00:00:00] Nina: welcome to another episode of Dear Nina, conversations about friendship. Today we’re talking about issues around money and friendship. I have an excellent guest for this discussion, Mia Braum. She is currently a staff writer@shondaland.com.

She writes the series, joy Makers and The Art of Friendship, and she has participated in the Financially Fearless series. Her piece in that section is called How Much Are Your Friendships Costing You With this subtitle that really caught my eye, if extravagant, brunches, and expensive happy hours are taking a bite out of your budget, cultivate deeper friendships by spending less cash.

We’ll be talking about that and we will also be talking about her piece in the same month this one was called How to Open Up About Money With this Fantastic Line underneath. Dig into the dollars you’re spending with your closest confidants and discover new ways to engage in Fort Wright conversations about your finances.

This is juicy stuff you guys, and we are going to unpack it all. First, let’s welcome Mia. Hi Mia.

[00:01:06] Mia: This is juicy stuff, Nina, and honestly, no one has ever labeled me as an excellent guest. , I’m thrilled and I’m honored and I’m a huge fan of yours. You’ve been writing about friendship for so long, I listen to your podcast and it’s just really cool to be here with you and someone who cares about friendship so much.

So I’m really excited.

[00:01:22] Nina: I love nerding out with fellow friendship enthusiasts. I love to study it, research it, talk to people about it constantly, but I don’t ever claim to have all the answers. I just love to analyze.

[00:01:33] Mia: I love that. I’m really big on that, that is like my life motto is we don’t always have to know the answers. , it’s just so much fun to explore something and really get closer to an answer and get closer to our own understanding of it, but to really just, I don’t know, like you said, be enthusiastic about it and be curious about it.

So I, I definitely, I relate to that.

[00:01:50] Nina: , I thought you would. I love your articles and I’m gonna read from that first piece that I mentioned. How much are your friendships costing you? Because I wanna center . The first part of our conversation on this, you wrote, friendship and money have become inextricably linked. I love a trip and a spicy margarita on the rocks as much as the next person. But friendships both season and budding ones don’t always have to be financial transactions. So let’s talk about that. I wanna hear what inspired this article and then some of the ideas you came up with to make it.

Friendships don’t have to cost so much. Cuz you’re right. , when I read your article and then thought about all the things I do, I mean, wow. Yeah, it’s expensive.

[00:02:29] Mia: , it’s so much. Okay, so I’ll answer that in two parts basically. First I’ll just say a little bit about the topic, which is basically, I realize that friendships aren’t, financial transactions, but they’ve become that in a way, and that really started to scare me. I, I started personally calling it like the cafeteria to cafe model, and in writing about friendship.

Especially, I mean, you’ve talked to Dr. Franco, Dr. Marissa Franco as well, but she really taught me that, you know, we used to have these, , infrastructures like school and club sports and organizations at school where it’s like, okay, we know we’re gonna see the same people every day and time around.

People builds intimacy and builds friendships. But then once we’re not in school anymore. Okay, I guess I maybe could make work friends, but like, where else do I find friends? And finding friends as an adult is really hard. . And so I say that we’ve kind of switched out cafeterias for cafes, so we’re like, where’s an easy place to meet up?

Oh, let’s get coffee, let’s get dinner, , and it’s all out of convenience. We don’t wanna be like, you know, come over, or especially in your young twenties, , when before you have a house in, you’re buying people over to your home. It can be like a, let’s go out, it’s easy, let’s go out after work.

I’m too tired to cook. You know, it takes energy to really invest in a friendship in ways that don’t cost money. , but really, , about this article and how I decided to write these, these series of articles, especially this huge club of time, I was just writing about money and friendship.

I think there’s three things that really led to this, but money and friendship. I mean, you’re passionate about this. We talked about this before the show started. It’s, it’s so niche within the, the scope of friendship, but it’s really been on my radar for a long time, and I feel like it’s kind of been leading to talking about this because when I started in grad school, when I decided I wanted to get out of entertainment, In production and go into writing in grad school for writing.

