Scrolling through my Venmo transactions, it’s evident that requests for comically small amounts of money are almost always made by friends who were either born with or earn more money than me.
The experience is curious and seemingly universal.
“Rich people love to Venmo request you $4.72 for like half a bagel because they have no concept of money and don’t understand that working class people operate under an economy of buying someone a beer,” one X user mused.
“Friend making $450k as a software engineer: ‘Can you Venmo me $3.62 for your share of the Uber ride?'” another wrote.
Susan Bradley, founder of the Sudden Money Institute, coaches clients who have quickly or unexpectedly come into large windfalls of cash on how to transition out of being a have-not.
The phenomenon of the rich friend being the stingiest rings true, she says: “People with more money than their peers struggle with generosity.”
‘They are peerless’
If a person knows they are in a higher income bracket than their friends, they likely feel isolated or “othered,” Bradley says.
“People with substantially more [money] have a smaller population to have as peers,” she says. “So in some ways they are peerless.”
Because their money is what differentiates them from their friends, they start believing that their money is why they have friends.
“They don’t want to be taken advantage of or to feel like, ‘I have money and that’s why people hang out with me,'” Bradley says. “It feels very invalidating.”
These insecurities manifest as a $4 Venmo request.
“If someone does the small-dollar Venmo, it means they don’t feel good,” Bradley says.
If someone does the small dollar Venmo, it means they don’t feel good.
Susan Bradley
Founder of Sudden Money Institute
‘With more wealth comes more of a focus on transactional relationships’
Being economically peerless also means you might struggle with feeling a sense of community, says Hal Hershfield, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles Anderson School of Management. Hershfield studies the psychology of long term decisions-making.
“With more wealth comes more of a focus on transactional relationships, which could then bleed over into relationships that should be communal,” Hershfield says.
Let’s say you’re moving apartments. If you’re trying to save money, you might enlist the help of a few friends. This favor signals a communal relationship.
If you earn enough money to pay for movers, then this experience becomes transactional.
Soon, you might start to see the world in a more transactional way, he says, and that will seep into your friendships.
If a friend Venmo requests you for small amount of money, Bradley suggests doing two things: pay it and then ask if something else is going on with them.
“If they’re doing that, it’s a way of not being taken advantage of,” she says. “It could be about something in the past with longer legs that hasn’t been dealt with. They don’t care about the $4.”
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