So I Have This Friend (or, on mooching)

What do you do when, say, a friend comes to visit and suggests you go to THAT restaurant with the amazing food and the great atmosphere, the one that makes delicious food but hits your wallet big-time? Then, say, this friend orders an entree and drinks and more drinks and a side of this and a bit of that, laughing it up and saying how good it all is, only to say, when the bill comes, that she can’t cover it?

You only ordered something small, because, well, you’re on a budget after all. And your friend says something about how she doesn’t make much money and it’s hard to find good work and you know? Maybe you can help her out?

This happens to me sometimes. Not frequently, and not with a lot of people. But with some people very frequently, in fact with one particular person all the time. I’ll know I can spend $10, so I’ll order something small; Friend knows she has $10 in her wallet but orders something big, knowing I can help her, if it comes to that.

I don’t mind giving to my friends; in fact, I believe in it. But maybe there’s some kind of line we can cross with giving. Maybe at some point, giving becomes excusing? Maybe at some point, my “sure, here’s another $10″ becomes “you don’t have to be responsible for what you do”?

This same friend has been looking for a better job, on and off, for almost a year. She makes $8 now, so, yeah, she doesn’t have much money. So what do I do? I offer to help her with her resume, thinking that this could help her get a better job, help her make better money. I spend three hours one Friday night beefing it up and reorganizing and formatting, etc. I send it to her and say, voila! like she’ll fall over herself gushing with praise. She doesn’t respond. She never says if she’ll use it.

The truth is, she never asked me to look at her resume. It was my idea, my plan to help her get in a better financial situation. In other words, it’s what I’d want someone to do for me. Just like I’d want someone to help me if I needed money, though, to be honest, I’d never, ever, not-in-a-million-years order something I knew I didn’t have the money for. I wish someone had helped me make a resume when I was frustrated, desperate for a job. I wish someone had given me advice and guidance to getting the right position. I wish someone would help me when I feel like I need it.

But do I wish that only because I’m looking back? I mean, if I hadn’t done anything, would that have meant I needed help that no one gave or that I didn’t want it (the jobs/resumes/whatever) enough?

What do you think? Can you give too much to your friends? Is there a way to know if you can? And how do you train yourself to stop helping people who don’t want you to? How do you love them enough to say, You can do it yourself? How do you love them enough to say, Sure, I’ll pay for it again?

Image: cedric1981

Who Am I? (and other 20-something reflections)

Sometimes I feel like I’m still trying to figure out my place in the world, like where I fit, which is weirder and weirder as I get older.

City life, country life and suburban life all have strong appeal, and I could see myself doing any of them.

I like Europe and I like America; I like my career but I like the idea of working from home; I like living with my parents yet I think I’d like living on my own.

Is this how it’s supposed to feel to be a grown-up? Or is this a sign that it (the whole adult thing) hasn’t happened to me yet?

I have friends who, I’d swear up and down, feel completely at peace and confident of their life’s decisions. Friends who, for example, grew up knowing she wanted to get married right out of college or sooner and start a family. Friends who knew he would work in marketing and live downtown in a swanky condo. Friends who knew their dreams, all along, and made them happen.

I feel like those people are really blessed, because, at least in my opinion, the idea that you should just know what your real dreams are is a gigantic, enormous delusion that we’re told from childhood. Maybe it happens for some people, like the friends I mentioned, but it seems like a lot more people have to struggle to figure it out, with bumps along the way.

A friend of mine from college works two part-time jobs, both somewhat secretarial, while she holds a degree in linguistics. She is starting, stopping, starting, stopping plans on a daily basis: sending resumes and calling places where she could move and start something different. Thing is, how is she supposed to know what that something different should be, if it should be something?

Right now, I’m saving money, living with my family, working at a job I like and worked hard for. I hold two college degrees and like my resume. I have friends and entertainments and love and true joy. All in all, a very good, very blessed life.

And I can see what today, and tomorrow roughly, look like. It’s good. But ask me what I’ll be doing five years from now? 10? Absolutely no idea. Is this strange?