My first paper ever, my first long form reporting story was actually called Batshit Crazy. And it was about the rising cost and expectations surrounding celebrating friends and weddings and how much money you have to pay to be part of your friend’s special day. I had been weddings where we spent, I spent $3,000 outta school, more than that.

that’s a lot of money.

[00:04:26] Nina: It could be almost like a dubious honor. , I mean of course it’s an honor to be in your friend’s wedding, but there have been times, I mean, I’m probably twice year eight, well, my twice year, no, I can’t really do the bath, but I’m in my mid forties and you’re much younger, but, which is great cuz I think that’s so, , fantastic to have a point of view from.

you know, I’m married with four kids. It’s like I’ve been down the line on a lot of things and you’re a little closer to that time. But I remember in the wedding years, You know, sometimes someone would be really apologetic, like, oh, I’m only having, you know, family in the wedding. Or they’d feel bad, and I’m like, no, that’s okay.

Is there anything more joyful than just being a guest Mia?

[00:05:00] Mia: No, no

[00:05:01] Nina: it’s the be and I will come and I will celebrate the heck out of you. I’ll be first on the dance floor, last on the dance floor. I love to just be a guest. I’m so grateful to be a

[00:05:09] Mia: it is. It becomes such a relief. . It’s true, but it’s like scary. It’s like how do we get to the point that we’re literally like, oh my gosh, I’m gonna have to drop Benjamins upon Benjamins for my friend. And of course you wanna celebrate your friend, but I completely agree.

, wow. It is a relief. And I, I think it’s important to start paying attention to, , when do we feel relieved and why do we feel relieved, especially around friend. and money. But I think for me, another big thing too is I come from a middle class family. I grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and my parents worked hard to give us, , a better life than they had growing up in New York.

And, , when I went to , my fiance was in business school and I feel like I was exposed for the first time to all these different classes and people who had money in a way that I had never, ever, ever been around, even in, in university of my. And I saw how money functions and how it became like a, oh, I thought we were splitting checks, but it’s like, oh, everyone we’re going out to dinner constantly.

We’re, you know, going out for drinks constantly. And then it’s like a, who cares what anyone got? Let’s just split it because everyone has money and it’s like, whoa, I got one thing on purpose because we’ve been out. six other days . This is the seventh, it made me start thinking about all of this.

And when I moved to New York too, all our friends complained about, oh, in the city it’s so expensive to go out and have drinks. It’s all we do, but yet we kept doing it. So, I don’t know, it just really made me start thinking about this. And when we had the monthly package on money, I was like, I’m just gonna go all in on money and friendship this month.

And it was so fun and so rewarding and really, really important. So yeah, that’s that whole long story.

[00:06:34] Nina: You bring up such an important point. It comes up in your second piece, which we’ll talk about more, but, but about the different budgets people have. Let’s, , stick with the first article when you were like, not everything friends do has to revolve around going out.

What were some of the other ideas that you thought about or uncovered?

[00:06:50] Mia: I really, , thought about, , our younger friendships. And I thought about when we were kids, right? And there was such a freedom to that feeling of being connected to someone.

And I was like, we used to go to walk around Walmart and not even buy anything and have fun. We go to the mall , , you do little things that cost money, but when you don’t have money because you’re a child, maybe you have a little chore money. You find ways to get creative and and spend time together.

And those friendships were like some of the most rewarding, at least for me. I started thinking back about what were things we used to do. One of the first things was I just thought about play dates. We always have to make almost appointment friendship now where we’re like, let’s show up at this restaurant at this time.

, how about you say to a friend, Hey, reserved this Saturday. show up at my door. Let’s figure out what we’re doing that day. You have this almost not pressed for time, where you’re like, we’re gonna sit down and have brunch. , we’re gonna meet, we might go, , on a, a walk, a long walk along the river , we might get one hot cocoa, but that’s way less than sitting down and having a whole meal or having a brunch and maybe we’ll window shop and maybe we’ll sit on my couch.

