People often say that your friends are a reflection of who you are. When you start hanging out with someone a lot, it’s inevitable that you’ll pick up some of their habits. Some good, some bad.
Do you ever find yourself spending more money when you hang out with one group of friends compared to another group of friends? Have you ever noticed that your wallet always ends up empty when you hang out with one of your friends? It’s undeniable that the friends we choose have a significant influence on how we spend our money.
Over the past few years, I’ve been a broke college student, a broke grad student, a relatively well-paid intern, and now a full time employee. Throughout each of those stages, I’ve found myself as both the influencer and the influenced within my group of friends at the time.
During my internship a couple of years ago, I was definitely an encourager of spending money. The internship was only 10 weeks in a city and state that I had never lived in before, so I wanted to explore as much of it as possible. Of course, exploring is a lot more fun with friends, so I regularly convinced a couple of my friends to come along on road trips even if they were initially reluctant to go. Not the best thing for their wallets (or mine), but it was a blast.
Currently, most of my friends are also coworkers, so we’re all in a similar financial situation. However, our spending habits are all over the board. I have a couple of friends who go out almost every night of the week, while another friend brings his lunch to work every day of the week. If our friends really do influence our spending habits, then I’m somewhere between a party animal and a homebody. A partying homebody?
How do your friends influence your spending habits?
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Wow I just wrote a similar post among who you associate with as a part of a short series of post reflecting what I learned while becoming debt free.
For the longest time I could not understand and well only recently did it finally start to make sense.
I mean now i understand why I was in debt for a few years and it wasn’t getting any better. I mean my parents didn’t know better, the friends I had weren’t any better off so i would say i was screwed.
But this also plays into the whole mentality that people have, that well everyone is doing it or has it so whats the big deal.
If you look at it, it looks like we are all just a herd of sheep following what others do, not questioning it and not stepping out of the herd, or comfort zone.
My friends in my college town are thrifty like me. They like to play Wii and pool, and maybe split a pizza. My friends in my hometown prefer eating well in the big city and spending lots of money on nice beer. It means I save lots while I’m in the college town, and I overspend when I’m “on vacation.”
I know what you mean. Always when we have some free hours between class they go like ‘Let’s go to the supermarket!’ and they will convince me to go with them (not that hard
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That’s why I try to go shopping by myself. When you are with a group and see a friend buying something, you automatically want to do the same. Even if it is a smaller purchase, it still adds up.
I’m with Craig, i always shop by myself (or w/ my wife). Most of my friends don’t like thrift stores or TJ Maxx anyways! haha….but speaking of friends “copying” others, the other night @ group dinner i asked our waiter for a separate check and it seemed to be pretty popular! the next thing i know 2 others at the table were doing the same – which is awesome because our friends can get a little testy when it comes to bill time.
It used to be that a lot of my friends spent rather than saved. But I got sick of it. Plus they went out too much for me to keep up — financially and in regard to energy.
Now, I have friends who are more financially responsible. They’re happy having a game night, or just grabbing something from the mall food court and then wandering a bit while chatting. We rarely come away with anything but full stomachs.
Still, I think peer pressure can be pretty difficult, especially when you don’t realize it’s happening. You just don’t want to the be the only one who’s hesitant about going to that full-price movie, or paying those menu prices. So you don’t. Or you do, but they think you’re just being “cheap.” I think these are pretty common fears. But overall, the subject of money is just so awkward that usually people will rush to accommodate the person who needs to spend less. If not, you may need different friends.
YES! I’ve actually gone through similar stages also: Undergrad, Paid Internship, Fulltime, Expat and now I’m going back for Grad school. At each of those stages, I was getting relatively more money, but now I’m back to a “broke” lifestyle (no income). It particularly sucks because I used to be a relatively big spender and I have to scale it all back.
I was reading an article lately that said that because of the recession, libraries had become a “cool” place to hang out for free books, DVD’s and wifi. As a student, it makes an even better excuse to drag my friends into study groups rather than sit at Starbucks!
I definitely think friends have an influence over our spending habits. While we’re the ones who ultimately decide to spend the money, our friends play an important role in that.
I have a girlfriend that I love hanging out with, but I won’t go shopping with her anymore. I don’t know what it is about this one friend, but I just spend way too much money when I’m around her. I can’t seem to control myself, I just sort of loose touch with reality. My opinion is that I get caught up in her excitement and just let loose.
So, yeah. I don’t go shopping with her anymore!
I definitely feel that friends influence our spending habits. Like most people, I enjoy buying “stuff” and I definitely buy more when I’m with friends who are quick to open their wallet.
I’m generally the influencer. Multiple times people come to me for advice. It’s true though, that our office friends influence our spending.
-Nate