The friendship wealth gap

Friends can share history, humour and loyalty — but not always the same bank balance.

What happens when the friend you once split cheap dinners with can suddenly afford five-star holidays, while you're checking the price of a coffee? Dayna Camilleri Clarke speaks with Gestalt Psychotherapist Miriana Ferrito about comparison, spending, and how to stop a growing wealth gap from costing you a friendship.

---

Dayna is a senior speech and language therapist and the founder of Malta Speech Therapy. She is a former editor at the Malta Business Weekly and a prolific writer whose work spans health, neurodiversity and travel. Her pieces are known for their clarity, curiosity and practical insight, making her a familiar voice to readers across Malta and beyond.

At some point in many friendships, life stops moving at roughly the same speed. Perhaps you met at university, when everyone was equally broke and a night out involved whatever was cheapest. Then careers gather pace. One friend gets promoted, another buys their first home. Someone inherits money. Someone else is made redundant. Before long, one person suggests a weekend in Mykonos while another calculates whether dinner out fits into this month's budget. The friendship has not necessarily changed. The finances have.

And that can be surprisingly difficult to navigate. "The money itself isn't necessarily the problem," explains Gestalt psychotherapist Miriana Ferrito, a psychology graduate who has worked within Malta's social sector for the past eight years. "It's the meaning attached to the money that creates the difference."

Money, she explains, can become tangled up with our ideas about success, status, security, independence and even self-worth. Suddenly, a friend's promotion or new home is no longer simply something good happening to someone we love. If we are already feeling insecure about our own progress, it can become an uncomfortable yardstick.

"It is a classic saying, but comparison really is the thief of joy," Ferrito says. "We start questioning: 'Am I falling behind? Are my friends more successful than me?'"

That comparison can go both ways. The person earning less may experience envy, embarrassment or resentment. The person earning more can feel guilty about their success, uncomfortable discussing a holiday or purchase, or concerned that celebrating an achievement will sound like boasting.

As Ferrito puts it, "'I earn less' is a financial fact. 'Therefore, I am less successful or less worthy' is the meaning we may attach to that fact. That meaning, if left unchallenged, may start causing significant issues in the friendship."

When comparison creeps into friendship

The trouble is that we rarely have the complete financial picture of anybody else's life.

"We don't usually disclose how much money we get in our pay cheques to our friends," Ferrito points out. Someone who appears considerably better off may have inherited money, received family help or made sacrifices elsewhere. Equally, a friend who turns down a coffee because they are saving might happily spend money on travel, while somebody else does the opposite.

"We never go home with the other person," she says. "The only person that we spend 100 per cent of the time with is ourselves."

It is a deceptively simple point. We compare our entire financial lives, including the worries, compromises, and bank balances nobody sees, with the parts of somebody else's life visible to us. Ferrito notes that those comparisons are not always conscious.

Gestalt therapy places considerable emphasis on awareness, and Ferrito says financial resentment can begin affecting our behaviour before we have properly identified what we are feeling. "We might find ourselves distancing ourselves from these friends, or becoming unnecessarily angry with them," she says.

Gestalt Psychotherapist Miriana Ferrito

That could mean becoming snappier, making excuses not to meet, declining invitations or finding it increasingly difficult to celebrate somebody else's success. Feelings such as withdrawal, embarrassment, defensiveness and competitiveness are among the ways inequality can surface. The wealthier friend, meanwhile, may minimise achievements, stop mentioning purchases or holidays, repeatedly offer to pay, or feel rejected when invitations are turned down.

The danger is that both people can completely misread what is happening.

"Sometimes a conflict that appears to be about effort or closeness is actually an unspoken conversation about money," Ferrito says. Your friend may think, "She never wants to see me anymore." The reality may be, I cannot afford the places she keeps suggesting, and I'm embarrassed to tell her.

When one friend sets the price of belonging

Money also brings choice. And choice can become an influence without anybody intending it.

"I think definitely with money comes power," says Ferrito. "That's unfortunately a truth in our society." Imagine one person in a friendship group repeatedly choosing the restaurant, weekend break or activity. They may simply be suggesting things they enjoy and can comfortably afford, but without realising it, their disposable income has begun setting the entry price for everybody else.

"If I am always choosing restaurants and choosing holidays, choosing activities, I might inadvertently put people in the group in an uncomfortable position," Ferrito explains.

Her phrase for it is particularly striking: "The person with the greatest spending power shouldn't automatically determine the price of belonging to the friendship."

Even generosity can muddy the waters. A higher earner might enjoy treating friends, but constantly paying can leave the other person feeling indebted or dependent. Ferrito points out that this can eventually affect seemingly unrelated parts of the relationship. If you are upset with the friend who routinely pays for dinners or helps you financially, are you as comfortable challenging them if you fear that support could disappear?

