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Comment by steveBK123 | Hacker News Reader

The subtlety in this article is real.

While logically money is fungible, it is the illusion of not seeing the transaction happens that makes people feel welcome to enjoy hospitality in case of a friends beach house, dinner guest, catered party guest, etc. As soon as there is an explicit, incrementally attributable transaction triggered by their attendance, people often feel compelled to offer cash.

If you invite people over for dinner & cook, or its a catered party, they all feel comfortable. As soon as you order takeout or ask what they want, they feel compelled to split the check. Even more so when dining out. Even the difference between ordering an array of dishes in advance vs asking what they want / ordering once they've arrived totally changes how people respond.

It gets very awkward when you are trying to host & treat people, but they insist on compensating with cash.

For me, I don't get the point of having wealth/resources if I can't share them freely. Especially if you come from a more modest background and now make 5x what some of your friends/family do.

View on HN

To some people sharing money is generous. To others it's a flex that they can't replicate and it makes them bitter. To others it's a sign you can be taken advantage of. To others it's a sign that you are not mature financially and are just making poor financial decisions.

Just like music, people have different tastes/expectations when it comes to money.

I've been paying for a lot of things for my friends recently as there is a very large imbalance in wealth between us which is more recent.

These are my best friends for the 20 years, same gang and they would never ask anything of me and always offered to contribute.

I still felt sort of akward about how I was approaching it. Even if we tell each other everything and are transparent about money.

I wanted to let them know that I don't care about the money at all, it's just the experiences that it will allow that matter to me and giving back to family and friends makes me feel good.

However I have started just acting more normally and not insisting on taking care of everything,I think people feel better this way.

So this article frames it nicely for the things I will be able to contribute still in a way that makes sense.

I imagine that for people with newer or less strong friendships it must be even harder to manage.

I think if it's long standing friendships there's certainly more wiggle room. Even to the point that you ought to just be able to tell them to let you know if they feel you're being obnoxious about it.

But often it's also not even amounts, as long as it's reasonably discreet and you create a plausible excuse for why you're paying, and there's a sense of back and forth. With friends or girlfriends I know earn less, I've usually made a point of saying that when I choose or suggest where to invite someone, I prefer to pay and I'd appreciate if they let me, and if they insist on paying for something they can pay for things when they choose the venue. There's a tacit "because that lets each of us pick somewhere that fits our cost level" in it that remains unstated, and the give and take helps make it feel more even as long as it's not too blatant and in your face and you never make a point of how expensive anything you pick is. It also works best if you also pick cheap places sometimes.

>each of us pick somewhere that fits our cost level

This is the best, most wise answer and will last through long friendships.

> I've been paying for a lot of things for my friends recently as there is a very large imbalance in wealth between us which is more recent... I still felt sort of akward about how I was approaching it... I wanted to let them know that I don't care about the money at all,

What kinds of things are you paying for, though? Consider there's a subtle, unintentional message if you insist on paying for their $20 burger and drink: "This $20 is a big deal to you, but not to me." Unless they are dirt poor, they can probably pay for themselves for most things.

Myself, I have friends with 10x less money (self-employed), and 10x more money (huge stock options and the company popped) -- in both cases, we round-robin the check at dinner. Now mind you, we're not going to French Laundry...

> Unless they are dirt poor, they can probably pay for themselves for most things.

Are you saying $20 for a burger and drink is trivial unless one is "dirt poor"? That doesn't match my estimates of the distribution of wealth in the US, and certainly not the world.

No, it wasn’t about the price of a burger. My point was that just because you made a million dollars and your buddy didn’t, don’t start treating him like every simple, common social expense must be a financial burden for him.

> every simple, common social expense

I don't think a $20 burger and drink is a simple, common social expense for everyone. Certainly not on a frequent basis.

OK, forget the price of the burger and look at the actual point they're making.

Isn't the price the point? The question is whether the poorer of the two is comfortable with the expense. At many times in my life, I was the one "not hungry" when invited to a restaurant.

