A Less-Than-Helpful Guide to Socializing While Broke
Here are some suggestions for easing the impact of human interaction on your budget.
Social pressures, especially in these last few weeks before summer officially ends, are insidious. Mint-infused cocktails or rounds of barbecue items may seem harmless enough, but in the aggregate they can, termite-like, do significant structural damage to your economic stability—and as soon as the summer social events are over, it’s time to deal with the holiday season.
If you want to finish out the year without ending up broke, you have to be strategic about your social choices. Here are some suggestions for easing the impact of human interaction on your budget.
Eat first.
If going out drinking, you’ll be less inclined to reach out for nuts, chips, or fries. If going out eating, you’ll be less likely to need an appetizer or side dish. Alternatively, pack your own drinks and snacks to smuggle into concert venues, movie theaters, and the like. Flasks and baggies are your friend here; security staff are not.
When faced with the possibility of free food, attempt to store it, camel-like, as bodily reserves. Wear loose clothing, first for the eating part and second so you can hide even more snacks underneath your outfit.
Over-research.
Before meeting friends, examine price lists with the meticulousness of a divorce lawyer poring over a prenup. Know exactly what you’re in for. If the preparation extends to exhaustively cataloguing your friends’ movements and habits, you’ll have a stronger sense of exactly how much they’re likely to spend on any given social occasion, and how much you’ll be expected to contribute. Obsessively over-researching is less creepy when it’s a matter of shoring up personal finances.
Meet in people’s homes.
People generally don’t demand payment for activities within their homes (which unfortunately also means that you can’t charge admission to your dinner parties or game nights). If your friends like to keep their living and socializing spaces separate, do what’s needed to persuade them otherwise. Feign overweening laziness to lessen your chances of being pushed out into a world where everyone is trying to separate you from your money.
Be a control freak.
Compile abundant suggestions of free things to do, from museum visits to sex parties. Cultivate excellent persuasive skills, so that you can convince people that a walk in the park or a picnic in a parking lot is the can’t-miss thing to do. Bully them into going along with your plans, if necessary.
Walk, cycle, or hitchhike if it isn’t likely to end up in physical harm.
Never mind taxis and gas, public transport can be a luxury. On the plus side, transporting yourself via walking or cycling is free exercise. And one advantage of hitchhiking is that it’s likely to reduce your appetite for further socializing, handily eliminating the problem of being too cash-strapped to do so.
Make friends with other cash-strapped people.
This is your tribe, the people who understand that there’s a difference between being asocial and being broke. See: students, nonprofit workers, and creatives. People of comfortable socioeconomic means and wellbeing are not the kinds of friends you should be seeking out.
Do all of your socializing online (using free electricity and internet in a public place, if necessary).
It’s all too easy for face-to-face contact to shift to spontaneous spending: a coffee here, a request for small change there. Avoid leaving the house and connecting with people in the mythical, suspect Real Life.
Know when ostensibly free events are likely to generate pressure to part with cash.
Church is one. Charity events are another. And of course free performances or services are often premised on the expectation of payment for drinks or in tips. Get very good at looking pensively into the distance, stroking your chin, and asking no one in particular, “But what is free, anyway? Who can say what doesn’t have a cost?” People will think you’re soulfully asking a rhetorical question rather than actually, quite desperately, looking for an answer.
Alienate everyone.
Some helpful suggestions for doing so: Repeatedly steal food from friends. Use the bodies of their husbands and wives to keep yourself warm during the cold months, so you don’t have to turn on the heating. Attempt to convince burly acquaintances to intimidate your landlord into waiving rent. Or simply take all of the recommendations in this article to heart.
With no friends, you won’t have to worry about lacking the money to socialize. It’s a win-win.
Christine Ro is not entirely as insensitive as this list might suggest.
