Is altruism as good as egoism?

Someone I used to know said that altruism is really only to serve egoism (where altruism is something like "helping the people around you"). The example is that you help a friend only because he may do something good to you later. Two are more powerful than one.

Today, we are going to show this argument false. It will be shown that altruism is not just there (for a chance) to get something back in the end. I need some credit though. I need you to realize that in daily life we are no philosophers and that we make decisions as whether to act egoistically or altruistically. Hence, there is no reason to believe that one is more important than the other, except that a popular argument says so. I just want to show that this argument is logically powerless.

So the argument is that we help other people and have friends just so that they might help us later. Also, if the people around you become better, it will do you good as well. Altruism is a "helper" of egoism. My point is that this argument can be turned around. Egoism can be seen as a "helper" of altruism. Now, let's not take the egoistic look, but the extreme altruistic.

The purpose of life is to help others. Not because it feels good, but because it is an altruistic act, we help the lady across the streets (in the hope that she lets us). One day, we think about our mortal souls as being irrelevant and we think about why not committing suicide. But then we realize that the people around us can then no longer be helped by us, and they would be sad. The egoistic act of keeping ourselves alive is just a "helper" of altruism. We accept the help of others so that we become better and so that one day we may help them and help them better.