, I think this idea of having a play date opens it up a lot more. to be more comprehensive of things that, that don’t actually cost a ton of money when you’re making an appointment. another thing I realized too is even as , I think I, I’m a pop culture junkie. I am a friendship enthusiast, but also a pop culture enthusiast and I love shows about friendship and so Insecure Sex and the City.

I started reflecting on those shows and I think the crux of all of them is the scenes that are my absolute favorite scenes is when they would like take each other to the doctor’s. and they would go run their errands and pick up their dry cleaning together. And it’s another way you can hang out with friends is running errands.

If you’re lucky enough to be near each other, , why don’t you be errand buddies together? Why don’t you grocery shop together? if you have to go do something, do it together and only a special type of friend will do that with you. But then you see who the friends are, where it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, as long as you’re together, it’s.

you’re good. You’re having a good time. And then, , another thing too is to invite people in. , I’ve learned from a lot of the friendship experts that I think you and I have both interviewed, but especially for my series, , art of Friendship that I’ve interviewed , , and I’m thinking of Sherry Lee as coming to the top of my mind, but.

She very much talked about how, friendship involves intimacy and that can even be physical intimacy where not, you know, intimate with someone romantically, but saying, I’m welcoming you into my emotions first. Right? But then now I’m welcoming you into my physical space. So after a few times of meeting someone saying, Hey, , come over, , cuz physical spaces are so sacred and inviting someone in that can build intimacy without you having to spend a ton of money.

You can play board games, you can. Talk on the couch. You can watch bad tv. There’s just, you can have a pajama party. There’s just so many ways that you can have intimacy without, you know, spending a ton of money.

[00:09:27] Nina: Those are all great ideas and you know, I was thinking about when you were talking about especially running errands, how some of the stuff. people don’t do unless your friend’s sick. And it would be really nice to see those things come into play when we’re all good and healthy. So, you know, the second, you know, again, not to bring up age, but , I’m at an age where, , people do, get, , a cancer diagnosis or something, they’re gonna have a surgery that’s like a serious surgery and so they’re gonna be down for the count.

And then the office start to come in of, I mean, I’m thinking of my own self. I’ll offer to come. Hang out at someone’s house or , maybe we’ll come over and play Majong. And not that we wouldn’t do that another time, but it’s like the offers are more so ,

I’ll come hang out and read a book, or I’ll drive you to. An appointment, but yeah, maybe we don’t have to wait until somebody is sick to have really low key intimate time like that, where it’s not about going out to a restaurant and or planning a trip or something like that, but the running errands and all that.

Yes, that would be, that would be great. The one thing I do that is the most low cost and. Efficient in terms of intimacy is walk. I much prefer to walk with a friend than to have lunch. I actually did have lunch with a friend last week, as a matter of fact, and it was so nice, but I do it so infrequently that I was like, wow, this felt really luxurious walking is. Great, but it isn’t as open-ended as what you described, which sounds really lovely.

Which is show up and maybe we’ll walk, maybe we won’t. A walk is like an hour, right? It, it has a start, middle and an end, which has its own benefits because you can spend time with someone and then get on with your day. But I love what you described and like the play date aspect. I think that’s really, there’s a sweetness to that.

okay. So Mia, , . , I would like to move on to the next article, which is how to Open Up about Money.

And I think that is a really hard thing to do cuz we are trained from a young age to not talk about money. No money, no religion, . you brought up . if you’re on a budget and you’re making a point to like eat at home before, to not order a lot at the restaurant so that you can still go out and be with people, but not spend as much.

And then everyone’s like, okay, let’s split the check. when people are coming from different, , budgets, That’s so stressful. So I would love to hear more about this article, and I’m gonna have you talk about the beginning story of a group of friends sharing an Airbnb and splitting it in a creative way that actually made me a little anxious, and we’ll talk about it.

[00:11:51] Mia: I, I can’t wait to hear how it made you anxious, because it also made me anxious to hear I was simultaneously amazed and also, Pure anxiety, , listening to this. But basically for readers who don’t know the series Art of Friendship that I write, , on Shonda Land, I start with a reader story.

