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Your relationship with your friends will change because of something like that, it is very very nice of you to want to share the wealth, but someone that has a

Your relationship with your friends will change because of something like that, it is very very nice of you to want to share the wealth, but someone that has a sense of honour themselves will either have to refuse your offer or they will accept and it will hurt their sense about themselves. That depends very much on the way you bring it. Indeed, if you offer to pay off their debts, of course it will hurt their ego. But if you bring it like "here's 50 grand, i don't need it, i care about you, do with it what you want", well, most people will have a hard time rejecting it. Since they don't associate it with their debt, but rather as part of sharing in your success.

jacquesm 17y ago
I'm not sure I'm making my point clearly enough, sharing in the success of someone else is not the same on a satisfaction level as achieving your own is. By giving that money you are denying someone the chance of achieving that on their own and keeping parity with you. Especially if you say 'here's 50 grand, I don't need it', as though 50 grand should be peanuts to them too. The asymmetry of the situation is what causes these problems. The reverse also happens, plenty of people may assume that because you go back a long time they have an automatic right to whatever is yours. This is also not a healthy point of view. There is nothing more poisonous to a friendship than to have one party suddenly come in to a lot of money. It takes a lot of tact (on both sides!) to get through that without getting peoples feelings hurt. The best way to avoid this problem is to earn the money together with your friends.
- ido 17y ago
  > I'm not sure I'm making my point clearly enough, sharing in the success of someone else is not the same on a satisfaction level as achieving your own is. > By giving that money you are denying someone the chance of achieving that on their own and keeping parity with you. I don't refute the fact that it's a tricky situation, but I think you and the OP might be talking about different situations. There is a big difference between a fairly well payed programmer that needs to pay $20k of student loans and might take a while to do so but still live comfortably, and someone who is unemployed, the bank just repossessed his car and his family is about to be thrown out of their house due to unpaid mortgage. There were a few years when I was growing up when my parents' business was going under (and bleeding money like nobody's business) and things looked very bad. They managed to get out of that by their own eventually (at a significant cost, not just financially), but a lot of people don't.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    The big trick here is I think if you are in that position to help people to help themselves. That's the best kind of thing a friend could do. Honor is preserved on both sides and when it is all done the friendship has only strengthened, not become lopsided.

jacquesm 17y ago

I'm not sure I'm making my point clearly enough, sharing in the success of someone else is not the same on a satisfaction level as achieving your own is. By giving that money you are denying someone the chance of achieving that on their own and keeping parity with you. Especially if you say 'here's 50 grand, I don't need it', as though 50 grand should be peanuts to them too. The asymmetry of the situation is what causes these problems. The reverse also happens, plenty of people may assume that because you go back a long time they have an automatic right to whatever is yours. This is also not a healthy point of view. There is nothing more poisonous to a friendship than to have one party suddenly come in to a lot of money. It takes a lot of tact (on both sides!) to get through that without getting peoples feelings hurt. The best way to avoid this problem is to earn the money together with your friends.

ido 17y ago
> I'm not sure I'm making my point clearly enough, sharing in the success of someone else is not the same on a satisfaction level as achieving your own is. > By giving that money you are denying someone the chance of achieving that on their own and keeping parity with you. I don't refute the fact that it's a tricky situation, but I think you and the OP might be talking about different situations. There is a big difference between a fairly well payed programmer that needs to pay $20k of student loans and might take a while to do so but still live comfortably, and someone who is unemployed, the bank just repossessed his car and his family is about to be thrown out of their house due to unpaid mortgage. There were a few years when I was growing up when my parents' business was going under (and bleeding money like nobody's business) and things looked very bad. They managed to get out of that by their own eventually (at a significant cost, not just financially), but a lot of people don't.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  The big trick here is I think if you are in that position to help people to help themselves. That's the best kind of thing a friend could do. Honor is preserved on both sides and when it is all done the friendship has only strengthened, not become lopsided.