We’ve all been there. The restaurant bill arrives for you and your friends and you suggest going Dutch. One person, who won’t be subsidising your starter, starts working out who ordered what while another suggests sharing the tip to the penny.
For Lesley Ross and Bridget Marsden there is no need to bother with all this. They regularly pick up the tab for their friend Hil Mines, because friendship is more important than money.
Mines is investing most of her time and money into her new business Trundl, an app that logs your walks and generates money for charity, and has had to make cutbacks in her personal life.
“I never go out thinking they’re paying for me, because I don’t think that’s right, but I’ve had pals who were in my position in the past and I did the same and paid the bill,” said Mines, 56, from the Cheshire village of Holmes Chapel. “One day I’ll hire a big cottage somewhere and take everybody to say thank you.”
Her two friends have no qualms about paying her share. “She promises she’ll pay us back when she’s a millionaire,” Ross jokes.
We might not like to admit it, but money plays a significant role in friendships. A survey by the US finance company Bread Financial suggests that one in five people have lost a friend over money.
When a wealth gap emerges in a friendship group — a divide between salaries, savings and investments — it can cause tension. Some 35 per cent of 2,300 people surveyed by Carnegie UK, a not-for-profit organisation, said the cost of living crisis has stopped them from spending as much time as they would like with friends.
“Having different levels of income can cause tension, especially if it’s a taboo subject in your group,” said Sarah Coles from the investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown. “But money doesn’t have to come between you, as long as you take each other as you are and keep communications open.”
Managing a wealth gap between friends can be difficult. We asked the trio how they navigate it.
Ten years of friendship
On a rainy Saturday afternoon Ross, Marsden and Mines are taking cover from the drizzle in a small café tucked away from Nantwich High Street. They are catching up over peppermint tea and doorstop slabs of toast with courgette soup.
The friends have known each other for nearly ten years, having met through work, and bonded through their love of walking. No conversation is off the table. They swap stories about their families, and support each other through the menopause and health issues (Mines and Marsden have had hip replacements).
Mines has been talking about how busy it has been at Trundl, and Marsden, 60, is sharing her concerns about the inheritance tax changes that were announced in the budget.
Ross, 55, an HR director from Nantwich, is happy to take a backseat and listen while the other two do most of the chatting. With 12 years to go before she and her husband, Mark, pay off their mortgage she has no plans to retire. She has no children of her own but has a step-daughter, Charlotte.
The trio bonded through their love of walking
Marsden, a self-employed accountant from nearby Wrexham, is hoping to retire next month. She has two adult sons, Kallum and Frazer, who have left home, and lives with Geoff, her partner of nearly 20 years. She hopes to go on more holidays once she is retired — her last trip was a Caribbean cruise for her birthday in December, which cost £10,000.
Mines has no plans to ever stop working. In 2021 she invested £130,000 of her life savings into starting her business and has since paid herself a minimal salary so she can invest more into growing the company. She has no children and has been single for most of her life. “Being single can be tough, as I’ve never had someone who I’ve been able to fall back on financially,” she said. “I’ve had to rely on myself.”
These friends met later in life and their financial histories vary. Ross had a happy childhood, but her family struggled for money while she was growing up. Her father was made redundant from his building society job in the 1980s, when she was ten. He opened a music shop but had to close it after five years, which left him nearly bankrupt. “That period was very difficult, we had to sell the house and downsize,” Ross said. “My parents were stressed about not having enough money.”
Money was also tight for Marsden’s family. Her parents worked hard to support her and her three brothers, with her dad juggling two jobs as a print compositor and painter and decorator,while her mum worked night shifts as a nurse. “We didn’t eat out and I didn’t go abroad until I was 16. But we’d go to Cornwall, Wales and Scotland for holidays, six of us all crammed into a car with the bags on the roof,” she said.
Mines, meanwhile, had a privileged upbringing in the Cotwolds. Her dad, who ran a window company, took her to private school every day in a Ferrari. “Dad would come home and share stories about work, and I remember thinking: ‘I want to do this, I want to own my own business.’”
Money matters
Your childhood can have a huge impact on the financial decisions you make as an adult. Research suggests that our money habits are formed by the age of seven.
The three women believe that their upbringings shaped their attitudes to money. “I think it made me more risk averse,” Ross said. “I always try to have a financial buffer. Some people might say I’m tight.”
She formed strict budgeting habits when she was a student, studying law at the University of Nottingham. “I was always really careful,” she said. “I had a food shop budget of £7 a week and would go to the market to buy potatoes and beans. I still put together a list for the weekly food shop, although it costs me £150 now.”
Ross is a saver. She puts £300 a month into her Isas, one cash and the other stocks and shares, and saves 20 per cent of her salary into her workplace pension (including her employer’s contribution). Her most recent splurge was a £250 Mountain Equipment raincoat and she’s too scared to use her Mulberry handbag, a present from her husband, because it was so expensive.
She thinks she inherited her good money habits from her mother, who was in charge of the family’s finances. “I’ve always put money aside and I’m not a big spender,” she said. “I’ve put a lot into my pension, and now have a healthy pot, which I’ll start drawing on from next month. I have enough to last me until I’m 89.”
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Ross has tried to pass this on to her sons, teaching them about paying off credit cards and how to avoid debt. “They had a very good upbringing and have not had to worry about money,” she said. “We worked hard to send them to private school and they’ve both done really well — they both now work in finance in London.”
Mines takes more risks, a trait she learnt from her father’s entrepreneurial spirit. She has set up various businesses in the past, including a bar, and a company managing telecommunications contracts for other firms. Now she is living frugally so that she can invest as much as possible into growing Trundl.
“I can’t buy new clothes or go out for posh dinners,” she said. “I’ve not been so skint since I was a teenager, but do I regret it? No. I couldn’t have faced getting to my deathbed wondering ‘what if I had set up Trundl?’”
Having open conversations is crucial to avoid any friction
Avoiding a rift
Since her income has dropped, however, she has had to speak to her friends and admit that she can no longer afford to do certain things.
“We’ll have a picnic when we’re out walking instead of going for a pub lunch. We used to go out for dinners, but now we’ll go round to Lesley’s house and stay in,” she said.
Having open conversations is crucial to avoid any friction. “If you’re short of money, it’s easy to say that you can’t afford to go out and invite friends to bring a bottle round to your house instead,” Coles said. “If they’re your friends, they’re in it for the company and the conversation rather than the cocktail bar.
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“Higher earners should be understanding when picking venues or deciding the things you do together. And if a friend is going through a financial issue it’s not the time to talk about the luxury purchases you are planning.”
Ross said: “We want to support Hil because we want her to be a success. She has invested everything into her business. We’ve sort of been living vicariously through her risk-taking, because we’d never dare to do it ourselves.”
The three friends have found that they’re just as happy nattering over a picnic as they were over a pizza at a restaurant. “It’s not about what we do, it’s about being together,” Bridget said.
How do you and your friends talk about money? Share your stories in the comments below
