Why your rich friend Venmo requests you for $4: People with more money 'struggle with generosity,' expert says

'Struggle with generosity' is to greed, like 'died as a result of an officer involved shooting' is to murder.

I would say there's a distinction.
"I want more" is different from "I don't want to share".

There was a program many years back that discussed this issue. It showed two kids, young girls, one was fairly well off and had all the things you’d expect a young girl to have and some to spare. The other was a young girl living in an impoverished nation and had a very poor family. Think tin roof on adobe walls kind of poor. She had a single stuffed animal that was in dubious shape handed down from child to child. The well-off girl had a small army of stuffed animals.

Point of the segment in the program was how difficult it was for the well off girl to share anything and how possessive she was for her material things, whereas the little girl that had very few things was willing to share her one stuffed animal quite willingly.

Wish I could remember the show. But it demonstrated quite handily that even at a young age people who had more, wanted more, and were unwilling to power with even small things vs the people who had very little.

Friend making $450k as a software engineer

I’m a software developer. If I just start calling myself an engineer, can I have 450k?

Check the law where you live. Engineer is in many places a restricted profession like lawyer or doctor.

It is amazing how rich people deal with non-rich people. I managed to climb from poor to reasonable well off, but I cannot understand people who earn many times the money I get to be assholes over small money.

Last week, I took a student that I want to "groom" to work in our development department to an electronics fair. Train, hotel, and ticket were paid for by the company, but the deal was that he has to pay for anything else by himself. Eating out and other expenses are still quite some money for a student, so I paid for his meals out of my own pocket and told him that one time in the future, when he will be the one guiding a student through the same situation, he should do as I did.

I understand what you mean with groom, but poor choice of words. 😂
Mentor/onboard/fast track, or any other would have sounded better. Groom just sounded like you wanted to fuck him.

This isn't any sort of real explanation of anything. It's just someone's opinion. They call her an "expert". She's a certified financial planner with no formal schooling or training. She passed a test and runs a company where she advises people who have suddenly come into a lot of money. That's her only expertise. She has no background in psychology or any information beyond "it rings true" to back up her statements.

Grew up in a resort town known for its plethora of rich people.
Rich people are near universally the cheapest group of people I’ve ever encountered.

I'm working poor and always have been. I never mind buying other people drinks or paying for their fares or whatnot, even if they make more money than I do. My philosophy is that I don't make nearly enough money to ever become rich or even well off, so what would it matter that I turn every cent around fifteen times or not? If at the end of the day I'm happy, and at the end of the month I'm not starving, then I'm living.

I'm suffering from enough shit already (chronic depression, adhd, etc) that complicating my life extra by tracking every red cent in order to deny myself and my family the last few pleasures making life worth living is not an option.

Of course, with this kind of attitude it's unlikely I'll ever become rich, even if I find a high-income job, since I care little about "making it grow". For all I know WW3 could break out tomorrow rendering EUR & USD near worthless. Then what does it matter how much you saved up?

I feel like I'm the exact opposite of what this article proposed however the entire thing confuses me.

I'm not rich but relatively well off, and, without doubt in the best financial position of my immediate group of friends.

If I happen to be the one that picks up the bill I often have people chasing me to pay me. I actually think that is a problem because they feel obliged to do the right thing, however I'm unmotivated because I don't care about the outcome -- I don't need the money. This is my fault and I feel poorly for it but the reality is that after I've had a nice evening I don't really care. In terms of the debt: honestly I probably wouldn't bother asking.

The very concept of asking someone for 4 bucks seems abhorrent to me. To be clear, I say this personally; I'm not struggling to pay rent/mortgage/utilities/whatever. If you're in a position where those are concerns then please absolutely follow up.

Chasing a $4 debt won't make you rich, ever. Even if you do it all the time. Anyone well off chasing this kind of cash is deluding themselves.

Generally speaking my friends and I operate over a long term fairness principle. "Bob got the last round, I'll get the next"; they won't be even but our assumption is that it'll balance in the long term. That applies to more than just the pub.

It kind of makes sense, though. I grew up a povvo bitch, so if someone wanted to borrow money there were basically two outcomes

A) We simply didn't have the money to lend them
B) We had the money and might as well help them out because we like the person and they'd do the same in turn; at the end of the day we'd still struggle, so a bit less doesn't make a massive difference

I'm glad that's never happened to me. They wouldn't be my friend anymore.

The article talks about how this is not them being assholes, but because if they have more money then their peers, it tends to make them feel isolated and self-conscious and fears about being taken advantage of. They even quote the expert at the end who says "They don’t care about the $4."
You would ditch a friend for struggling with someone? I find that hard to believe.
- If they don't care about my money, they shouldn't ask for it. It's just shitty behavior.
I was once very poor and now pretty well-off. I'm generally happy to try and pick up the bill when I go out with friends and family because I'm thankfully in a place in my life I can do that and I remember how thankful I was for the generosity of others early in my life. Unfortunately I've found some people get offended... that my picking up the bill is some power move to show I'm rich so I've become reluctant to do that unless I've explicitly invited them to dinner or whatever. I don't want people to think I'm showing off and trying to make them feel inferior so if they've invited me or it's an otherwise group event, I assume they're paying their own way and didn't come with the idea that someone else was paying for them. If somehow I'm the one whose credit card it ends up on because the place won't split the bill, I'll let people know how to Venmo me or whatever. It's not because I'm worried about the money though.

People don't usually get rich by giving money away or being bad at finances. Why is a wealthy person obliged to not ask you to pay back your share?

I'm by no means rich but I'm probably the wealthies of all my friends yet I live in a tiny house, drive a 15 year old truck and shop groceries at a discount. I'm extremely frugal and you can be sure I expect you to pay me back.

Are you, like in the article, afraid of your relationships becoming transactional? Do you think that if you paid for stuff for your friends every once in a while, they would start expecting it of you, and think of you only as a means of getting this free perk?