DEAR JEANNE & LEONARD: My wife and I arranged with another couple to rent a house on Cape Cod for a week in July, a house large enough to accommodate both couples and all of our children. The cost of the rental is $2,000, and each couple kicked in $500 toward the nonrefundable deposit. The remaining $1,000 is due next week, and here's what's happening: The other couple owns a liquor store, and the manager and a clerk just quit, so they need to stay home and tend the store. Unfortunately, neither we nor they have been able to find another family to take their place on such short notice. Nevertheless, our friends feel they shouldn't have to pay the additional $500 they owe for the rental just so, as they put it, our family can have the place to ourselves. Well, my wife and I feel we shouldn't have to pay $1,500 in rent when each couple had agreed to pay $1,000. Who's right?
-- Nick
DEAR NICK: You are. The fact that the balance of the rent hasn't been paid gives the other couple the right to walk away from the landlord, who presumably specified the payment schedule with the possibility of a cancellation in mind. But it doesn't give them the right to walk away from their commitment to you to pay half of the rent.
That said, your family will indeed be getting the place to yourselves. Surely that has to be worth something. So why not offer to split the disputed $500 with your friends? Isn't the friendship worth $250 to each of you?
DEAR JEANNE & LEONARD: While visiting friends in Texas, a guy at work bought a T-shirt at a shooting range, and he sometimes wears it to work. The name of the place is on the front of the shirt, and on the back, in large letters, it says, "Where the Second Amendment Comes First." Everyone understands that this guy is being ironic with the shirt -- he's in favor of gun control -- and nobody objects to his wearing it. But it turns out that half of the $20 he paid for the shirt went to a gun-rights group. Wasn't he wrong to buy it when he knew some of his money would go to an advocacy group whose position he opposes?
-- Jessica
DEAR JESSICA: We're glad you work in an environment so enlightened that workers are able to tolerate the sight of political slogans with which they disagree ... at least when they know the slogans are displayed with irony.
More to the point, your co-worker did nothing wrong in buying the T-shirt, the built-in contribution to the rights group notwithstanding. Because just as he's free to hold whatever political positions he chooses, he's equally free to decide which issues he's not interested in having guide his buying decisions, right down to the T-shirt level.
Put another way: Being less passionate about gun control than you seem to be doesn't make your co-worker a bad person.
A note to the many readers who wrote to us regarding a recent column: Of course, you're right. A half-sister is not the same as a stepsister -- just ask Cinderella -- and we erred in referring to the same pair of sisters as both.
Please email your questions about money, ethics and relationships to
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Family on 06/22/2016