So I talk to a real life person, a real life friend who’s going through the topic and it kind of leads in with their story and how they’re struggling or how they’re thriving in a certain area of friendship. And then, you know, we get tips from experts. For this story , I talked to a woman named Abby Armato, who is wonderful.

, I could not believe this story. I think it’s one of my favorite lead-in stories ever of this series because it was just so fascinating. She was going on a vacation with her friends. I think it was , five or six friends altogether. , and they were going to the Cascade Mountains and she was in charge of finding the, the place they were gonna say they’re lodging.

So, , she’s very thoughtful, which is, you know, rare. Cause I feel like in some stories it’s like people learn to be thoughtful. She comes in thoughtful, she says, okay, what amenities do you want? What kind of house do you wanna stay in? And, , you know, sent out the survey and people sent everything back and it ranged from, I want a hot.

With a river view and a view of the mountains and a deck and a hammock. And then some people were like, I really wanna sleep on the couch and I don’t want a house with bedrooms for everyone because that’s too much money. And so it was almost this realization that being thoughtful sometimes isn’t thoughtful enough.

You have to actually act on it. You can’t just say, what do you want? , everyone has different preferences and and capabilities financially, so how, what are we gonna do about this? And so she came to the group and was like, this is vastly different. What are we gonna do?

And it ended. within that friend group leading to a conversation about money and people opened up about safety nets. Whether that’s , money generationally, generational wealth, , and then the big one, which Nina, I dunno if this is where you got anxious, but I got anxious.

They discussed their salaries. They literally, Shared their salaries and they decided, I think this was after the fact that they decided to split the cost of this Airbnb equitably, not equally. So it was based on how much they make annually. And you pay a percentage based on that number. So you’re not paying, like everyone splits evenly, but it’s way more for someone else.

, and so in a, in a spreadsheet, they had the spreadsheet, someone who’s very good with math and money made a spreadsheet where everyone had to punch in their salaries and they got the numbers of how to split this Airbnb equitably, not equally. , and Abby did talk about and opened up, she was very honest about, you know, it was hard because she grew up in a culture.

Where they didn’t talk about money and they weren’t supposed to talk about money, and it was very scary for her and, but also very freeing in the end.

[00:14:25] Nina: So, I’ll tell you what, what made me anxious about that. I, I get in theory that splitting it by salary maybe would be more fair. What I wonder is if it made the people who were spending a little more kind of say, well, okay, that one’s spending less, but their car payment, you know, they didn’t need to choose to. Like, why are they driving that car? Not that car. Oh, if they wanna pay less for this trip, you know, maybe they didn’t need to go on two other trips this year. there’s salary, you know, there’s income, and then there’s how you budget that income. And I think that could get really tricky. Like if you’re going to say, I wanna pay less for this group trip, we’re all going on.

If you don’t have the money, you don’t have the money, but I wonder if it’s hard for the people paying more. That’s what I’m saying. Not to kind of be like, oh, that, you know, she’s at Lululemon for the third time that month. Hopefully good friends wouldn’t do that, but it would be hard to completely look the other way if somebody’s spending a lot, but then asking you to pick up more of.

[00:15:26] Mia: , that’s very interesting. I think that, they’re probably without saying it, I didn’t talk to everyone in the throne group, but maybe there were, you know, people who thought about that. , but, I think the, the core idea was that they were all spending. , on this trip, willing to, if someone wanted more because they made more, it kind of evened out.

And, you know what was really interesting to me, I I, I didn’t have the space to put this in the story, but one thing that didn’t go in the story is that they also, they split food evenly though. But it was interesting because when they got the groceries, if someone wanted chocolate chips in their pancakes, but no one else did, or someone wanted whipped cream and like all the fixins for breakfast, but everyone’s like, I don’t wanna do that.

The person would just pay for that thing, which was interesting. They really got into the nitty gritty on this trip. It seems to have worked for them. But I see what you’re saying though about of course you’re gonna start, you know, analyzing and getting nervous.

[00:16:21] Nina: I, I would hope that I wouldn’t, but I don’t know if I would be able to control myself completely. And I’m glad you brought that up about the food. The first thing I thought of was the food.

