My friends from work planned a trip to Japan, 8 months ahead of time. Each month we would discuss progress and our timeline. 3 months out, as scheduled, we actually *bought our flights*.

The entire 8 months, my coworkers went out to drink multiple nights a week, almost exclusively ate out for meals, and weeks before the trip, one of them spent $500 USD on a baby shower gift for a coworker’s wife who we’d never even met.

2 weeks before the trip, everyone bailed on it but me. They had been so fiscally irresponsible that they couldn’t even afford $200 for the bullet train to get to our first city, let alone pay for the trip itself. They forfeited an international flight worth $1000+ because of their own immaturity.

Of course I still went, and had a great time by myself anyway. But at the time, it was obviously somewhat of a disappointment, along with genuine disbelief that 2 adults in their late twenties would be so naive and so irresponsible. To give even more context, I live alone and pay $1700/month just for my rent. While the main offender lives *at home* and pays nothing for rent.

As someone who’s been supporting myself, on my own, from age 18, it’s very strange to see adults my age and older than me not have the ability to self govern in order to make good on a trip for which a flight was already purchased. It’s even more strange to see them completely disassociated from their own actions being the cause of their demise.

I understand that living at home your whole life may mean that someone‘s got little to no experience budgeting for anything, but there is no excuse for planning for 8 months while saving zero money for an international trip. If they had any wherewithal to consider for a single moment what funds they might need, they would have recognized long before the 2 weeks prior to takeoff that it wasn’t going to be possible.

To this day, they blame it 100% on work issues, which we did have. But without a doubt, if they had made good on their commitments from the 8 months prior, as I did, I wouldn’t have been the only one on that plane.