Fine, xapata! Yes, if you suddenly find yourself with a shitload of money, and you have friends who can't pay their bills every month, they have $0.00 in the bank, literally can't afford to ever eat out, and a $20 meal would be a grand expense and a momentous occasion for them... yes, go ahead and offer to pay for those friends every time.

Thanks, I'm glad to have your approval.

If you're curious how I handle those friendships: I invite them to dinner at my place. Much as discussed in the article.

And our friend group periodically chips in a bit so that they can make important purchases, especially health-related ones.

I picked a random food and $20 as a "small" amount. The burger wasn't the point :-)

I have some friends who aren't comfortable with any out-of-home food expenses. They exclusively cook at home.

TBH I'm not even sure what we're talking about anymore.

I sometimes have trouble with message threads, too.

Please tell me one place in the bay area where you can get a burger and a drink for $20?

The correct answer

It is, but a $20 lunch should be considered an occasion or treat and not a daily driver. Just because it's not a daily driver doesn't make it trivial.

If most people eat lunch out once a week for $20 - that's about $1000/yr. That's trivial for most people if it's part of their social/entertainment expenses (eg even making $30-40k), but it's okay that it might not be trivial for all people.

I don't think spending an extra $1k per year is trivial for someone making $40k per year.

Non-trivial spending includes expensive mandatory expenses, like rent/mortage, insurance, maintenance, etc.) Spending $20 on a lunch once a week (if that's what I wanted to do) is trivial, both in cost and importance.

Obviously trivial expenses are the first to be optimized away when a budget crunch occurs, because they are also trivial to remove/stop. It's hard to delay rent or a car payment withour real consequences, but there's no real consequence to not eating out lunch anymore.

I interpreted "trivial" as negligible, too small to cut from the budget, even in a crunch. I see you're using a different definition. However, I also think that $40k per year is a perpetual budget crunch, so not really a crunch at all.

Typical lunch in NYC can pretty easily hit $15-20.

My friends with 10X less money can't afford to eat out, so yeah, I offer to take them out if I want to go out with them.

> What kinds of things are you paying for, though? Consider there's a subtle, unintentional message if you insist on paying for their $20 burger and drink: "This $20 is a big deal to you, but not to me." Unless they are dirt poor, they can probably pay for themselves for most things.

I mean if you are stubborn enough you'd find anything innocent to be malicious but I'd wager most people would think nothing of it unless you do it every single time and also refuse reciprocal offers

The context was if someone suddenly has much more money than their friends, and then decides it’s their responsibility to pick up the check every time. It’s not, and probably wouldn’t be appreciated.

I went through the same thing with a much newer friend. It makes sense to you and me logically, but I agree that there was a feeling of disconnect that ultimately made me back off. I'd rather help financially facilitate more opportunities to have a good time, but it just always seems to come off as an insult or uncomfortable, no matter how it's handled.

I feel like im grossly overpaid for what I do in comparison to the much more impactful work that they did, making roughly half what I do, so in my eyes it's only fair to view it as more of a group thing where we can contribute relatively equivalent amounts rather than strictly split amounts? You know?

> I feel like im grossly overpaid for what I do in comparison to the much more impactful work that they did, making roughly half what I do

This this this. I'm a former blue collar who managed to break into tech. After a decade I still feel weird about the amount that I make. My partner and I now have our long-term finances completely squared away and still have money "left over" every month. I feel super lucky, and I basically just want to spend it on my friends and family. They are not destitute but mostly not in tech and just don't have the surplus that we have. Finding ways to share with them without it being overt and weird is an ongoing challenge. (Dinner parties are definitely a favorite, since we like cooking anyways.)

"I imagine that for people with newer or less strong friendships it must be even harder to manage. "

This is me. I'm at a point where through a series of good luck and risk adverse decisions I have a free flow of cash. I really enjoy getting the opportunity to spend it on others, ill buy coffee, ill buy lunch. I ask for nothing in return as it's my honor to do this for them and I want to set the example of being generous with nothing desired in return. If pressed I say, today I can so allow me to do so. In the future when you can, I'll return the honor and let you buy then.

