Four years in, Putin beginning to wonder if he’s shit at this

HAS your perpetually broke friend bailed on buying you a drink again? While letting slip that all these activities were apparently within last month’s budget: 

Going skiing

Inspired by the Winter Olympics, your broke friend somehow found cash for a weekend in the French Alps. Oh, someone from work has a timeshare lodge? That doesn’t cover ski hire, lift passes, the flight or the après ski, does it? Which were all paid for, unlike their half of an £8 Uber.

Online gambling

The damage incurred through gambling is grimly obvious. Nobody goes into a bookies and thinks ‘hey, this place seems full of people whose lives are getting better’. Online gambling? Much more abstract, which is how your mate went on a poker-winning streak with the £200 you lent him them lost the lot. And he expects you to understand.

Started five new hobbies

Self-improvement is good. Nothing wrong with learning Portugese, how to make pasta, or to play the keytar. It’s just if you’re learning all of them at once, and street dance, and padel, then it’s surely costing you money. And each one will be dropped by next month but but the memory of your birthday meal they couldn’t afford to attend will last forever.

Got a dog

Not from a shelter or from a friend or those blameless methods, no, their new pedigree French bulldog is from an elite breeder and comes with a whole host of pricey congenital quirks. It’s also ill after eating your headphones and so really that’s your fault and you should be paying the vet’s bill?

Bought a car

She already has a car, but thought a runaround for everyday errands would preserve the first car’s value. Makes sense, right? Then went for an Audi A3 after carefully reviewing her budget and bank statements, and realising signing up for another credit card and moving debt around was the prudent move. ‘It’s recommended by Martin Lewis!’ she says.

Bought into cryptocurrency

It was the right time, apparently, to make a fortune. So years after everyone else your friend bought big into crypto and launched a podcast about how everyone else should too. Then Bitcoin crashed, and now he’s sold most of what he owns and is asking to crash at yours rent free for a couple of months.