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Friends & Financial Issues/Conflicts
I'm not sure if this is the right forum for this post, please let me know if it isn't. I really do apologise for the length.
I really need someone else's opinion on this:
I have a friend who has been a really good friend for ... quite a while.
I met her, and became friends with her when I was 3, some 25 years ago.
We've had one of those friendships where we could lose contact for a year or two, and then pick it up as if there had been no break.
We've rarely argued and she has stood by me when other people ran away - like when my mental illness started making itself known.
Her oldest child treats me like an adopted aunty, and her youngest is my god-daughter.
Oh, and she's what my housemate calls a "norm" - she doesn't have a mental illness of any description.
Okay, okay, sorry for taking so long in getting to the point, I'm just trying to give a full picture.
We went on a holiday recently - me, my housemate and my friend and her kids. Naturally certain bills were incurred. My housemate paid for one dinner plus several other incidentals, my friend paid for petrol and I paid for a meal at a restaurant. We had an arrangement before we left that we would invoice each other, work out what we had paid and pay the remainder. She still owes me for the meal at Adelfia.
This wouldn't be so much of an issue as it is only $69.00, however . . .
Almost 3 weeks ago her daughter destroyed my computer monitor. As my computer is my lifeline ... in every sense of the word ... my housemate and I emptied the combined contents of our Savings Accounts to get me a new computer monitor here as soon as we could. We even rang down to the supplier and changed the monitor from the one we were originally getting so that it would get here sooner as the one we wanted was out of stock. This then meant that not only were we $320.00 out of pocket, but 2 fortnights behind in our savings.
This may not mean much but it could mean the difference between us being able to pay the rent and us not being able to pay the rent. Or being able to pay for groceries ...
On the day it happened my friend said that she would give me some money towards it. Since then nothing has happened. Literally. She hasn't given me any money, nor has she even really mentioned the monitor or anything. No, wait, not quite true. She came over the day the new monitor arrived and said that "[she] felt really bad about it".
I don't know what to do about it.
I guess part of what makes it so hard is knowing that she separated from her (now) ex-husband not long before we went on holiday, and they are barely giving her shifts at work which means she is relying more and more on the Parenting Payment/Pension from Centrelink. But then again, she says to us that she has a 4-figure bank balance and wants to keep saving!
I really don't want to lose a friend over this but I'm starting to question whether she really is a friend. I mean, would a friend be able to live with something like this without even coming to some sort of an arrangement - especially when they know the other person only has a Disability Pension to support them and they have to leave town to get decent health care?
I don't know. Does anyone have any ideas?
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