I also have a friend who again through a series of good decisions is at a good place financially and it's fun for us to try and buy things or meals for each other because we both know each others finances and the joy it brings being able to do this for one another.

Make it a “business expense” friends won’t feel as bad of company is treating them all to dinner.

I am not sure that this is a net improvement: either you are lying to your friends, or you are lying to the business/on your taxes.

Well if they get sad from getting told "I have some free money and I'd rather buy stuff for my friends than myself", that's next best thing.

Bible time!

When you sit to dine with a ruler, note well what is before you,

and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony.

Do not crave his delicacies, for that food is deceptive. - The Book of Proverbs

In my experience rich people are very 'outcomes focused'. They almost always expect something in return. I always ask myself why are they giving food to me specifically and not just some random person?

> In my experience rich people are very 'outcomes focused'. They almost always expect something in return.

That's a pretty sad way to live. I mean, I guess when I'm back home and the "rich" person in the room (I went from rural america to FAANG salary), I just want people to enjoy themselves and not think about price when we're at a nice restaurant. That's the "outcome" I want.

Back in the bay area, the rich people in the room never seem to want anything in return for their hospitality. At most they want to hire me, but there's no expectation there.

Your experience (or maybe incorrect thought) is not what I've seen.

>In my experience rich people are very 'outcomes focused'. They almost always expect something in return. I always ask myself why are they giving food to me specifically and not just some random person?

How often do rich people randomly feed you and what is it they want in return?

This can be a major cultural issue as well. My wife is asian and her whole family looses their mind if someone tries to pay for a meal at a family get together. It can be a major issue of pride in many asian cultures when people try to pay for things.

issue of pride = loss of face

I only accepts tokens of friendship in most expensive currency: time. I do hate getting presents and vastly prefer to just go for a beer or barbecue or something

Also, some people try to somehow make you feel guilty because you have no money problems. Others who have not much to spend are very thankful for a small practical gift.

When you're a billionaire who has material interests in court cases and you just so happen to befriend a justice on said court who has nothing in common with you from either a wealth or personal background standpoint, then you're attempting to buy influence.

There's a zero percent chance that Harlan Crow, a generationally wealthy white guy from Dallas, would ever have anything to do with Clarence Thomas, a middle class black guy from rural Georgia, except that Thomas sits on the US Supreme Court.

None.

Crow sought Thomas out to peddle his influence. Thomas accepted because (a) he believes he deserves this sort of treatment, and (b) there's nothing particularly illegal about it because of how fucked the US Constitution is with regards to high court appointments.

Thomas isn't the only one, either. He's just the one currently in the news.

How is that relevant to the topic here?

It's not, but political hacks of all ideologies will waste no time to turn anything into a shrieking fit about the topic du jour.

Your friends usually want to feel like they are your social peers; casually buying dinner for everyone reminds them that you're loaded and they aren't, but if they chip in they can maintain that feeling of being on your level. I got a tech job in 2014 when all my friends were waiters and bartenders and I found myself in situations like this quite a bit. To what degree am I obligated to pay more, since I have more, versus protecting my friends feelings and not rubbing it in?

Humans are complicated creatures!

> I got a tech job in 2014 when all my friends were waiters and bartenders

I sort of have this “problem” with my family. Since moving to USA about 8 years ago, I’ve been able to build as much wealth as took my mom her whole life. My sister makes in a month what I make in a week.

The balance I’ve found works best when we hang out is for me to take care of any flights or lodgings, the invisible expenses, and be on equal footing otherwise. You pay for some meals or drinks, I pay for others, it all about balances out.

And sometimes I buy them tech they can’t afford or donate my old devices. They seem to feel better about receiving a device I no longer need than being bought a new one.

Thats actually a great compromise and happy that it is working for your family.

I've found a lot of parents have trouble switching from being providers to being provided for, especially if some of your siblings are still "takers".

