Savannah James and the Money Question That Can Test Black Women’s Friendships.

That weight rarely gets named out loud. It lives in the space between people who genuinely care for each other, folks who would show up at 3 a.m. without asking a single question, yet somehow keep landing on opposite ends of a dinner check.

Savannah James has spent the past couple of years building a whole platform on the honesty that runs between girlfriends. The podcast she hosts alongside April McDaniel, “Everybody’s Crazy,” launched in 2024 and returned with another season in August 2026. Their friendship stretches back well over a decade. Savannah has recalled meeting April at an NBA event in Las Vegas while she was pregnant, with April immediately telling her to sit down and taking care of her. All these years later, the two are cracking jokes, hopping flights together, fielding calls from strangers with their own messy situations and talking publicly about the complications that can exist inside even the strongest friendships.

That kind of bond is the whole point of what I want to sit with today.

The Akron native lives inside a rarefied world now. She launched her skincare brand Reframe in 2025. There are fashion events, business ventures, a famous husband whose career has kept the family under public lights for decades, two older sons building lives of their own and a daughter still growing up while watching her mother step more fully into her own lane. Savannah spent years describing herself as somebody who played the background while raising children and supporting her husband. These days, she is putting more of herself out front. And when you exist at that altitude, the math of a getaway looks nothing like it does for the sister stretching a check to Sunday.

Here is where things turn thorny for regular folks. Say two women came up together, braided each other’s edges in a dorm room, cried at the same funerals, held each other through the divorces. One hits a stretch of real abundance. Promotion, marriage, a business that finally pops. The other is doing fine, just fine in that ordinary way where the budget has a mind of its own and a spa weekend means telling something else no. What happens to the closeness then?

The competition creeps in sideways. It almost never announces itself. Sometimes it looks like a sister maxing a card she cannot cover, just to hang on the trip. Other times it is somebody pulling back from the group altogether, going quiet, letting calls slide to voicemail, because pretending gets exhausting and honesty feels like a confession. Or it is the one holding the cash reading every hesitation as coldness, wondering why the invitations keep getting declined.

So let me lay the uncomfortable question on the table, the one that has been circling my mind lately. If you are sitting on plenty, is it not a touch selfish to plan the fancy vacation, book the pricey table, chase the spontaneous flight, and never once offer to bring along a girl who cannot swing it? Is that true friendship, or just enjoying the company of folks who happen to keep up?

I sat with that a good while, because both answers have teeth.

One side makes a strong case that a true bond means reaching back. What is abundance even for if not to bless the people who stood with you before the money showed up? Covering a plane seat for the sister who held you down is not charity. It is memory. The Black women who make up our village are not accessories to enjoy only when the vibes line up. If the resources sit right there and the affection is genuine, letting a beloved friend miss every moment because money keeps getting in the way can eventually begin to feel less like honoring pride and more like guarding your own ease.

The other side reminds us that grown folks carry dignity, and cash can poison a bond quicker than distance ever could. Constant covering hardens into a tally nobody agreed to keep. The one always paying can begin to feel used, or worse, start seeing the other as a project instead of a peer. And the one always being carried can lose the very thing that made the connection feel level to begin with. Not every Sista wants a benefactor. Plenty would rather split a cheaper meal and hold their footing than sip champagne on somebody else’s dime and feel like the charity case at the table.

Both things hold at the same time. That is how truth usually behaves, refusing to sit neat on either side.

What I circle back to is that the poison is hardly ever the dollars themselves. It is the silence wrapped around them. Black women get raised, so many of us, to swallow the hard talk and grin through the strain. We will dissect anybody else’s business before admitting our own account is running thin. So the invite lands, and rather than saying baby, I love you, that flight is not in my budget this month, can we do a cookout at my place instead, we ghost. We let a whole friendship fade out instead of speaking one honest sentence about the wallet.

The one with means owns a piece of this too. There is a way to bless people that leaves pride intact, and a way that plants a flag. Handling a bill without a word, no announcement, no group chat receipt, no reminder six months down the road, that is grace. Turning it into a whole production about who paid for what converts a gift into a leash. If you are running a scoreboard, you never truly gave a thing.

Savannah and April offer a timely example because they recently talked about this exact tension instead of pretending it does not exist. During a September 28 appearance on Boardroom’s “Mental Wealth,” April said plainly that the two women live different financial lifestyles. She explained that when they travel, they plan ahead so she has time to budget. She also said she does not feel the need to sit in first class just because Savannah does. Viewers have apparently questioned why Savannah might be in first while April is in business, but April’s answer was refreshingly grown: Savannah has accommodated where she is financially, and April does not expect her friend’s bank account to erase her own boundaries. Two Black women can love each other, travel together and remain close without pretending their wallets match.

Maybe that is the whole assignment for the rest of us. Quit performing. A getaway you cannot afford is not worth the debt or the resentment, and a friend worth holding onto will never make you choose between the vacation and your peace. Maybe she pays sometimes. Maybe you sit in different sections of the plane. Maybe the whole crew trades the resort for somebody’s backyard one year. Friendship does not have to look financially equal every single time to remain emotionally equal. If a bond only lasts while the spending stays even, it was standing on sand the entire time.

So check the Sistas in your corner. Not with your bank app, with your honesty. Tell the truth about what you can and cannot do. Offer help in a way that honors the person on the receiving end. And if a woman ever loves you less because your pockets got lighter, believe her the first time. Real sisterhood was never up for sale, and the ones who understood that were never counting your coins to begin with.