The situation: Carrie needs to buy her apartment from her ex-fiance Aidan Shaw because they broke up and he has to either sell her place or have her buy it from him at what he bought it for to allow her to stay in it. But she has 100 pairs of shoes, at $400 a pop, which is about $40,000, and is equivalent to a down payment on her apartment but unfortunately her savings hasn’t matched it, as she has only saved about $1600 so far.
Carrie: “Big offered me the money for my down payment. But I could never take it….could I?”
Miranda: “No you couldn’t.”
Charlotte: “He just ..gave you $30,000?”
Carrie: “As a loan, I would pay him back.”
Samantha: “Take the money!”
Miranda: “When a man gives you money, you give him control.”
Samantha: “It’s just money. Man, woman, who cares? It’s fluid. Someone needs it, you give it. You need it, you take it.”
Charlotte: “I’m uncomfortable with this situation, we shouldn’t be talking about money.”
Miranda: “Why not, we talk about everything else..”
Women don’t talk about money with one another, and we don’t help ‘police’ one anothers’ spending habits either. Correction, most women don’t. I occasionally brush upon it with my close friends on things like how much we pay an accountant to do our taxes, or how much an apartment costs and whether or not to invest in a condo, but generally, we don’t discuss any financial matters. It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I pretty much have my own life under control financially. I have a goal, and come hell or high water, I’m trying my best to stick to it, even though I do lapse now and then. (Hey, life happens!)
At any rate, this reminded me of Budgeting Babe’s column about this very matter, and it got me thinking about it. Why don’t women ever talk about money with their girlfriends? We can talk about all the 1001 sexual positions to try (I don’t do that though..), about whether or not we should get breast implants, about diseases and all of these other things that make up our lives, but we can’t even discuss the one thing that ‘drives’ it all, for lack of a better word – money.
In my situation, I have maybe 2 or 3 friends I’d ever consider asking money advice from. And only because they’re level-headed, and my one friend has ‘been there and dont that’. But we don’t regularly talk about how our stocks, index funds or retirement savings plans are doing and I kind of wish we would. But I think it’s also the Internet Age that we live in. Anything we need to learn or understand can be gleaned from Investopedia or other “How-To” sites. I think that’s what started me blogging about finances (which has slowly started lapsing into becoming a beauty+fashion+shopping blog), because I don’t have anywhere else to say it.
The funny thing is that I can talk about finances with my guy friends with nary an issue. They’re thrilled to be discussing the returns on a certain index fund, or a stock, or how to best invest your retirement using a proper asset allocation strategy. Or even whehter or not we should rent a place, or buy a place, where the cheapest living accomodations are, etc. But they’re not my girlfriends, and I wish that they were, because while I don’t want to be the one to say: “Hey.. I noticed that you seem to be really stressed out lately about finances but you’re also spending a lot of money lately.
Can you afford that shirt you have in your hand?” But I can’t. Because it’s considered rude, and is quite awkward to try and bring up something like that. Plus, since I don’t know their situation, I don’t know if they’re hurting for cash to clear their credit card bills. They don’t tell me anything, and even if they do mention that their credit card got declined, they laugh it off like a joke, or a badge of honor to attest to how much they love shopping, or doing their nails at $30 a pop per week, or eating out at restaurants and blowing $50-100 a night because they think they should.
I’d imagine a lot of my friends think I’m a bit of a anti-social hermit sometimes. It’s not that I don’t want to hang out with them, but it costs money to even go and SEE them for the day. Then it balloons into going out to the mall to pick up a couple of things, then into dinner or a lunch, then into drinks or dessert afterwards. And how can you say no when you’re in the middle of it, and you just want to go back to her place and just talk while watching TV? You can’t. Well, at least I can’t. I feel rude, and a bit ashamed at how ‘cheap’ I’m being. And this stems not only from society shunning a ‘cheapskate’ but from experience too.
I remember the one time I went on a “No shopping. No dinners. No lunches. No more spending” plan, to clear $8000 one summer so I could qualify for a $15,000 loan to pay for school. My one friend was incredibly put out every time I suggested that she just come over and ‘hang out’ and watch TV with me, and make sushi together, and just relax and talk. Instead, she wanted to go to the mall, or go to the movies, or some other event.
After it was all over, and I ended up having lunch with her, she sighed with effusive relief and said: “THANK GOD you’re off that whole cheap thing. It was getting really boring having to stay in and not being able to do anything.” I got kind of quiet. And I didn’t want to say anything back about it, because in my heart I was a little upset and hurt. See, her parents pay for everything. Everything. I’m talking school fees, trips, clothing, shoes, credit card bills, her apartment and her utilities, and her food on top of all of that…..PLUS she gets spending money on top of that. And here she was, making me feel angry and ashamed about the fact that I was trying to be cheap and save money to be able to pay for next two years of school.
I didn’t hang out with her for about 3 months after that. I had to cool down, and just be by myself, with other friends who didn’t think like that. But it’s interesting how if we had just talked about money, and maybe I could’ve had her see that I couldn’t afford to do those things because I didn’t want to put my education on credit cards, just so I could have lunch with her. Plus it’s cheaper to eat at home. That’s why I tend to try and just get a group of girls all together at once, because then the entertainment is each other, (but I need to pick up some Sex and the City DVDs), and the food is free, because it’s potluck. That way, it doesn’t feel cheap, and feels more like a gathering.
And sure, I may spend my money on big purchases once in a while, but only if my think our finances can handle it.
But that doesn’t seem to matter to people regarding our finances. One big purchase, no matter how well thought out or planned, immediately classifies you as a hypocrite if you turn around and say you’re trying to save money to pay down your debt. But all of that stems from women not talking about finances, because if they did, they would’ve known that we were foregoing a lot of things that they take for granted like vacations every couple of months..
So ladies, go out there and make an effort to exercise your financial muscle with your girlfriends! You may learn a lot in the process. 
- Women and their money
- My tale as a reformed shopaholic…
- Can men and women be friends?
- Shopaholic: Men & Women
- Feeling of inadequacy