Personally my parents insist on us joining them on vacations I extremely don't want to go on (Orlando theme parks in peak 100F+ summer heat as 40ish couple w/o kids), and that they'll cover the expense.. when the expense isn't the issue, and 1/10th of what I'd spend on holiday.

> vacations I extremely don't want to go on

Why do you think I pay for flights and lodgings? ;)

But really in my family’s case flights are expensive and quickly add up to a month of their income. It’s not that they don’t want to go somewhere fun, it’s that they can’t. And I’m tired of burning all my vacations on going back home. Flying them out somewhere fun is the obvious solution.

Yeah that's pretty great. It really depends on the people. People just have different tastes, and it's not just a cost thing.

Of my parents & in-laws, really only my father in law would probably genuinely be able to enjoy going somewhere we chose. My mother in law and parents would probably actively dislike going..

About 10 years ago I stopped trying with certain things..

My parents anniversary one year we treated them to brunch at a place that's like.. not fancy, but wear a polo shirt & not sneakers.. but also its NYC so if you don't they aren't gonna kick you out anyway. Nothing adventurous food wise - chicken, steak, burger, pancakes, fries, eggs, whatever you imagine standard fare but done very well.

It was clear they weren't enjoying it, and in a subsequent anniversary dinner they insisted we all go out to the place they chose - fried fish & laminated menus at a marina type thing.

Flights and hotels are "perfect" for that kind of thing because the prices are so extremely variable as well. Much easier to "quietly upgrade" the whole experience without it getting weird that for a lot of other things.

The biggest thing is making sure people have choice when you are paying. Sometimes it can be that people are paying for control.

What I've learned with my in-laws is to stop worrying about it. Some people are going to be jealous/angry anytime you spend money.

For example, whenever we go to visit them we get a hotel or rent a car. Perfectly normal right? Well to some of my in-laws that's "Throwing money around and in our faces" Even though the alternative is sleeping on the floor in their home and begging them for rides.

And, I get it. They can't afford to grab a hotel and car like we can so it does look like a crazy luxury.

I'll grab tabs and pay for things, I don't really care. I never have. But I was somewhat surprised to find people just generally upset when I do things for myself.

This is one of several standard reactions to people spending money. Jealousy, Envy, Disgust, Pity, Ambivalence. It's why people of the same social class tend to gravitate toward one another. While everyone is different regarding money, people of the same social class who have been in that position for a while seem to have similar reactions.

There's also a weird thing of like adjacent class envy more than large gaps. Kind of a Narcissism of small differences thing (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...)

At the extreme- Few people are personally envious of Jeff Bezos having a nicer house/car/boat/vacation. But the way some people in my small middle class hometown react to someone who lives in the same town/hood, kids going to same school driving a $40k car when they drive a $25k car is kind of comically deranged.

This makes sense to me. I came from the service industry to tech. I tripled my income in a couple years and was very satisfied. Then a coworker got a promotion that I felt I deserved, and started making more than me. This coworker came from a different background and had always been "ahead" of me financially. But suddenly, there was a very tangible gap between us. It could have been me, I thought. I could have that so easily. And I was not satisfied with my pay. I found a new job. (I no longer care that much. I know that wages are essentially more unfair than fair.)

Going from $25k to $40k for a car seems within reach and they don't see how that person that they see does anything different that makes the difference justified, and they might even have personal knowledge of the person to make them think that person definitely isn't as smart/working as hard/being as deserving as them. But with Bezos they don't have a yardstick to go by.

Cars are wholly other kind of funny. Get 15 years old sports car, especially "looking" sporty, and people will look at you like you're trying to show off your wealth when they are driving SUV 3x as more expensive as your car...

Yeah car stuff is very funny.

In the grand scheme of things past a certain income level as a lump sum cost, they are not a large expense compared to housing. Nor is their monthly cost if financed particularly expensive next to the ongoing forever cost of insuring, fueling/charging, maintaining and garaging them. Nor is driving around in a relatively decent & recent model vs trying to keep an old model in working order with all the maintenance costs.