Then again, there’s a larger part of me that thinks maybe admitting I don’t know what will come is the actually most honest way to live, despite my age/career/income/family/etc. Even if I had a specific life track, a 15-year plan or whatever, I wouldn’t hold the future.

And, now that I think about it, maybe that’s a really valuable thing to learn and hold onto, especially when you’re all of 25.

photo by John Mueller

what’s on my mind today

The nicest man I work with, the one who treats everyone with respect and fast became my all-around favorite 60-something, is having major surgery today. Major, major surgery. And I know he’s scared.

I hadn’t seen him around lately, and I thought his performance had been down and maybe he’d been let go. Apparently I was half-right. He was let go, in a way, but he also is having serious health concerns, with an aneurysm last week.

If you pray, would you pray for him today? I’ll try to post an update when I hear news. Times like these, I have to admit it’s hard to care much about the little nitty-gritty day-to-day work stuff I have to do. It’s hard to think it’s that important, other than the principles of work ethic and earning a living, etc.

At the end of my life, or at a time when I know it could be the end, I doubt most of my work stuff will matter, save for the relationships and the ways it mattered to those relationships. The ridiculously out-of-proportion responses I see in business to things that are kind of trivial (i.e., money, the making of it, the spending of it) will be just shadows.

Article Tip

I just read a fantastic post at Forest on Finance, “Should I Be in Sweden or, Thoughts on Travel.” Here’s a clip, and you can go here to read the rest.

“All that to say, as savers, aren’t we a bit of risk-takers? Are we denying some instant gratification now to hopefully be gratified in the future? That’s the point, I suppose. But we’re not guaranteed that future - does that bother anyone else? It’s a risk, but a calculated one, I guess. Yes, the odds are with us that we will survive to retirement or whenever and then we will have the last laugh. They say youth is wasted on the young; are they right? Will I have the vitality to travel the world when I’m retired? How hard is it to even think about retirement when you’re in your twenties? Do you ever feel weird because you just got into the workforce and you’re already considering your exit plan while your friends are out spending their paychecks like there’s no tomorrow?

And further: if we’re savers now, won’t we always be? How will we know when we’ve saved enough? When will we start our spending? For me personally, I have no idea. That bothers me. I don’t like not knowing.”

Giving Words

I was given two thank-you notes this past week, one personal and one professional. The personal one was handwritten by my best friend, after her family visited, and the other, by the professor who invited me to speak in his class. Totally different people, totally different relationships with me, but one thing in common: kind and encouraging.

What do you think: Why is it that a well-thought-out thank-you note can make someone feel so good? And, why is it, even when we know this about the power of kind words (giving words), we are so slow to take time to write them?

On the Thing That Has Nothing to Do with Money

My best friend and her family drove down Friday. Their son, 18 months old, threw up after they’d left their house–all over his seat, the car, himself. So they turned back, cleaned him, cleaned the car, cleaned the seat, repacked, restarted. Five-and-a-half long hours plus one. The directions, which I’d e-mailed her in a hurry, didn’t account for construction, so they ended up an extra hour out of their way. Five-and-a-half long hours plus one plus two.

5 PM, Friday. A little growing family walking up to my house. Their son has her eyes–crystal blue with the longest, darkest lashes you’ve ever seen and the roundest, sweetest cheeks. We hug. Son meets my dog, family sees my family, we go get dinner.

I haven’t seen them for a year–one whole year. When Son was just six months old, not walking, not talking, not playing with his new giraffe truck or throwing chew toys for the dog. I love them. Love her, who was my instant friend when we were roommates almost seven years ago. Love him, who is her match in every way–kind and patient, hard-working and strong. Love their son, who is not only beautiful but to me perfect–perfect in the way that only your best friend’s first child can be.

Funny things happen when you see old friends, especially old friends that you don’t get to see often. You remember them, you remember yourself with them. And, this is important, you see yourself now in terms of how it compares with you then, as they knew you.

I’m not where I thought I would be by now. And I don’t even mean the living-at-home thing or the working-in-my-industry thing. I’m just, not.

