Help! My Friend Wants a Birthday Dinner I Can't Afford

Eddie hears from a reader who can't afford his friend's big upcoming birthday dinner. Is it okay to push a cheaper night out?

Writing in the Globe and Mail, David Eddie hears from a reader who can't afford his friend's big upcoming birthday dinner.  Is it okay to push a cheaper night out?

The friend writes:

I am a university student and broke. Broke like broke. Broke like $5 in the bank account, maybe $500 in credit on Visa, and I still haven't paid off my tuition. My boyfriend and I are taking a friend – also a student, also broke – out for his birthday. Our friend has requested we go to a restaurant with $30 entrees, the kind that specializes in suggesting beers to go with each course. And I’m not talking Bud Light. We've already bought his presents, and we’re feeling the strain of coming off Christmas.

I don't want to begrudge my friend his celebration, but nor do I want to be ordering a garden salad and using my phone as a calculator under the table all night. Would we be within our rights to request we go somewhere cheaper?

Eddie responds:

I understand better than many what “brokeness” is, and what it can do to a person.

On the plus side, it has a wonderful way of focusing your mind on simple pleasures. You’re hungry, living on ramen noodles, and you have a nice steak? In those moments of chewy transcendence, you’re happier than the Sultan of Brunei.

But it can also grind you down, warp your mind and throttle your best impulses. It can make you pinched and petty, and lead to a poverty of the spirit.

I think that’s what’s happening to your friend. He’s using his birthday as a smokescreen to shake you down for a meal he knows you can ill afford.

Click here to read the rest.