My Friend Ruins Every Lunch With the Same Two Words. I Dread Them!

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I have a friend that I meet for lunch a few times a year, three or four. We are both retired teachers (we worked at the same school together). I love our lunches, we’ve been having them for years, but there is one part of them that I dread. Every single lunch, when the bill comes, my friend grabs the bill and says, “My treat!” The thing is, she almost certainly has less money than I do! I am married and my husband also has a pension, and we have a very comfortable life. Her husband died several years ago, and he had been disabled and unable to work for many years before that. Her lifestyle is pretty frugal, though she is a big shopper for her grandchildren. Anyway, I guess if I knew she was a millionaire, I’d just say, “Thanks!,” but knowing she is not, I always say, “Now come on, at least let me split it.” She gives in maybe half the time. Maybe twice has she ever allowed for me to pay for the whole bill. But I just hate this. Everything is nice and then there is this strange tussle. How would you handle this?

Dear Lady at Lunch,

Here’s the thing: You don’t actually know what’s in your friend’s bank account. She may have come into an inheritance, have a generous child helping her out, or simply have her finances more under control than you assume. Making decisions based on guesses about someone else’s financial situation is a risky game, and it can quietly become its own kind of condescension.

So stop the dinner bill tussle and propose a new system. The simplest: just split the check every time. Before the bill even arrives, make it the default understanding between you. No negotiation, no awkwardness, no one feeling pitied or managed. If that feels too rigid, the next best option is trading off—you get this one, she gets the next. Either way, if one of you wants to treat the other on a birthday or a special occasion, wonderful. That’s what those moments are for.

Most people find this kind of arrangement a genuine relief. It’s fair, it’s clean, and it lets you both focus on what actually matters—the lunch itself, and the friendship that’s brought you to the same table for years.

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My girlfriend and I just moved in together and are merging our lives, but we can’t agree on what, exactly, an emergency fund is for.

We are splitting the rent and all the bills for our apartment, and going in, we split all the move-in fees. She wants us now to save three months rent in a separate checking account for “emergencies.” I think OK, one month of cash on hand, fine. But three months is so much!

I think that if we really have an emergency and needed a lot of cash, we can just pull the cash from our 401(k) accounts—my understanding is that you can take out the cash you’ve put in, just not the gains. We both are putting in at least $2,000 in our (separate) 401(k)s each month. So if we needed cash, we could just pull that out. She says this isn’t how it works and we need liquid cash in a savings account.

Dear Who is Right,

Your girlfriend is right. On both counts.

First, on the 401(k) question, your understanding is incorrect. A 401(k) is not a savings account you can dip into freely. Early withdrawals—before age 59½—typically trigger a 10 percent penalty plus income taxes on the amount withdrawn. Depending on your tax bracket, you could lose 30 to 40 cents on every dollar you pull out. Some employers do allow you to borrow against your 401(k) and pay yourself back with interest, which sounds appealing—and it’s better than credit card debt—but it’s still a bad idea. While you’re repaying the loan, that money isn’t invested, meaning you miss out on any market appreciation during that time. Compounding works best when you leave it alone.

Second, three months is actually the minimum most financial advisers recommend for an emergency savings account. The standard advice is three to six months of expenses (not just rent), covering everything: rent or mortgage, utilities, food, transportation, insurance, and child care expenses, if you have them. The reasoning is sound: Emergencies don’t announce themselves, and they rarely cost exactly one month’s rent. A job loss, a medical issue, a car that dies—these things take time to resolve. And even if you have insurance for some of these losses, it might take a few months for a check to come your way.

Saving money isn’t easy, but the good news is you’re already doing a lot right. You’re splitting costs fairly, you’re both contributing seriously to retirement, and you’re having this conversation now rather than during an actual emergency.

Start building toward three months of expenses. If it feels like too much to do at once, set a timeline and automate a monthly contribution to a high-yield savings account. You’ll barely notice the missing money from your paycheck, and you’ll both sleep better knowing you’ve got a rock solid financial foundation on which to build your lives.

I was secretly in love with a close guy friend of mine for many years. We’re now in our 30s and both married (to other people) with children. I haven’t heard from him in a while, despite reaching out to him about once a year. I just received a response to my latest attempt to reconnect, in which he admitted to pushing me away because he had been in love with me and it took him a long time to accept that things were not meant to be!