If you make 6 figures / live in a HCOL area, then the difference in a $25k or $40k or $50k car over the course of a 10 year life is kind of whatever. The insurance, maintenance and gas/charge over that 10 years probably adds up to $30k at a bare minimum. Your house probably cost $1M.

Even if you trade-in every 4~5 years at the end of the warranty period to minimize random maintenance costs, then maybe you eat like $3-4k/year of depreciation during ownership.. again not a huge number to have a reliable, safe, modern car at all times.

The real outsized car costs are incurred with car nerds who max out on having more cars than drivers, and/or "upgrading" every year, constantly eating max depreciation.

I’ve heard this from so many people, and I just do not see how it matters in practical terms. A car has four wheels and an engine. Other than that, as long as it’s safe and functional, why care what it costs?

humans are irrational, emotional, illogical beings.. what does practical terms have to do with it?

It's signalling.

It's a waste of money that could be helping people.

I never really thought of this seriously (or why) until reading that "Some Things I Think" post[0] was on here yesterday and a few were along the lines of that. Three that resonated with me about money:

“People like you more when you are working towards something, not when you have it.” - Drake

Net worth goes from $0 to $1 million: Ecstasy. Net worth goes from $10 million to $1 million: Despondency. Can we agree that all wealth is relative?

A lot of people like making money more than they enjoy having money. The change, not the accumulated amount, is the thrill.

The last one is the biggest mindfuck to me because I can relate to it so much. Every single online MMO I play I'm happy making tiny amounts of money and watching the balance go up. I don't care much for upgrading to bigger and better things or end-game content. I played this game called Tibia pretty seriously for a period of time and then got bored and was going to stop. There were a few months where the only thing I would do is log in, do about 6 daily quests I enjoyed doing that were dead easy, collect my 1000gp or however much it was and walk around town for a bit debating if I want to level up before quitting.

[0] https://collabfund.com/blog/thoughts/

> Net worth goes from $0 to $1 million: Ecstasy. Net worth goes from $10 million to $1 million: Despondency. Can we agree that all wealth is relative?

I think that's more because when going down on income (regardless of the starting amount and difference), that usually comes with having to resign from some luxuries on that way. While earning more means experiencing luxuries you couldn't afford before.

Like, moving from public transport to nice car vs the other way around. Or living in cramped apartment vs nice house.

> A lot of people like making money more than they enjoy having money. The change, not the accumulated amount, is the thrill.

I would not say a lot; I think there might be some self-selection when people focus on making money that might just become their hobby and so have higher motivation to earn more and more vs focusing on other areas in life.

The few well-off people I know don't exactly feel like ones making money for money sake

> The last one is the biggest mindfuck to me because I can relate to it so much. Every single online MMO I play I'm happy making tiny amounts of money and watching the balance go up. I don't care much for upgrading to bigger and better things or end-game content. I played this game called Tibia pretty seriously for a period of time and then got bored and was going to stop. There were a few months where the only thing I would do is log in, do about 6 daily quests I enjoyed doing that were dead easy, collect my 1000gp or however much it was and walk around town for a bit debating if I want to level up before quitting.

I am complete opposite. When I was seriously raiding in WoW (we were usually somewhere in top 5 guilds on our server) I still did just enough to have money for any gear/consumables I needed.

Same in other areas, I need to have some end goal, else I don't have all that much motivation for work or getting better pay. Else I'd just burn money on random crap (I got better with that over the years)

> Net worth goes from $0 to $1 million: Ecstasy. Net worth goes from $10 million to $1 million: Despondency. Can we agree that all wealth is relative?

> A lot of people like making money more than they enjoy having money. The change, not the accumulated amount, is the thrill.

Dunno, to me it looks more like people just want to have enough to not need to work 40 hours/week anymore. "Thrill" is probably about billionaires like Musk, not people getting towards a million in saving.

There's a name for this: loss aversion.

> Loss aversion in behavioral economics refers to a phenomenon where a real or potential loss is perceived by individuals as psychologically or emotionally more severe than an equivalent gain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

Thanks for the flashbacks.

