Ann never has enough money to afford anything, and believe me that I don"t usually criticise people who are not really well-off, but in this case the fault is entirely hers. I don"t earn a fortune either, so I try not to buy expensive clothes or change my furniture every year. I sell things that I no longer need if they can still be used. Ann always spends incredible amounts of money on things she doesn"t really need. She visited me last Friday. She had called me an hour before just to inform me that we had to talk. When she arrived, she asked me to borrow her some money. It was more or less half of my month"s earnings. She explained that she needed the money for a new bathroom. Her future parents-in-law had visited her a couple of days before and commented on her old tiles and bathroom furniture. I asked Ann to sit down and relax. I explained that her mother-in-law must have exaggerated a bit. Ann"s bathroom is not that old and the tiles are not at all destroyed. It"s true that the bathroom doesn"t look like those wonderful barrooms from furniture shops catalogues, but it can still serve her for a couple of years. I told her that she didn"t need a new bathroom at all. If it had been an urgent situation, I would have probably borrowed her the money, but in that case I decided to refuse to do it.