own doing and is also related to the people you consort with.
Dude came in and showed off to us just like he did to the people around him. It’s no wonder that he gets asked for money.
This I can agree with. Started when I found out a friends wife needed surgery (not life threatening, but would remove a cronic pain from her life and she could start working again, big QoL improvement). They couldnt afford the upfront payments, so they were going to not going to do it. So I forwarded him the money so she could have it done, hes been good about paying me back, it is very very slow, but hes working at it so no worries. Wife mentioned to her/our friends how I helped, and it just went from there.
I should have known better and just let her suffer.