I recently re-watched the Friends episode, “The One with Five Steaks and an Eggplant”. It sees Rachel, Phoebe and Joey munch on complimentary breadsticks in an upscale Manhattan restaurant, as Joey confronts their richer friends (Monica, Ross and Chandler) for automatically splitting the unevenly distributed bill. “We three feel like that sometimes you guys don’t get, uh… we don’t have as much money as you,” the usually pliable character squirms.
Millennials are currently finding ourselves in a similar position, with what’s been dubbed the “wealth gap” – one that’s only widened in recent years, among all ages – taking its toll on our friendships. “There’s stuff that hurts. Not being invited to birthdays or dinners because friends don’t think you can afford it. Arguments over splitting the bill when the investment bankers at the table spent twice as much as you. It’s a tricky situation to navigate,” says Theresa*, a 37-year-old English teacher based in London. Theresa is far from alone in this sentiment. Per one 2025 study, 24 per cent of Gen Z and millennials report feeling anxious about financial or lifestyle differences with their friends.
Wealth gaps can be less pressing in your early to mid-20s – most people, in the city at least, are flat-sharing regardless, and you’re more likely to be at the club than a Michelin-starred restaurant. But you really start to feel it in your 30s, when – after the equalising backdrop of shared flats, internships and entry-level jobs – corporate salaries mushroom, while those in the public and creative sectors often struggle to stay afloat. It’s also a time when money properly starts to dictate the direction our lives take, with partying, flatmates and casual dating often giving way to mortgages, weddings and babies, but only for those who can afford it (or can afford to decide if they even want it).
Of course, wealth gaps have incited friendship rifts since that Friends episode aired in 1995, and long before (hence the age-old philosophy that we shouldn’t talk money with friends). But, given today’s job market, the sky-rocketing cost of living and housing crises, financial constraints are having an unprecedented impact on the stage of life we can afford to occupy. Marriage and a downpayment can be impossible without a healthy salary, parental help or a partner to co-sign the mortgage – often, it requires all three. (“Those whose parents helped with the mortgage in their early 20s, for example, now feel eons ahead,” says Theresa.) For those lacking in the above, home ownership can feel so far off that saving feels futile. “It’s so crazy to have friends who are buying flats with their partners or having a baby. It’s a bit grim sometimes to feel like those things are so far beyond my reach while other people have got there,” says Mila*, 31, based in London.
Weddings among millennials in particular have emerged as a microcosm of wider economic inequality. Somewhere over the last decade or so, getting married abroad became normalised (I have friends who’ve racked up more miles than Amelia Earhart.) Hens and stags often demand another trip, while in many circles, it’s tradition for guests to cover the bride and groom’s shares. A 2023 survey found that guests spend an average of £779 for UK hen and stag events, and £1,208 for events abroad. But for many, the funds just aren’t there. “It’s quite easy for a wedding to cost me well over a week’s pay,” says Mila. At a time when a lot of people aren’t getting married because of finances, those who can afford to tie the knot asking for money from those who can’t feels like a backwards logic.
People can be understanding – but when deprived of the experiences they want with the people they love, they can also feel thwarted and act insensitively. “I think most people don’t think about [the wealth gap] at all, and assume everyone is at roughly the same level financially. I hear a lot of ‘nobody can afford X’ and ‘I’m so broke!’ and bite my tongue because they have just spent an hour’s wages (for me) on a glass of wine and I’m just like, ‘OK, you would crumble on my wage’,” says Mila. These kinds of reactions can sound the death knell for a friendship. “Small comments over the years such as one from my friend who said in passing once, ‘You haven’t always made the most sensible decisions, have you?’ meant I stopped trying to close the gap. I could take being the broker friend, but I couldn’t take a friend somehow thinking it was a moral failing,” says Theresa.
Conflict isn’t always involved. Sometimes, friendships end because lifestyle differences just become too stark to navigate. “I am no longer friends with any of the girls I was friends with at school,” says Theresa. “Money has a lot to do with that. They all bought large houses and acquired high salary jobs straight after uni. I have only just got myself in a financially comfortable situation at 37… There were no big arguments, no hostility, just an understanding that we are very different people.” Indeed, according to the aforementioned 2025 study, 20 per cent of people said that financial or lifestyle differences contributed to the dissolution of a friendship.
At the end of “The One with Five Steaks and an Eggplant”, Monica gets fired, and Joey reaches for the check – an on-the-nose reminder that financial dynamics can change overnight. The ending calls to mind a conversation I had with a friend the other day, who’s anxiety searching for a job in the finance world unexpectedly echoed my own. In this economy, none of us are immune to becoming the poorer friend (bar those with family money, of course). And, as that Friends’ ending brings home, for the most part, money isn’t worth losing real friendship over. Emphasis, of course, on the real.
*Names have been changed.