Haven't heard anybody mention Tibia since I was in grade school. Grade 8, probably.

Wow this is exactly how it is for us that it's uncanny. We try to say we got a deep discount because we used a "website." But we haven't got the courage to try separate lodgings yet, it would cause so much trouble heh.

One trick that works with some is "oh I have lots of hotel points from work travel and they were going to expire" kind of games. It may even have a shred of truth to it.

For the frugal family members offended by he spending flex, they may be happy to see this instead.

I do this- I just tell my parents I have a lot of frequent flyer points (which I do), but then depending on the cost and availability of flights I book whatever is most convenient for me.

It's generous, but not cash in your face.

don't forget airline points! Also don't forget credit card points. I'm not treating you to dinner, I got his gift card through my discover card and now I got to use it

You spend so much money that 3-5% back pays for luxuries?!

That's besides the point. This is in the context of spending money on people when they get all weird about it. Saying that I got these points that are expiring so we have to go to dinner at a moderately upscale restaurant turns the table on "I'm buying you dinner because I want to spend time with you, I don't want to cook, and I know dinner at this restaurant is half your whole food budget for the month." into them doing you the favor of not leaving points/money on the table.

Still though, $200 for (half) of dinner, on a card giving 5% Cashback is $4,000, and that doesn't have to be spent in one month.

That isn't my in-laws. That is the way my mother feels about me and my family.

Everything is a luxury. Everything is a waste of money. Nobody should have fun or enjoy something.

Sorry life didn't work out for you, but I didn't work hard to stare at walls and be bitter.

Well now it’s like if I spend my money it’s almost necessarily creating carbon and fucking the world more. So it’s like I don’t even feel like I can spend my money if that makes any sense. What is the point of all this money when you can’t use it ethically?

My usual response to these types of concerns is "touch grass", but if one has the means & concern, theres many organizations to fund, green improvements one can make to their home (solar, energy storage, heat pumps, efficient appliances, insulation, better windows, etc), transport (switch to an EV, take trains, stop flying places), plant a tree, etc.

I do find in my circles though that the loudest voices are also the ones who scoffed at my switch to an EV, but fly on vacations 3x/year, so some of it is clearly fashion & posturing.

And some of it is counterintuitive as we see Germany shut down nuclear plants for "green" reasons, only to have to spin back up some coal.

> counterintuitive as we see Germany shut down nuclear plants for "green" reasons, only to have to spin back up some coal

I've read that Poland is having issues where the grid will only support so much, so they need to disable or dial back the renewable energy sources because it's impossible to turn down or off a coal firing plant.

Yeah, you have to exactly match electric output to demand or things get very bad. Until we have a few more breakthroughs in battery technology, we're going to be stuck with fossil fuels to make up the gap for variable demand. Nuclear can't be ramped up and down quickly, and solar and wind just do whatever they want.

As I understand it, a typical strategy for a power company is:

- nuclear or similar for the base load that's always required

- solar and wind as available

- weather forecasting to determine how much solar and wind will be available

- demand forecasting to determine how much power will be required at any given time

- natural gas to meet predicted solar and wind shortfalls

- RICE engines and battery storage to handle unexpected fluctuations

- contracts to buy and sell power with other nearby power companies

> Until we have a few more breakthroughs in battery technology, we're going to be stuck with fossil fuels to make up the gap for variable demand.

I think we are there. We don't need new breakthroughs we need more manufacturing capacity.

LFPs are both cheap and work great for a grid storage and now CATL is announcing new sodium batteries which are pretty ideal for grid storage (cheap and long life).

It does sound like that, honestly, just needs more investment and maybe engineering into mode distributed storage for the whole renewable stuff.

I'm guessing sweet spot would be something like "big, economically efficient battery per street of houses + solar on every house", but as it would be shared it needs investment and power company have very little incentive for it

In the states a lot of left-coded "environmental review" stuff gets used by NIMBYs to block grid improvements / new transmission lines.. which ends up being a bigger blocker of renewables than the permits for the generation itself.

