FRIENDS AND MONEY

ON THE FRIENDSHIP CAFÉ 

Ten  Million Dollars Cannot Buy What Great Friendship Can

Although we may not realize it at the time, a chief event in our lives is the day in which we first encounter one of our best friends. If by chance you don’t precisely know why you need great friends, let’s get you started:

After you work either hard or smart to be successful in life, it’s important to enjoy your success. Celebrations by yourself, you may have noticed, aren’t all that much fun — they actually tend to be on the quiet side. Even if you have a dog or cat, sharing good news with it isn’t quite the same as sharing good news with a great friend.

All things considered, happiness is one of the cheapest things in the world when we secure a good part of it through friendship.

Portland resident Lenny Dee told an Utne Reader reporter, “I have always thought you could invest your energies in making money or making friends. And they achieve much the same ends — security, new experiences, personal options, travel, and so forth. I have always found it more fulfilling to make friends.”

Money contributes to our lives, without doubt, but it’s just that friendship contributes a lot more. At this point it is worth asking: Can true friends be bought? Not with money — luckily so for the happy poor and unfortunately for the lonely rich. “A friend you have to buy,” declared George D. Prentice, “won’t be worth what you pay for him.”

Even so, friends have to be bought. Friendship carries a price tag — a big one at that. Hey, it should — it is one of life’s greatest joys! To find, win, and keep great friends, you must continually be paying a price. Although many people are not wild about having to continually pay a price for anything, that’s just the way it is. The Universe has declared that this is how the friendship game is played.

The price you have to pay for friendship varies in substance and form. Most important, you buy great friendship with intangible substance. You buy great friendship with the inspiration, advice, joy, support, and good feelings that friends expect from you. The major friendship maxim is that the best friends that money can buy will never even come close in quality to the friends that your character, integrity, and compassion will get you.

No doubt friendship is not always easy — you may have to put in a lot of time and effort for it to work. To have a true friend is one of the highest prizes of life. To be a true friend in return is one of the most formidable tasks in life. In this regard, always remember that friendship is a verb and not a noun. Put another way, friendship is an active element that requires constant input for it to develop, survive, and thrive.

Whatever you do, don’t expect something for nothing. Friendship doesn’t work that way. At times, particularly when growing new friendships, you may even have to put more into them than you get out. But the rewards of paying the price to develop great friends can bring invaluable prizes of which you have never dreamt.

Perhaps you have noticed that attention and kindness from a true friend will warm your heart a lot more when you are sick than receiving $1,000 from a distant or crabby relative. Of course, your best support during troubled times will always be a dear friend.

According to an old Greek proverb, “It is better in times of need to have a friend rather than money.” In fact, a great friend is someone with whom you can have a great deal of fun even when neither of you has any money.

At this point it is worth remembering that friendship isn’t important only when you are in dire need. Without great friends, a journey to an exotic foreign land can be boring; a million dollars will not have much use; Christmas Day will be lousy; your most important accomplishments may appear worthless; and life, itself, will not even come close to being as precious and fulfilling. 

Note: This article is excerpted from the book 101 Really Important Things You Already Know But Keep Forgetting by Ernie J. Zelinski

COPYRIGHT © 2011 by Ernie J. Zelinski

  All Rights Reserved 

Friendship Advice — Separate Money and Friends

Today, the chase for money and all that is connected to it are stumbling blocks and impediments to enduring friendships.

Avoid going into business with best friends if you can. If you must, ensure that their most important collateral is their reputation and their honesty.

Our true friends have a profound effect on our personal finance habits. Some friends can lead us to spending and to debt.

Money separates more friends than it unites.
— Author Unknown

Do the right thing rather than the instinctive thing when a friend asks you for money. This is one of several rules of friendship. If the friend doesn't pay you back in time, you may end up losing both. By saying no, you can only lose one.

If the person is intelligent and rational, you will lose neither. She will realize that you have many important qualities that she admires and respects and that not loaning her money is irrelevant to the quality of the friendship.

Good friends settle their accounts speedily.
— Chinese Friendship Proverb

She will also see that you did the right thing to ensure that your friendship is preseved. Still more, she will also realize that loaning money is not a duty of great friends; that's what bankers are for.

In the same vein, you should not be upset if a good friend refuses to loan you money. She is just doing the best thing possible that will keep your friendship
together.

Friendship and money: oil and water.
— Mario Puzo

If a person tries to intimidate you into loaning money to him or her by suggesting that as her true friend you should, there is a pretty good sign that she is not your true friend. True friends don't try and intimidate their own friends into loaning them money.

If the loaning of money is required to keep a friendship together, it has to be a shallow friendship indeed. In fact, a true friend will not loan money to another for the simple reason that this will just further complicate the other person's money problems in the long term.

Truth be known, lending money to friends has severed more friendships than it has strengthened. Researchers found that 50 percent of loans to family members and 75 percent of loans to friends aren't ever paid back.

Of course some of the loans that are paid back are paid back late, which still puts a strain on — or an end to — the friendship.

Quotes and Sayings about Friendship and Money

Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
— Ambrose Bierce

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
— Oprah Winfrey

Before borrowing money from a friend, decide which you need more.
— Author Unknown

Money can't buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy.
— Spike Milligan

With money and wine, you will have many friends, but when you are in trouble, will you see even one?
— Chinese proverb

The richer your friends, the more they will cost you.
— Elizabeth Marbury

It is better in times of need to have a friend rather than money.
— Greek proverb

Friendship is friendship, but accounts must be kept.
— Chinese proverb

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.
— Thomas Edison

Treat your friends like a bank account — refrain from drawing too heavily on either.
— Author Unknown

If you want an accounting of your worth, count your friends.
— Merry Browne

Friends that you can buy [with money] are a dime a dozen, and will shortchange you if given a chance.
— Author Unknown

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
— Mark Twain

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
— Samuel Butler

The richest man in the world is not the one who still has the first dollar he ever earned. It's the man who still has his best friend.
— Martha Mason

When you are young and without success, you have only a few friends. Then, later on, when you are rich and famous, you still have a few . . . if you are lucky.
— Pablo Picasso

You never really know how many friends you have until you buy a house with a swimming pool and a tennis court.
— Author Unknown

This is no time to lend money, especially upon bare friendship without security.
— William Shakespeare

A home-made friend wears longer than one you buy in the market.
— Austin O'Malley

It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.
— Douglas Hurd 

For more information and opinions on friendship and money see:

1.  Your Friends Need Money. Do They Have References?

2. Friends with Money: What happens when one friend has more cash than the other? How to handle a cash imbalance....

3. Advice: What are Friends For? Hara Estroff Marano gives advice on dealing with money-management differences between friends....

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COPYRIGHT © 2011 by Ernie J. Zelinski

 All Rights Reserved