The reverse can happen too. The higher earner may begin to wonder whether they are expected to pay simply because they can. Neither person has necessarily done anything malicious. Yet the financial friendship gap has acquired power within the relationship.

The Friends episode that got it surprisingly right

Ferrito points to a nearly three-decade-old episode of Friends as an unexpectedly good illustration. In The One with Five Steaks and an Eggplant, Ross, Chandler and Monica are earning comfortably, while Rachel, Phoebe and Joey are struggling. The six go to an expensive restaurant, where the poorer three order considerably less, only for the bill to be divided evenly.

The problem is not the restaurant. It is everything they failed to say before arriving. "The three who were getting paid less were all feeling the dynamic," Ferrito says. "But they were speaking between themselves and not communicating it to the higher earners."

The One with Five Steaks and an Eggplant Friends scene

 The wealthier friends' subsequent attempt to buy concert tickets for the others only makes matters worse. What is intended as generosity feels like charity to the recipients. It is funny because it is painfully recognisable.

For Ferrito, the lesson is not that friends should stop doing expensive things. It is that friendship needs enough flexibility for somebody to say, without humiliation, I'd love to see you, but that's outside my budget. Can we do something else?

"Saying no to the expense isn't saying no to the friendship," she stresses.

Why saying 'I can't afford it' feels so difficult

There's no denying money remains deeply personal for many of us. Ferrito goes further, describing it as "intimate". Saying something is unaffordable can feel like revealing far more than a spending preference. Shame may attach to it, particularly if we interpret our financial position as evidence that we have somehow failed.

But shame, Ferrito says, grows stronger in secrecy. "The way that we mitigate shame in therapy, and the way that we encourage our clients to work with shame, is to talk about it. When you talk about the thing that makes you feel ashamed, you immediately take away its power."

That doesn't mean handing your friends a breakdown of your salary, savings, and current account. Ferrito draws an important distinction between communication and disclosure.

"You don't have to tell your friends, 'Without taxes, I get this amount,'" she says. Instead, "That's kind of out of my budget right now" may be all that needs saying.

Ferrito makes the distinction explicit: healthy communication does not require complete financial disclosure. Friends do not need to know each other's exact salary, savings or bank balance. What matters is feeling safe enough to communicate financial limits.

The response also tells you something about the friendship. If somebody says they cannot afford a restaurant and their friends happily suggest somewhere cheaper, Ferrito describes that as a positive "co-creation", with both people contributing to a healthier interaction.

If the response is ridicule, belittling or pressure to spend anyway, she suggests asking a more uncomfortable question: Is this friendship still conducive to your wellbeing?

The ticking social clock

Money comparisons become especially potent when they collide with the milestones we believe we should have reached. Ferrito calls this the social clock.

By a certain age, we tell ourselves we should have the salary, the promotion, the property, the marriage or some other marker of adulthood firmly ticked off.

"I joke sometimes with my friends," she says. "'Can't you hear it?' The imaginary clock is ticking!"

Yet two people of the same age may have arrived there through entirely different circumstances. One may have lived with their parents and saved. Another may have studied for years, travelled, supported relatives, moved countries or prioritised independence. The social clock may exist, she argues, but your clock does not have to match it.

So how do you stop money costing you a friendship?

Ferrito reduces her practical advice to four words: Awareness. Communication. Boundaries. Connection.

First, notice what is happening internally. Is it jealousy? Guilt? Shame? Inadequacy? Rather than immediately condemning yourself for feeling it, become curious about where it comes from.

Then communicate. "Being communicative doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to go on the attack," she says. "It means that we're just going to tell the other what we're going through right now."

Boundaries follow. Perhaps you cannot afford Ibiza, but you can suggest something closer to home. Perhaps dinner is too much this month, but coffee is fine. The important thing is not simply to disappear and expect friends to decipher why. Then finally, return to connection.

"Remember what created the friendship," Ferrito advises: shared values, humour, support, history and connection, rather than matching salaries.

That requires effort from both sides. Higher earners can be sensitive without becoming patronising. Lower earners can set boundaries without apologising. And neither needs to treat the other's financial choices as a verdict on their own.

"A friend's success doesn't have to become evidence of your failure," Ferrito notes. "We can celebrate somebody else's journey without using it as the measuring stick for our own."

Perhaps that is the most useful way to think about the friendship wealth gap. Friends do not need matching salaries, houses, careers or lifestyles to remain close. What matters is leaving enough room for both people to remain themselves.

"From a Gestalt perspective, meaningful relationships are not about becoming the same," Ferrito concludes. "They are about remaining ourselves while still being able to meet one another in genuine contact. A healthy friendship doesn't require us to be in the same place in life. It requires us to be able to meet each other where we are".

Ferrito makes one last appeal: "No one should go through things alone in life. If we notice ourselves going through a difficult time, constantly comparing ourselves with others and feeling like we are falling short, that perhaps sounds like the right time to start your therapeutic journey."

---