. I think an easier. Fair split. Uh, trips are so hard is what you talked about with the check and, and maybe not splitting the check equally that’s a little more clear. It’s kind of like your chocolate chip example.

It’s a little more clear I’m paying for the things I consumed. Right? I think that’s easier. , when you did that article, did you find that some people really didn’t like that? They don’t like the to , only pay for their portion of the.

[00:16:52] Mia: so I didn’t really talk to readers for this part of the story, but I mostly talked to friendship experts and I think this part was really interesting because they basically, , just talk about different ways. There’s like a lot, lot of scripts they gave on for people who are nervous to, , approach their friends and just say, you know, I prefer to split it this way.

Before you get to the dinner saying, , I’m not drinking because I’m trying to save money for X, Y, Z. , can we get a separate check? So it, it was a lot of that, which I found, you know, was really helpful and I think that a lot of people, , have come across. Yeah.

[00:17:23] Nina: I thought that was a really excellent point that we, we. , maybe overly private about certain things like that. And just that very small script that you shared. And it was in the article just saying really honestly with no, uh, drama or emotion about it. Just, Hey, listen, I’m, trying to save money, so I would really like to pay for what I had.

, I can’t imagine anybody not being like, oh yes, of course. Like that. That’s an easy one. You also brought up another awesome point about the benefit of opening up about. Is that it can become a opportunity for better financial literacy. I don’t even know if you use that word, but I’m using that word, , among people, , I’m thinking like younger, , who maybe didn’t know, , oh, I should be asking for a raise.

I’ve been at this job for X amount of years, and here’s my friend now who’s asked twice because now we’re actually talking about it. We’re actually having this conversation. Tell me a little bit more about what you, what you uncovered there.

[00:18:16] Mia: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I think there’s a lot of benefits to opening up about money with friends. First of all, I think all the experts agree that you should only talk about what you’re comfortable with. , you don’t have to do anything you don’t wanna do. Going back to. Abby’s story is one thing she was very clear on is that they all consented. They all agreed. No one was pressured into sharing their salary. They were like, we’re all gonna do this, right? We’re all sharing it. Yes, yes, yes. It was like, yes, it was across the board.

So I think it’s important to know that just because your friends don’t wanna talk about money with you doesn’t mean that you need to end the friendship or anything like that. But the benefit is that it does create intimacy and. . I think one thing is that when it protects you, it protects your budget to talk about these things with your friends.

You don’t want them dragging you to a hundred Broadway shows and brunches and all these, you know, bachelorette trips if you can’t afford it. So it protects your, your wallet in that way. But I think it’s like one of those things that’s like. Food almost, right? How food is. So cultural, food is food, but also you learn about, you know, where someone comes from.

You learn about the culture that way. It’s the same thing with money. , money is money. You’re talking about money. But at the same time, it’s so tied to our lives in different ways. And you can learn a lot about someone based on talking about it. And so, Amanda, claimant, who I had never heard of this term, Nina, she’s a financial therapist.

How cool is that? But she was awesome. She was an expert for the story and she said that, you know, talking. Money with friends takes us out of like a, she calls it a superficial playmate zone, , where everyone gets along and no one discusses anything hard. And so when you share that, you move from a level of superficiality into vulnerability.

, and so there’s that, that one thing. But then the second part of that is that, , another expert bolus Secundy talked about. Straight up, there’s tangible benefits including help your friends, literally if you were buying a house for the first time. She gives an example of she coaches people and she had recently coached someone who was buying a house for the first time and had to go to her friends and be like, help.

you guys all bought houses. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m a first time home buyer or, or investing. If you’re investing in stocks for the first time, , go to your friends who you know, you know how they know how to do it. Or even Abby talked about when they, , opened up about salaries, she was able to talk to her friends about how to advocate for more money.

When she saw how much they were making, she was like, wait. And then she also realized she needed to go out of her fuel to make more money. Having these conversations can be hard and complex, but then they can also lead to really beautiful things for yourself or, you know, match your goals and all of those things, so,

[00:20:33] Nina: we could replace money with a lot of other topics with this idea that if you are gonna keep everything surface, You’re just only gonna get so deep with your friends. Maybe for some people it’s just too hard to even imagine talking about money.