So you end up with multi-year backlogs just to get grid connected with new clean energy generation.

Right, everybody wants the change, but nobody wants it to affect them. As is tradition.

Your existence, and mine, is intrinsically harmful to the world. But you have the opportunity to also do good, to heal systems. What you can do with your time, money, and energy is to shift the balance more toward healing than harm. So don't waste your money on plastic or flights, but try to purchase more ethical/sustainable goods (which quickly becomes very expensive). Donate to well regarded charities. Etc.

We are a part of the world, not a foreign entity. From the point of view of evolution, if our existence eliminates a bunch of other species, that's how natural selection works. This misanthropic view of us as intruders in nature is just a throwback to weird ancient cults, it is just basically religion, not reason.

What is the point of saying that? Are you trying to get people to give up and accept ecological collapse?

Nowhere did I say humans are a foreign entity. I said our existence does harm to ecosystems all over the globe. That is a fact. We also, uniquely, have the ability to choose* whether or not we do that harm, which oxygenating bacteria did not. So here I am, advising someone to do less harm because doing harm causes them pain, and you're saying... what? That choosing to counteract the harm we've done is foolish and illogical? That makes no sense.

Buying better, more durable things that won't break after a year or two is one way to spend more money for less environmental impact. Tho the maths on that is kinda iffy, as it is hard to tell how much of the "more expensive" is "longer, harder production process that generates more emissions" and how much is "we put actual good engineering into it".

Why not just buy carbon offsets?

Because they are mostly a scam. If offsetting the carbon was so cheap we wouldn’t need to fret about it much.

More & more I find that with money theres growth mindset & scarcity mindset and few who have both. Some people are great at making more money, some people are great at spending as little of their money as possible. Few thread the needle on a little bit of both.

So if you come from a scarcity mindset family, it's incredibly hard to do anything with them with money if you yourself ended up in more of a growth mindset.

It is what it is.

Money can replace dependency and attachment, and some people get very offended by it. Other people appreciate you not burdening them. People are hard to parse.

To me, the subtlety is specifically mentioning money. "I'll pick up the check" feel more tacky than "on me". Both explicitly imply I'm paying, but the first says I'm paying for you, and the other says that I'm doing this for you. I know that a hairline difference, but for me it makes is seem less explicitly transactional and more like reciprocity.

The second example doesn't seem as bad, becuase the cost of the cottage won't go down if you don't show up. But it would be softened further if the mention of money were out of the picture--"I have a cottage for the weekend" versus "I rented a cottage"

This to me goes back to a very old-fashioned prejudice that discussion of money is a bit vulgar.

I think you're spot on, the small details in delivery make a big difference and people naturally pick up on it

That's a good point about the illusionary aspect to it all. It's part of why there are so many cultural/social traditions where the polite thing to do is to counter-offer. If someone wants to pay for a meal, you're supposed to offer to pay instead, this dance goes on several rounds until you give up allowing the original person to pay, which kind of demonstrates several things one of them being loyalty and commitment.

When this happens in cultures without this tradition, I find that both parties miss out: it doesn't feel as rewarding to pay, and it doesn't feel as rewarding to have your meal paid for because it seems low effort. People almost view that as bragging vs sharing because of that lack of dance. Which is part of the illusion! High effort v low effort.

A safe way to treat people is to allow them the ability to "counter-offer". Dance with them a little, alternatively encourage them for the next event if they want. You can avoid that crude transactional feeling, plus if they are up for it, next event is their choice.

I haven’t thought of it before, but here in Türkiye that dance is everywhere in life. Not only money related situations, if anyone is going to take/give anything more than the other party, or even if someone will be first to something and other party will be second, that dance is usually performed. I considered it an unnecessary form of kindness until now. But this is fading like any other tradition with great speed, as modernity spreads.

So https://twitter.com/killersundymann/status/14461312839695892... but with money

TIL I'm German.

It's just so much less mental effort to be direct.

I've also noticed an opposite is a problem, when you don't want something that someone else made (say cookies) many people feel personally attacked that I don't want their cooking. Bitch I'm fat, I don't need more.

