<commit_before>---
title: How Our Friends Hurt Our Finances
date: 2019-08-19 11:00:00 -04:00
categories:
- lifestyle
- budget
- spending
image: "/uploads/kal-visuals--3Le1lY8yTg-unsplash.jpg"
posts:
- How to Talk to Your Friends about Money
- You Can Have Fun with Your Friends While Spending Less
- How to Deal When You're Jealous of Your Friends' Finances
---

Have you ever felt like the only way to get your money right is to become a hermit and just have no social life whatsoever? I've been there too! When I first moved into my own apartment and was living alone, I knew I needed to be really careful with my money. My rent had nearly doubled and my student loan payments had increased. So there wasn't a lot of extra money to go around. My response to that was to almost completely obliterate my social life. I turned down most social requests and spent a lot of time alone in my apartment. Of course, this helped me to build up a substantial emergency fund and pay off my student loans four years early. But looking back, I think I went to an extreme when trying to cut my spending. I believe it's possible to be social while also sticking to a budget, even if it's a strict one.

However, sometimes our friends and social lives actually do harm our finances.

xx<commit_msg>Updated How Our Friends Hurt Our Finances<commit_after>---
title: How Our Friends Hurt Our Finances
date: 2019-08-19 11:00:00 -04:00
categories:
- lifestyle
- budget
- spending
image: "/uploads/kal-visuals--3Le1lY8yTg-unsplash.jpg"
posts:
- How to Talk to Your Friends about Money
- You Can Have Fun with Your Friends While Spending Less
- How to Deal When You're Jealous of Your Friends' Finances
---

Have you ever felt like the only way to get your money right is to become a hermit and just have no social life whatsoever? I've been there too! When I first moved into my own apartment and was living alone, I knew I needed to be really careful with my money. My rent had nearly doubled and my student loan payments had increased. So there wasn't a lot of extra money to go around. My response to that was to almost completely obliterate my social life. I turned down most social requests and spent a lot of time alone in my apartment. Of course, this helped me to build up a substantial emergency fund and pay off my student loans four years early. But looking back, I think I went to an extreme when trying to cut my spending. I believe it's possible to be social while also sticking to a budget, even if it's a strict one.

However, sometimes our friends and social lives actually do harm our finances.

## Judging Our Choices

Last week, during our Money Circle meetup, one of the attendees told the rest of us about an experience she'd recently had with a friend. She told that friend that she didn't think she'd ever want to own a home, and the friend, who'd recently bought her own home, thought she was crazy. 

## Ignoring Our Limitations

x

## Pressuring Us

x
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