But I think people can take from this is maybe there’s something else you could be more honest about, more vulnerable about, because that is, that is a key. To deepening friendships cause I get letters like that. You know, look, we talked about, I’ve been writing friendship stuff for a long time and it was in a advice column for years and I still, that email is still open and I use it now for the podcast and for my sub.

And I get a lot of versions of, not about money, but I get a lot of versions of. A question that is somewhere along the lines of, I feel like all my friendships are on the surface. Like I feel like I have a lot of friends, let’s say. I mean, of course I get letters from people who don’t feel like they have friends.

But then there’s the other side of it, which is people who do feel like they have a lot of friends, but they don’t feel like they have a lot of deep friends or good friends. And I think some of this stuff that we’re talking about, , is what keeps people from getting to that next level is that they’re not willing to share the things that are hard. , money is a hard one. Even if you have a lot of it, it can be hard there’s all kinds of issues people have. They feel like they don’t deserve it or if they didn’t, , earn it. They have self-consciousness about that. Like, they’re not good at things. They don’t have skills because maybe they inherit it.

I mean, it’s not like a boohoo thing. But, , I mean, people have all kinds of problems and anxieties they.

[00:22:00] Mia: Yeah. That is, that’s the, the reality of it. And Amanda Clayman talked about that. She’s like, you know, it goes both ways. Whether you don’t have a lot of money or you have a lot of money, it’s such a vulnerable thing. And I think people. Don’t realize that it’s, it’s a very, one of the most vulnerable things you can talk about, which is why culture has taught us for so long not to talk about it.

So whether you found out your friend comes from a lot of money or has a lot of money, it’s like you shouldn’t, , assume things because it, it can be vulnerable for them. , both ways. And so I think that’s, that’s really important. You can bring up a great point, Nina, about talking about it.

And I’m sure people are wondering, listening to this like, oh, I do wanna go deeper, , I wanna go past the surface, I wanna talk about money, how do I do it? And another expert, Paco DeLeon, said, , a great general starting place. for conversations about money is just simply saying to your friends, Hey, I’ve been thinking about X.

Would you like to have more regular conversations about money with me and how to navigate it and just opening it up that way. Simple as that. And then, you know, you invite them to this conversation and they can say yes or no. And it’s, , consensual. It’s not weird if you bring it up the next time.

If you say, Hey, are you, , putting money towards your 401k, or are you investing, or, , all of that stuff. It’s like they’ve already said, , yeah, I am interested. If they’re a book reader, you can recommend, , we can read a book about finances together. If you’re a podcast listener, they can listen to this episode, , you know, so there’s just different ways into it that you can share and learn together.

So

[00:23:23] Nina: Well thank you. That’s a great place to end cuz it’s a good practical tip and a way to open things up. Mia, thank you so much for being here.

Everyone should look out for Me’s debut book, which is already out so you don’t have to wait for it. It’s called Note to Self, A Short Collection of Life Lessons and you can also find her on Instagram and Twitter. Mia will you tell them your handle cuz I

love it.

[00:23:43] Mia: Okay. So it’s basically like my split personality. So on Instagram, I’m yours truly Mia cuz it’s very sweet. It’s all my writing stuff. And then Twitter is hot mess. Mia,

[00:23:51] Nina: . , , and everyone Mia’s , website is going to be in the show notes and I’m gonna have all her social media in the show notes.

She’s so adorable. I’m gonna actually, when we’re done, snap a picture. , she’s sitting in her mother’s closet home for the holidays. She has a microphone at, at home in New York City, but since she was not gonna be home. Sit in a closet.

Everybody come back in a couple weeks for your next episode. As I always say, and Mia’s heard me say, when your friendships are going well, you are happier all around. It really is

[00:24:20] Mia: Yep.

[00:24:20] Nina: Bye Mia.

[00:24:21] Mia: Nina.