I used to work with/be friends with this girl who was like alternate universe me except she made choices that were completely opposite to mine. After a while of this, I found myself biting my tongue so hard I nearly chewed it off. Sorry if this is a bit long, it was overheard throughout my 3+ years of working with her.
For starters, she dropped out of university with something like AUD$18,000 HECS (student loan) debt, so I used to hear her complain about how she was expected to pay for classes she had attended but not bothered to complete. It was like clockwork, every tax time it was a constant wailing and gnashing of teeth.
She moved out of her parents house despite it being rent free and her being able to have as many friends/boyfriends as she liked over. She made herself almost immediately unwelcome with her new housemates because she started complaining about people not doing the dishes or whatever on facebook and the housemates seeing it and saying 'hey we get that you're upset but could you please talk to us directly about this?'... So she moved out into her own flat and found it really hard because we were barely making above the minimum wage, so rent was eating up something like 40-50% of her salary.
After that lease is up, she moves in with her boyfriend and she decides to take care of all the bills by putting it on a rewards credit card, her boyfriend forgets to pay her back for anything, then they break up and she's got a balance of $10,000 on a 20% CC.
Then there was her car. Her parents gave her a fully functional 2-3 year old car they'd bought secondhand. She would pay for routine services, but I used to hear how if there was a big problem she'd never have the money to pay for a repair, so her parents would bail her out.
Anyways, she pays off her credit card and now decides she's an adult who can do whatever she likes, and that the secondhand car her parents gifted her isn't good enough. She wants a Mini, dammit!
So she sells the car her parents bought for her, and takes out a loan for a Mini that is older and has more kms on it than the car her parents gave her. The new car now requires premium fuel, she said something about it costing $90 to fill it up. Just when I thought things couldn't get worse for her, about a year after she bought it the car breaks down during one of the hottest days on record and it turns out she hasn't had the car serviced at all since she bought it because she didn't have the money, and now she certainly doesn't have the funds to get it fixed. The mini gets repaired (possibly courtesy of her parents), but she can't drive it because the tyres need replacing and she doesn't have the money to replace them (she said something about it costing $100 or more per tyre). For a while she was paying down a loan on a car she couldn't even use.
Anyways, about a month or two after this she decides that she's going to buy her own place... in one of the hottest property markets in our state. She scrapes up a minimal deposit with what sounded like a lot of assistance from the bank of mum and dad, and in what was a surprisingly smart move, bought a 2 bedroom house close to what was then our office. However, she refused to entertain the idea of getting a housemate, even a FIFO worker, because she was a homeowner now, she wasn't going to share with some pleb.
She financed her washing machine and dryer on a 0% interest scheme and when her mother asked her if she could afford to pay it off in that time she apparently went beserk. She also freaked out when she received a $700 strata fee, apparently not realising this is all a part of the joy of home ownership!
Oh, and mobile phones. She always needed the latest, and it always had to be with the provider with the largest network coverage despite never leaving the metro area.
The last I heard (from an acquaintance) is that she's now doing 'internet work' involving 'video cameras' to make some extra money to pay the bills. I honestly thought he was joking, but nope, apparently not, she is actually doing... something which may involve nakedness on camera for money. Good for her for finding a revenue stream with some flexibility, though!
A few memorable quotes from her:
"I need to have two tv's in my house, coz otherwise it means you're failing at life"
"I drive everywhere because I'm afraid of public transport"
"Only losers cycle, coin"
On a Monday: "I've got about $20 to last me until Thursday [when we get paid]"
"Jeez, coin, CD's are so last century, why aren't you just getting a subscription to a streaming service?" (she then looked at me like I'd grown two heads when I told her it was cheaper for me to just buy a CD once in a while instead of the recurring cost of streaming)
Conclusion:
After a while this all sort of became a bit of a sore point for me, because I admit I was a bit sour about how she had everything laid out on a platter for her by her parents and she was never capable of recognising that. I honestly think this did affect our friendship, because she kept having to decline invitations out for things unless somebody else was paying - the reasons usually being related to being broke. After a while I stopped inviting her out, because I realised material things like cars and shoes were always going to come before the people in her life. It got too difficult for me to see 'ooh look at this consumer crap I've just bought' on social media only to be told that she didn't have the money to go out anywhere.
tl;dr friend makes succession of bad choices over a span of 3-4 years which ruins the relationship.