One of the great challenges for individuals with wealth is the question, “Do my friends like me for who I am or for what I have?” We hope the following section sparks some thinking about what a true friend is for you.
According to his student Xenophon, the philosopher Socrates once spoke about friends this way:
Many people know the number of their other possessions, even when they have many things. But of their friends, even if they have just a few, not only are they ignorant of the number, but also to those who ask them to list their friends they set down some and then again take them out. Such is their mindfulness about their friends!1
Think about this point for a moment. How many houses do you have? How many bank accounts? How much money in each account? Now think about your friends. How many would you list? Do some names shuttle on and off the list? What is different about asking yourself about your houses or bank accounts versus your friends?
If you reflect on these questions, you will agree that the challenge Socrates poses is not one limited to fifth century bc Athens. The difficulty of listing our friends seems an enduring one.
And yet pretty much everyone’s idea of living well includes spending time with friends and loved ones. These may be family members, spouses or partners, boyfriends, girlfriends, work friends, school friends, and friendly acquaintances that are more casual but still add charm to life. A life without friends would seem miserable, even inhuman.
Why, then, is it so much more difficult to catalog our friends than our financial capital?
Part of the challenge seems to be that friends do not stay put the way that houses or other possessions do. Friendships are often changing. One person may be a new acquaintance who is on her way to becoming a friend. Another person may be drifting away, on his way to becoming a former friend. The lines between prospective friend, friend, and former friend seem fuzzy.
Most people also have different types of friends. You might have a best friend or even a couple of best friends. You probably have close friends versus friendly acquaintances. You may have friends specific to a context, such as school, work, or family. Some people may feel like close friends and yet see each other only once or twice a year. You might not place them on a list of friends unless you are thinking about a specific context.
Aristotle speaks of three types of friends.2 First are friends of utility. We might call these “friendly acquaintances.” Such a friendship aims at getting a job done. It is the kind of relation you might have with your banker, landscaper, or a clerk at a store. Second are friends of pleasure. These are people we enjoy spending time with, at dinners, parties, or entertainment. They are fun, and life needs some fun. Third are what Aristotle calls friends of virtue. These friends are rare. Such friends encourage each other to be as excellent as possible—in whatever area of life matters to them most. They truly delight in each other’s success.
Try cataloging your friendships this way: Who are your most important friends of utility? Who are your friends of pleasure? Who are your friends of virtue?
These complexities—the changes in friendships and the different types of friendships—all point to a more fundamental question: What is a friend? This is not a type of question one faces with respect to houses, cars, dogs or cats, stocks or bonds. The difficulty of cataloging our friends may derive, at least in part, from the difficulty of answering this fundamental question.
The question is difficult because there is something precious and delicate about friendship. It wants protection and care. But maybe, at bottom, the delicacy of friendship comes down to what we want of it. Don’t we each want our friends to love us for who we are—to care about us and, when push comes to shove, to put us first? “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” To that end, we hope to be deserving of our friends’ care and sacrifice. And yet cataloging our friends threatens to take away the veil from this delicate dance of hope. Socrates likens our friends to our other possessions. Possessions are things that we make use of, for our own benefit. If we look at our friends as possessions, from which we hope to benefit, do we deserve their care?
If we think through what we are truly looking for in friendship, we will be in a much better position to be good friends ourselves. This is the key to friendship generally.
Great financial capital brings added complexity to friendship. As mentioned, many members of the rising generation in families with significant wealth worry that friends do not like them for who they are but rather for what they have. This worry can be exacerbated when their family name is publicly known or when their parents or grandparents have made significant gifts to their schools or colleges. We have even known of situations where teachers have called out rising-generation family members in their classrooms, commenting on their parents’ financial capital.
Again, the key to having good friends is being a good friend. When it comes to dealing with friends, roommates, or the like about money, some of the more specific practices that we have found helpful include:
Because these situations arise so pervasively at school or college, we recommend that every family with a large number of rising-generation members who are teenagers to 20-somethings make time at family meetings to talk about these challenges. Support each other as a group. Learn from what older cousins or older-generation family members have experienced. We have heard family members productively discuss everything from how best to split a dinner bill to how to make decisions about where to go on Spring Break with friends with fewer resources. You do not need to navigate these added complexities of friendship amid financial wealth alone.
Most importantly, do not feel guilty. If you are a good friend, then you will have plenty of things—and more important things—to contribute to your friendships beyond money.