I want to make decisions that I know will be the right ones. And when I think of things that I just know are right–when I’m being as deep-down honest with myself as I can be–I think I want to do something for someone else.

What does this mean, exactly?

The best answer I can come up with is simple but vague: loving. I want to be a true, honest-to-goodness lover to the people I know. I want to sacrifice in ways that are uncomfortable and not immediately rewarding. I want to invest in more than the stock market–in people, which are the only things that really matter. I want to remember, when I think I need more money, when I want something I can’t have, when I’m discouraged: true joy isn’t in things, no matter how beautiful or wonderful they are.

It’s in relationships.

Because when I have friends who will spend seven-and-a-half hours in a compact car with their little son to see me, who will drive through the night the next day and arrive at home by 2 AM, who will value me because of things that have nothing to do with my job or my money or my goals, I feel really, truly, remarkably blessed.

When Did We Stop Dreaming?

I asked some six- and seven-year-olds recently what they want to be when they grow up. There were a lot of answers, with a general theme: grand. Several kids said they wanted to be more than one thing or that they couldn’t pick just one:

I want to be a doctor. And a college professor. And a veterinarian.

I want to be a crocodile hunter.

I will be an author.

At what age do you think we stop dreaming big? How many kids say: I want to be an accountant or an actuary or, heck, a copywriter?

My friend’s son grew up wanting to be a paleontologist, but he’s given up the dream. Why? My friend says it’s simple: money.

All of this makes me feel powerfully sad somehow.

What Do You Really, Really, Really Want from Your Money?

That was the question in a financial article I read recently. The irony is that I don’t remember much of the article–just the title. I immediately started asking myself how I’d answer the question, rolling it around in my mind later that day and continuing right now.

What do I want from money? There are the easy answers: my sidebar goals, for one thing. But saving for a down payment, a vacation, an emergency fund, even for retirement–these aren’t things I really, really want. I mean, I want them. But I want them because I want something(s) deeper.

What?

The best answer I’ve been able to create so far is something somewhat generic: freedom. I want the freedom of many, many choices. I want to be able to, say, get in a car accident without going into debt, horrible as that sounds. I want to have a roof over my head at some point that I paid for. I want to travel Europe, visit good friends, buy gifts for those I love and those who need help. I want to redecorate, to eat deliciously, to be prepared. I really, really want money to work for me to its fullest extent. I want to make a difference in the world–and in eternity. I want to give it all away; I want to save it. I want to take two months off working between jobs; I want to seamlessly transition into my next position.

It’s funny, I think, how talking about what I want from money is similar to talking about what I want in life. It’s vague sometimes, not because there aren’t specific goals (stick with this job for at least a year; continue growing in my knowledge/career; love and be loved; give; think eternally), but because I don’t quite know yet how those specific goals all fit together.

So I spend one day at a time, one dollar at a time, not knowing precisely how these investments and allocations will all work out in the end. Is it strange, I sometimes wonder, that I don’t have a clear image of myself ten years from now, or even five?

Resurrection Weekend: Victory

from Matthew 28:

5The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

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Redeemed.

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though worms destroy this body yet, in my flesh shall I see God. For now is Christ risen from the dead, the first-fruits of them that sleep.

Resurrection Weekend: the Cross

Redeem, from M-W.com

Main Entry: re·deem

Pronunciation: \ri-?d?m\

Function: transitive verb

1 a: to buy back : repurchase b: to get or win back2: to free from what distresses or harms: as a: to free from captivity by payment of ransom b: to extricate from or help to overcome something detrimental c: to release from blame or debt : clear d: to free from the consequences of sin 3: to change for the better : reform

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Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows! He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him. And with His stripes we are healed.

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Galatians 3:12-14

12But the law is not of faith, rather^(A) “The one who does them shall live by them.” 13Christ^(B) redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written,^(C) “Cursed is everyone who is hanged^(D) on a tree”— 14so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might^(E) come to the Gentiles, so that^(F) we might receive^(G) the promised Spirit^[a] through faith.

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