This is the Byzantine General problem of relationships. No way to know how many times to go around before stopping.

> It gets very awkward when you are trying to host & treat people, but they insist on compensating with cash.

My friends should feel comfortable with whatever. If they are more comfortable splitting then let’s do that. Under no circumstances will I make the assumption that more money is better and less money is bad.

If they are acting out of politeness, that’s on them. This is especially the case because I tell my friends to be who they want to be

I generally agree with your points, although in the takeout case, the host can probably communicate fairly clearly that they're going to order takeout (because they don't cook, don't want to bother with a caterer, etc.) and if anyone asks what they owe wave them off and that's that. Though, of course, if they did cook a meal no one would think of paying. (Though informal get-togethers with my friends tend to be pot luck to at least a degree.)

Of course, financial situations do matter. Some new grads scraping by in the expensive city are probably not going to operate the same way that generally well-off professionals where everyone knows that a group takeout order really isn't a big deal for the host.

It really depends on the person. Half of friends are like whatever. Half will send you a Venmo/zelle for an estimated amount if you refuse.

I end up making sure to order modestly with the second half, as its not being generous if they are going to reimburse me later.

I once had an amazing meal at someone's house, so I donated to food bank in their honor.

In Europe a lot of the more "upscale" restaurants have menu's with and without prices. If you let them know you're taking the others out for dinner as a treat they will hand out menu's without prices on it to your guests. And typically present the bill to you in a more subtle way so the guests don't see it.

Never really thought about it before, but I think this is for the same reason. So you can take your guests to dinner and not make it feel like a financial transaction where you're paying for them.

Hilariously in NYC there's restaurants that only do that on their website, so you can go in blind, as the buyer, to how much you are going to spend :-)

> For me, I don't get the point of having wealth/resources if I can't share them freely. Especially if you come from a more modest background and now make 5x what some of your friends/family do.

In my experience the most adamant refusers are people who literally live paycheck to paycheck. It is a mix of pride and the (very real!) fear that you might think they are only friends with you because you got the funds.

If anything you should see it as a compliment if people who would need it refuse to let you pay.

When you're cooking a dinner, you already bought all the food as a pre-paid expense for the most part. Or it's ambiguous enough as things are finalized yet that there's some certainty in how many people will actually show up / be hungry / etc.

It's also not a lot of extra work to cook for 5 people compared to 3 or even 1, generally speaking. The initial investment of time is the big burden, and then it might be a little extra effort to add additional people. The food is also a lot less expensive in bulk when cooking at home.

Doing 0 planning or pre-effort and buying takeout during the event is like you specifically planned to share the cost because you didn't want to do any preplanning. You didn't even call ahead to have the things delivered at a specific time. The cost in money directly scales to the amount of order. More people is always directly scaled more money, and it's pretty expensive to boot. If you're eating, you're not consuming food that was otherwise wasted or leftovers. You're a new premium scaled cost.

The awkwardness here isn't the medium people are reaching the end goal of feeding their friends. It's really the planning and effort put in up front.

Think about it from the reverse situation. If it WOULD have really hurt you financially to order food, but you technically could have struggled through the cost, how would you have silently asked for help other than waiting until last minute to order during the event in hopes people may pitch in? There may be a social obligation to order food where asking for people to pitch in may cause tension. For example, hosting a party at a nice new house but you were just laid off after scheduling the party and don't want to derail the rare gathering's vibes.

If you find yourself in this situation and you are going to order food, I recommend pizza by the way. Just order a few different ones (including a vegetarian / vegan option or whatever if you have to guess people's preferences) but generally asking for preferences on pizza is not awkward. Pizza is an ambiguous delivery option where it's implied to be shared. It's similar to many general home cooked meals where the amount anybody has or doesn't have is ambiguous.

Compared to takeout style delivery where every has a dedicated packaged meal and you either ordered 3xMeal or 4xMeal where the multiplier is absolute and the amount per person is without ambiguity.

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