I don’t like taking money from friends – Chicago Tribune

Dear Eric: My wife and I own a guest house near us. When we’re not using it for ourselves, my wife rents it out on Airbnb. Airbnb guests pay a daily rate plus a cleaning fee, which we use to pay cleaning staff after they leave.

I like to let friends from out of town stay there for free when they are visiting. My wife is fine with not charging them a nightly rate, but thinks we should charge them the cleaning fee since we still have to pay to have the unit cleaned after they leave.

I don’t agree. I don’t like taking money from my friends at all. We are financially successful, so we don’t need money. Being generous to my friends and family is part of my personality. It seems wrong to me to ask friends to pay cleaning fees.

My wife and I rarely argue, but we can’t seem to agree on this. What do you think?

– Generous husband

Dear husband: None of you are wrong per se. Your wife doesn’t want to end up paying for the privilege of being a host, which is fair. And you want to offer hospitality to your friends without strings attached. In this case, the solution might not reach an agreement. Instead, the best solution is to find a compromise that doesn’t cause resentment in either of you.

If you don’t want to ask your friends to pay, see if there is another way to cover cleaning costs. Maybe visiting friends can take you out to dinner for the same price. Or, if you and your wife have discretionary money in your shared accounts, perhaps you can volunteer to cover the cleaning costs.

If hospitality is important to you, be creative to find a way to do it. And make it the center of your conversations with your wife. Instead of both of you standing on your separate sides, ask yourself what’s in the middle. With disagreements like this, it’s sometimes helpful to say, “We see things differently and that’s okay. How can we work together to make sure everyone gets what they want?”

Dear Eric: On Dec. 6, “Leftovers, Anybody” wrote about her daughter’s Friendsgiving overshadowing her own Thanksgiving. The letter said, in part, “I don’t think it’s as special as it was because now everyone has already eaten the traditional Thanksgiving meal whereas before we only did it once a year.” I think I can give another way of seeing things, or at least share my experience.

My daughter-in-law and her daughters were so tired from all the Friendsgiving parties they were attending that they didn’t show up to our traditional Thanksgiving meal. They arrived hours later and literally ate the leftovers.

Clearly, my party and family side was not a priority. Even the hospitality of sending food home with them was taken away from me, as their fridge and freezer were full from their previous evenings. I’m not sure this is what kids need to learn, but I also think it’s the future of Thanksgiving.

– Change is coming

Dear change: I kindly suggest that you are not helpless against the changing tide. You’ve noticed a trend that seems to conflict with your hopes and expectations for the holidays. So, for next year, you have the opportunity to talk about it in advance with your daughters and find a solution that will please everyone.

Every holiday meal is, of course, focused on food, but its primary goal is family togetherness. As people change and family structures change, we have the power to change what this unit looks like and how it occurs.

It is important that you sit at the table with your daughters and share a meal. According to your letter, it is also important to offer them hospitality in the form of leftovers. Now that the holiday dust has settled, talk to them about what’s important to you and what’s important to them. And see if, together, you can come up with a plan for next year that meets everyone’s needs. That might mean Thanksgiving changes a bit on your end — maybe there are fewer leftovers, for example — but it might also mean they’re more aware of the impact of their actions and plan their time better.