“So, who’s up for booking glamping tents at that festival?” the WhatsApp message reads. Everyone immediately responds with enthusiastic approval. And then comes the kicker: a Bedouin tent for four costs – gulp! – £2,355. Each.
Such is the reality of trying to keep up with my rich friends during the school summer holidays, which are thankfully now over.
Despite the rain, most have tried to squeeze every last drop of fun out of July and August, with boat trips on the Solent, expensive dinners and weekends by the sea.
But, my God, the price of all this. And the anxiety that comes with accepting any innocent suggestion of “spending a quiet night or two away” when your mates have a lot more money than you… and you’re already wondering how you’re going to pay the gas bill this winter.
I reluctantly pulled out of the festival. As much as I would love to spend a weekend of partying with some of my oldest friends and their kids, the truth is that I’m finding myself increasingly out of reach financially.
Georgina says she’s suffered through the anxiety of saying yes to an innocent ‘night or two off’ with rich friends… and you’re already wondering how you’re going to pay this winter’s gas bill.
And as I scroll through Instagram and see their luxury holidays abroad (one chartered a yacht for a week in the Mediterranean, another posed with a glass of bubbles by an infinity pool in the Caribbean), I’ve had to fight back the wave of Fomo and envy that envelops me at this time of year.
Our family holiday last summer – a week in Ireland and a few days camping in a rain-soaked shepherd’s hut in Dorset – made me realise that there is a growing gap between me and my wealthier friends.
When a friend recently asked me if I could spend a long weekend with her in Ibiza, I jokingly asked her if she had heard of something called the “cost of living crisis”. She simply laughed and said she found it very unpleasant.
Get out the little violin, they tell me. I know it’s a ridiculous first-world problem when so many are struggling, but still, that Theodore Roosevelt quote about comparison being the thief of joy rings true sometimes.
Like when I’m forced to admire a friend’s new wine cellar, which is twice the size of our repainted 1980s kitchen.
At our annual college reunion, it’s not unusual to order bottles of champagne one after another. When the four-course feast arrives (smoked salmon, celery carpaccio, beef fillet, lamington with chocolate and jam), I dread seeing what the final bill will be: £300 each.
That kind of spending is enough to leave me broke for a month, and I’ve already maxed out my overdraft.
Although we met at Exeter University in the late 1990s and have followed similar middle-class life paths (2.4 kids, Volvo, ploughman etc), I earn considerably less than most of my friends.
While many of them have gone on to become CEOs and fund managers, I manage to live on less than the average full-time salary in the UK of £35,000 as a freelance journalist. I have been self-employed for almost 15 years and work with my three children, now aged 15, 12 and 10.
A look at her friends’ Instagram feeds of their luxury summer holidays (one chartered a yacht in the Mediterranean) exposed the widening rift between Georgina and her wealthy friends.
Thankfully, I’ve never felt judged by my friends for my relative lack of money. However, I do sometimes suggest we meet for lunch at a local café rather than one of the fancy, expensive restaurants they frequent. Only once did an old friend decline. After she gave up on Wagamama, we ended up having oysters and champagne at a new restaurant in Soho. We had a great time, but I regretted it the next day when I checked my bank balance.
I learned about Oystergate and started telling my friends that I can just go out for drinks with them instead of dinner if I don’t have money that month. They are usually very understanding.
Quietly, some friends go out of their way to help me. One was willing to wait for the £75 I owed her for dinner until a large bill was settled; another sometimes insists on paying the bill at the end of the night because, she says, she can do it and she knows I would do the same for her if I could.
There is no social hierarchy in my various groups, we have known each other for too long for that. But I find it hard that some of my friends now work four days a week and earn much more than me.
Fortunately, my husband Dom, a lawyer, earns enough that I don’t have to worry about paying the mortgage every month, but we have separate bank accounts (something my late mother always advised me to do), so I’m very aware of my own precarious income situation.
So it’s a great relief to see the school year start and a socially quieter autumn once again. A chance to recoup some of the money I’ve spent on going in search of sunny memories with these friends. Overall, I’ve had to accept that I just can’t keep up with them, at least not all the time.
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