The Best Night Out I Couldn't Afford

One Wednesday evening in the early 1990s, my telephone rang. It wasn't a mobile—there weren't any back then—but the family phone sitting in the hallway, with a curly cable that somehow always managed to tie itself in knots.

It was one of my closest friends.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

"Fancy going out?"

"I'm skint."

There was a short pause. "That's not what I asked." So we went out.

To anyone under thirty, it's difficult to explain quite how different weekday evenings were back then. With no internet, no social media, and only four television channels, staying in was a bleak prospect. If you weren't working, playing sport, or seeing friends, there was a very good chance you would spend the evening sitting in the lounge with your parents, watching whatever happened to be on. For a nineteen-or twenty-year-old, that felt like a life sentence.

Normally, our group of friends was rarely home. There were between four and seven of us, depending on who was working, who had a girlfriend that week, and whose car was still functioning. We’d play snooker, meet in the pub, or head into town. In my case, I often worked behind the scenes in a pub kitchen, washing mountains of plates. It wasn't glamorous, but it paid enough to fund the next night out

But that Wednesday was different. Everyone seemed to be staying in, and I had absolutely no money. And I really do mean no money. My approach to money in my late teens bore little resemblance to the financial planning advice I now give for a living. Credit cards were stretched far further than they should have been, and payday always felt a lifetime away.

"I'm skint," I repeated.

"That's not what I asked," he said.

He bought every drink that night. It wasn't a loan, he wasn't keeping score, and there was no expectation that I'd somehow repay him the following week. He knew that staying at home wasn't what either of us wanted.

At the time, it just felt like an ordinary Wednesday night.

I remember almost nothing about what we talked about. I couldn't tell you which pub we ended up in, and I can't remember what music was playing. Yet more than thirty years later, I still remember that phone call.

Today, I spend much of my time helping people think carefully about money—how much to save, how much to spend, and how much is enough. Those are important conversations. We build financial forecasts, test different scenarios, and make sure people don't run out of money.

But over the years, I've also realised something else: one of the biggest risks isn't running out of money. It’s reaching the end of life with a bank account full of experiences you never bought. We can become so focused on preserving money that we forget it was only ever meant to be used. Its only real value is what it can be exchanged for, and there is no higher exchange rate than buying back time with the people we love.

Now and then, I think back to that Wednesday evening. My friend didn't conduct a cost-benefit analysis or consider whether buying a few drinks was a sensible financial decision. He didn't want his mate sitting at home because he was broke. Money did exactly what money is supposed to do: it made life a little better.

I doubt he even remembers that Wednesday night. He probably can't remember buying the drinks or even making the phone call. But I do. More than thirty years later, it's still there. Not because of the beer or where we went, but because, for a young man who couldn't afford to go out, someone decided that friendship mattered more than settling the bill.

Perhaps that's the point. We rarely know which small acts of kindness another person will carry with them for the rest of their life.

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