Debt $ense

Beyond Broke posted about eating out in groups and the always-tricky part of the meal - paying for it. I chimed in with a comment, which prompted another post, which inspired me to post an expanded discourse.

If you missed the original post: My friends and I, when we get together, often eat out. Usually there are eight or nine of us. At the end of the meal, one person always pulls out her calculator and does the hard work of figuring out who owes what. One woman, who only joins us occasionally, tends to complain about the time it takes and always asks why we can’t just split it evenly.

As I told Beyond Broke, one time a member of the group (I now forget who) spoke up and said she didn’t want to feel constrained from ordering something expensive that she could afford when she knew others in the group might be on a tight budget. That shut the complainer up, at least for the moment.

I wasn’t the one who spoke up, but I’m glad somebody did. And I think it was all the more effective coming from somebody who presented it not as her being worried about money, but as her being considerate for others who were worried about money.

Let’s face it: it’s tough to be the one who says, “Sorry, but I can’t afford that.” That’s especially true in a public situation, like eating out. A lot of times it’s easy to order an inexpensive meal without it being obvious, but that doesn’t do any good if the group decides on an even split.

And on the flip side, there are times where I’ve saved up enough money to splurge on a drink with dinner, or a more-expensive entree. I don’t want to feel guilty about ordering it because I know others are watching their budget.

I’m always grateful to my friend with the calculator for going through the trouble of figuring it all out for us. I only wish everybody appreciated people like her.

Savvy Saver is hosting this week’s Carnival of Debt Reduction, so head on over and check out all the contributions. I’ve been on the road most fo the day and haven’t had Net access, but I’m at the hotel now and ready to dig into the list of posts.

I finally figured out why my links won’t show up - they need to be placed in a category - but when I categorize them and save changes, they don’t save. Grrr. I’ve got a request in for help, so I hope to have this resolved soon. Stay tuned…

OK, so WordPress is not showing my links, even though I have everything set up correctly. For now, use the previous post, and hopefully I’ll have this figured out soon. My apologies.