Keeping up with your friends when retired?

[galaxyhi]

Do I feel pressured?

No.

I was medically early retired at the age of 40. Comfy but not lavish.

I've gone back to work part time for a variety of reasons, and can do so.

I never felt pressured when I worked or when I was retired, and certainly dont now .

I do my thing they do theirs. If the two shoukd meet in the middle, then we make arrangements. We have close friends who is a lawyer. We are not lawyers. We don't have his income. We both enjoy going to the opera, for example.

So we go as a foursome, they pay the higher ticket prices, we pay for dinner for 4 before or after the opera, which is usually the cheaper of the two as we all like the buffet center, and it's only $10/person.

We each get the others company, enjoy something together, and have a great time. No one feels pressured. They know we don't have the income they do so they don't expect us to pay equally.

In other cases, we travel with other friends. We drive our vehicle and pay the gas. They pay the hotel room. Each pays own admission, eats and souvenirs.

If we had friends who didn't respect our potential or actual differences, we would not be friends.
Good friends realize every thing can't always be split equally, and make amicable arrangements to fit each other's budgets.

Simple as that.

No keeping up with the joneses here. If we can't afford and or don't want to, we simply dont.

And yet still, a good time was had by all.
That's the important thing.

[Piney Creek]

Originally Posted by PriscillaVanilla

Do you care enough about people to care what they think about you. That's the question.

Hmm, an interesting question. I think you can care a lot about people, but at the same time not really care what they think about you (at least, when it comes to this sort of thing). But maybe that's easier said than done?

[Larry Caldwell]

Originally Posted by Piney Creek

Hmm, an interesting question. I think you can care a lot about people, but at the same time not really care what they think about you (at least, when it comes to this sort of thing). But maybe that's easier said than done?

If your friends don't share your values, why are they friends?

[Piney Creek]

Originally Posted by Larry Caldwell

If your friends don't share your values, why are they friends?

Because there are a lot of great things to base friendships on; and having the same spending habits doesn't strike me as the same thing as having the same values.