Rich Woman's Friends Furious After Finding Out She's Independently Wealthy & Never Offered To Help Them Financially
Her friends' response is exactly why financial experts say to never reveal your wealth.
standret / Shutterstock.com Money can be a sticky thing among friends, especially in our American culture where you're basically told not to talk about money, for any reason, ever.
One wealthy woman on Reddit recently got a firsthand crash course in part of why that cultural more has endured for so long, and it's sparked quite a debate online.
The woman's friends are furious after finding out she's wealthy.
"I (25F) don't like money talk," the woman began in her since-deleted Reddit post. "I keep it private because growing up I've seen the things people will do for money."
She's certainly not alone in that sentiment.
And we've all heard stories about those who come into big money through their work or win the lottery or something and suddenly their third cousin twice removed is banging on their door asking for a loan.
The point is, that there are lots of reasons why people, like this woman, choose to keep their wealth quiet. And once this woman's friends found out, their response proved every secretive millionaire's point.
Her friends went snooping through her office and discovered the details of her trust fund and investments.
This woman's parents died when she was very small and left her with a trust fund, so she had "a very privileged upbringing" living with her grandparents. "But they also raised me to be frugal and grateful for what I have," she wrote, and she's taken that to heart, never flaunting her wealth.
But that was no match for a friend who decided to rifle through the documents on her desk while using her office to make a phone call. "She... found documentation about my trust fund, my investments, etc.," she explained.
"When she came out, she was mad," the woman went on to say. "She started telling everyone that I was actually rich, showing them one of the documents she had taken from the office."
"At dinner, she kept going on about me masquerading as poor because I thrift, have a cheap old car, travel in economy, and don't offer to cover the bill when we go out."
Her friends say she betrayed them by never disclosing her wealth, and some even demanded she give them money.
The other friends gathered that night were furious too, pointing out that she "had never said I have money, never offered money when one of them was struggling."
She's since gotten several angry messages, and a few friends have even gone so far as to demand she loan them money or pay off their student loans. Her husband is adamant that she owes them nothing, especially given the invasion of privacy.
Photo: Megaflopp / Shutterstock
But her friends disagree. "I've been very much frozen out from the group, I've been told I won't be invited to anything until I pay my equal share, and by equal share, they mean I pay for everything." It's left her wondering if she truly was in the wrong.
Her post sparked a debate about what the wealthy do and do not owe the people in their lives.
First, disclosure of my own biases — I grew up poor, stayed poor through the majority of my adult life, and have even been homeless. I have a relative who is independently wealthy and would sooner die than so much as buy me a coffee. So I get the vitriol here.
But, sorry, this woman's friends are insane. Nobody owes it to anyone to disclose how much money they have, and it's not anyone's responsibility to simply offer to fix their friends' financial lives for them.
And while class rage is frankly the blood that runs in my veins, this woman's friends seem to be projecting their anger over the state of our punishing economy onto their friend, which is absurd.
There have always been haves and have-nots — and always will be. Their friend isn't an oligarchical villain crushing the working class while evilly twiddling her handlebar mustache simply because she was orphaned as a kid and got her parents' money.
But several Redditors did not agree. One told the woman she was in the wrong, "not for lying but for not bettering the world with your wealth." "You don't know what I do with [my money]," the woman shot back.
Others were firmly on her side though and several Redditors had similar stories after coming into money themselves. "When I gained access to my trust fund after my dad passed, it was like the switch in my 'best friend' flipped," one person wrote. "She actually quit her job, telling me now I can 'take care of her.'"
Even one Redditor who felt the woman should have done more to help her friends still felt that "they aren't your friends," they wrote, "you do not owe them."
At the end of the day, all her friends did was prove her point. As a boss of mine once put it, "Money makes good people do bad things."
You can't blame people for wanting to keep their wealth under wraps.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.