How much should you contribute toward the $2000 of the birthday person’s total if you aren’t attending?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is one of a hundred reasons why I’m sort of glad I’m no longer in any social circles.

I remember how much it sucked when it felt like everyone in my ex’s family seemed to need a giant “Lordy Lordy Mike is 40!” and “Nifty Nifty Janice is 50!” party.

Such incredible narcissism. Guess what, lots of people also turn 40 and 50

I still have a couple social circles but have eliminated the ones where this kind of thing happens. Life is too short. This is also a good way to just blow up your budget as a 20 or 30 something, when you want to be saving for a house or building up a nest egg for kids or travel or starting your own business. What you will inevitably discover if you go along with this kind of completely needless "gift" spending is that the people pushing for this spending wind up being the ones whose down payment is completely funded by parents, or who have some kind of trust that pays their kids' private school tuition. Like the reason they are so "generous" and want to push everyone else to be equally "generous" is because they actually have no concept of money, are used to having someone else foot the bill for things like vacations, their cell phone, even their rent, and either don't realize other people don't have that or do and just don't care.

All of the people from my past like that are GONE. I even left a job at one point in part because this was at the vibe and we were well compensated but the expected lifestyle among people who worked there undermined the higher pay. I wound up staying for three years, made virtually no friends other than cultivating an okay relationship with my boss's boss for the reference, saved every penny I could, and then got the heck out of dodge. I could easily have been spending 40-60k on vacations annually at that job if I participated in the social scene there, including "birthday trips" and bachelorettes and "oh let's all tree Carol to a spa weekend in NYC to congratulate her on her engagement." Babe, let's not and say we did. Carol's gonna quit this job in 18 months anyway because her fiancé is loaded. Carol can pay for her own hotel rooms and facials. Meanwhile, I didn't want my bedroom to be an alcove off the dining room for the rest of my life, so I went ahead and held onto the thousands of dollars it would have cost to "treat" Carol, who was already rich.