Found this article Can friends be to blame for det. I thought some of you would like to read!

It's the forbidden question most of us prefer to avoid, at our financial peril. If you've ever picked up a tab, purchased a ticket or taken a trip with friends against your better judgment, you've probably wondered, however fleetingly, if your social life is driving you into debt.

"It is a dirty little secret. It isn't something anyone wants to look at or talk about," says MP Dunleavey, author of Money Can Buy Happiness.

"Your friends can put a lot of pressure on you economically if you're not willing to admit that that dynamic is going on. You have to acknowledge the financial disparity between you and your friends. It's painful, but if you don't, all kinds of crazy things can happen."

Money counselor Ruth Hayden says couples will tear themselves apart to maintain their country club memberships, ski trips to Aspen with the old gang and expensive private schools for the kids rather than risk ostracism by their social circles.

More From Bankrate.com:

• Does Your Child Suffer From Affluenza?

• 10 Ways to Earn Cash for the Holidays

• Beat the Bad Credit Blues

"Whether you're 27 or 67, you are under pressure financially to be part of a group, although we don't choose to think of it that way," Hayden says.

How did we go from keeping up with the Joneses to having lattes with the Trumps? Read on -- if you value your money as well as your mates.

The trouble with 'Friends'
Hayden traces the recent escalation in peer-driven debt to one particularly perky, insidiously seductive TV program.

"It all started with Friends on television, which set up an impossible image for young people today," she says. "There are two reasons that young people are in trouble: They've never learned how to problem-solve with money and they've never learned how to defer what they want. Part of the reason is Friends."

OK, so maybe Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Monica, Phoebe and Joey did seem to have a surfeit of spare time, cash and clothes as struggling 20-somethings in NYC. The point was that friends of different income levels could put money aside for the sake of their friendship, right?

Dalton Conley, the chair of sociology at New York University who studies wealth and class issues, says Friends is a nice fairy tale that doesn't accurately reflect reality. He says the friends/money friction in this country dates back to the first immigrant communities where enterprising sorts pulled themselves to success, left and never looked back.

"There is a long tradition in America of people who no longer feel connected to or comfortable with their old buds once they themselves have made it economically," he says. "They go off to college, get a big job, and they can't really relate to the people they left behind in the old neighborhood."

The awkwardness is more common among college graduates today than it was a generation ago, in part because their economic backgrounds are more diverse. According to Thomas Mortensen, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute in Washington, college enrollment of adults ages 18 to 24 from the bottom quartile of family income increased from 28 percent in 1970 to 42 percent in 2003.

Conley says the fast-track jobs tend to go to upper-income students, either because of family connections or their financial ability to accept unpaid internships that lead to prime job offers. Considering the growing disparity in starting salaries and the likelihood that lower-income students will emerge with loan debt, college pals today can find themselves in drastically different economic strata soon after graduation.

"It's a growing issue because inequality is increasing," says Conley. "Take a common scenario: One person goes into education where wages aren't great and the other person goes into investment banking and makes a fortune. That's more common now than it was before."

'Organic parting' of ways
Hayden says money disparity hits us hardest as we make the transition from life stages where our focus is nonmonetary -- such as college, parenthood and grandparenthood/career peak -- to scary new stages where belonging is paramount, regardless of the ante.

"I think each age has its price tag," says Hayden. "For 20-somethings, it's setting up patterns, setting up credit scores that could take years to clean up. The middle years, you've got children involved, so if you decide you can't afford the private school, you have disruption that goes much broader. The part that nobody talks about is the retired folks. There is no way to redo that income, no way to remake it."

Hayden says one benefit of retirement communities is that they "level the playing field" to promote an egalitarian lifestyle.

Dunleavey, a married new mom who left New York City to live upstate near Woodstock, says the economic disparity didn't begin to take its toll on her friendships until her early 30s.

"I have friends where I know they do things with their other, richer friends that I can't afford to join them in," she says. "I have a friend who regularly goes out for weekends in the Hamptons, and she often invites me and my husband to join her, but we can't afford
that -- a weekend in the Hamptons, minimum, is going to run you $1,200."

She says losing friends is sometimes just part of life.

"If you have friends who take ski vacations every winter or rent or buy a beach house and you don't, they're naturally gravitating toward a different social circle. That may indeed be an organic parting of the ways."

Friendly concessions
New York therapist April Benson treats the friends-with-funds issue from the other side; her rich clients wrestle just as much with the social awkwardness of unequal fortunes as their less-wealthy friends: Should I pick up the dinner check and risk offending? Or, should I be egalitarian even though I know the meal will cost them a week's wages? Should we book lodging at a place our less wealthy friends can afford or should we stay where we would normally?

One woman who had had enough of running with a fast crowd found her own comfort level: She dines at home and meets friends after the theater for a nightcap.

Benson's advice: "Suggest a lower-cost alternative activity and see how that flies. If it doesn't fly, it may be that this is really not the peer group for you. But depending on who your friends are, if you tell them the truth, you may get an earful back about how they have felt the same way but felt unable to talk about it with you."

Dunleavey agrees. She suggests floating a few low-cost suggestions, such as hiking, county fairs, outdoor concerts or ice skating. Then, see who's in. When friends bring up expensive ideas, have a short list of defensive parries (OK, they're excuses) at the ready: We're putting all our money into the house right now. We just went there last week. Mom's coming with cannoli, etc.

"When we are tempted to keep up with the Joneses, you don't know how much debt the Joneses are in and you don't know what it's costing them to keep up that facade," she says.

Copyrighted, Bankrate.com. All rights reserved.

Interesting article although its something I have delt with all my life just with my Family alone. My moms side all live out in the middle of nowhere they come to our annual reunion in tents and itty bitty trailors that they bought used somewhere. My Dads side Moterhomes that cost more than my house. The activities the way they view money is totally different. Still I manage to have a good time with both sides
As for Friends I grew up in the nicest neighborhood in my area. People did give me a sterio type that my family was rich when really it was that my family managed there money well. And I hated being labled as rich all the time

Well now I have new friends most are stay at home moms or ones who work part time with young kids because of the type of people they are I don't see any of them as being better off then me and there isn't to much pressure to engage in costly activitys. Sad to say I anilize my friends at times and there is normally something that put them at a higher level. But the Friend with the nice house over looking the water Rents it from her husbands parents. A few are about 10 years older them me they bought when the market was a lot lower. A few are military and I am greatful that I don't have to deal with deployment. And there are a large group of them who do home sales to have a little extra. So really who are you keeping up with? People who are in a different point in life. Yes my DH has a huge list of I want thes but they will come and I for one and happy with where I am.

__________________
Kimberly Proud Mommy to Bethany Rose April 2006 &

Organizer of the Coupon Clippers of Tacoma

We don't have friends like that, and I can't imagine we'd want them! LOL! We don't ever feel compelled to buy thing just because someone else has them! IMO, that's an excuse for bad spending habits...people need to take responsbility for themselves.

I can see this being true. My best friends are my sisters. One sister lives a couple hours away and the other is traveling with her husband (his job) atleast 9 months of the year. When they aren't here, I don't spend much. When they come into town, we want to spend time together & our favorite ways to do that is going shopping & eating!

So for me, it's not trying to keep up with the Jones', it's them suggesting us all to to McD's so the kids can play, etc. & me being tempted (and usually giving in) to spending money that way. Neither of them are penny pinchers--so they don't usually think up fun activities that are cheap or free....

We do a monthly meeting for our budget, so I try to know if one of them are going to be in town & if so, put a little more money in the entertainment & eating out categories.

__________________
Mom to Ryan ('06)

I have friend that is single, working in a good job so has no idea what its like to raise a family, when she asks if I want to see a movie, I politely postpone til I can afford to.

I don't feel pressured to socialise if I can't afford to.

__________________
Melanie.
Mum to Lillianlee- 1st September 2006.

Monkey Mia's Savings... (my blog)

We have friends like that but we don't really talk to them alot I think my husbands family makes us poor. I cannot go shopping with my mother n law she just piles in the things and if I put stuff back she is like just get it so I end up returning the stuff. But I stop shopping with her.

I think sometimes it is hard to say no when your friend's invite you out to do something and you don't have the money. You want to spend time with your friends so often people charge the activity on a credit card. if that happens too often, you end up in debt. Other ways people to into debt with friends is if they try to keep up with them. One friend gets a new big screen tv so then you have to have one too even though you can't afford it. I have to say I have bever fallen into that trap. The way I see it, though it is fun at the time, I know how guilty and stressed out I will feel later when the bill comes due. Luckily my friends are always ok with just getting together for coffee or to watch videos.

I agree that friends or our social circle can be an influence. Unfortunately, I think in one friendship, I'm the 'bad influence friend'.

I have a girlfriend who is younger than me. We simply have more assets, a different career path (hence a different income) and are at a different point in life - even though we both have children of the same age. I adore this girlfriend. I do seem to surround myself with people who are frugal and this girlfriend is no different. Her and her husband made a commitment to never get into debt, except for their mortgage. If they do have to charge something to a credit card, they work to pay it off within a couple of months.

Unfortunately, that has changed since she has met me. For instance, they now have a car payment, which I feel partially responsible for since I told her how she could swing it financially. And she recently revealed to me that she has been carrying a balance on her credit card for far too long. And I know she has been working part-time to make ends meet. At first she was working the same at-home job I do for 'pin money'. Then she took on a casual outside office job to pay for extra-curricular activities for her kids. But recently she revealed that she became an actual employee for that office and when I've suggested that she might not want to work so much she doesn't say anything.

In my own life, when I have been excluded from activities because I chose not spend money shopping, going out to eat at expensive restaurants frequently, or even donate a large sum of money to certain causes. I once joined a volunteer organization before I realized that volunteering my TIME wasn't really what they hoped I would do. Turns out there were two different kinds of volunteers - young women from wealthy families or older wealthy women. Either one was fine as long as you were willing to deliver the checks.

__________________
"I've been rich and I've been poor but independently wealthy is where it is at."

I see it more with my kids. I am not going to tell my dd she can't play JO volleyball ($300) just because it causes us financial stress. My boys wrestle and play soccer. We come up with the money somehow because I want them to be able to do all the things other kids are doing.

__________________
~Happiness is a large family~