Loaning money

Anyway.

It's a reflection of how rarely I lend money that I remember this: I once lent somebody £7.00 when I was university (a pathetic sum I know but at the time it was my entire food budget for the week) and they never paid me back - I never mentioned it but I never liked them as much afterwards either. So, NEITHER A BORROWER OR A LENDER BE or if you are then don't be stupid and passive-aggressive like me.

I hate hate hate HATE borrowing money! I hate my credit card, I hate my overdraft, I hate not being able to have the self control to live within my means. Earning money that I don't get to keep is so dud. I have months where it seems that I'm working for nothing cos of paying things off. Only rarely now but boy does it rankle.

my parents borrow from me a lot. now, i've always used the adage that they paid for so much of my shit growing up (including a trip to europe) that i'd always do it no questions asked.

but with that said, it does get a little frustrating when second and third loans are requested before the first is paid off. or when frequent promises of paying back a $1200 debt suddenly go silent and then the topic is never broached again, debt never paid back two years later. but i forgive em cuz i love em, even if they are into me for $850 now.

in fact my entire family combined owes me $1500

you are bo jackson overdrive and i claim my $5

ditch those moochers imo

you can wait to pay until after your family pays you back if you want

dude, it's your family. if they really need the money and you can afford it, then you just have to suck it up. if they don't really need the money / you can't afford it, that's another story.

i don't care about all that, see. like..if they needed it to be a gift rather than a loan, that's fine, i won't plan to see the money again. the other thing is, as much as i love them, sometimes i think they depend on it too much. one time, immediately after borrowing this sum of money from me, they went out and bought a flatscreen tv...granted it was on credit, but...it doesn't look good when you lug that in and you still haven't paid me back anything.

the thing is, i've been trying for 4.5 years to accumulate enough cash to pay off all of my credit card debt so that ongoing in the future, my bills will be more manageable. So while i can afford to loan money, THAT goal flies out the window.

i eventually gave up and said fuck it and took out another fixed income loan to pay off my credit cards within 3 years.

ive never refused my parents money, except if i couldn't afford it, and i won't ever do it. but it doesn't mean its not frustrating when you frequently lose entire paychecks to loans, many of which never get paid back, and were earmarked to pay down debt. i wouldn't mind if i even got say like 20$ a month, but not even that has been given.

(dont take any of that as a slam on my family, god knows they are struggling and i never make them feel guilty about it...but secretly, sometimes...i wish i wasn't always having to loan money. if i hadn't had to, my savings would be so robust by now i'd have probably paid most all of my credit cards and/or my car off, which would have improved my credit rating, possibly allowed me to afford to move someplace else....etc etc.

maybe you should offer them a smaller amount as a gift rather than a loan? accepting a monetary gift like that requires losing face (which I guess makes it sort of mean) - but then they might only ask when they *NEEDED* it. the flatscreen tv story is ridic though, esp. if you have credit card bills to pay.

If you aren't making an actual loan with a promissory note and a payback schedule, then it's not a loan, it's a gift. If you make it an actual loan (which isn't hard to do, esp w/ 0% interest), then if it isn't paid back you can write some if not all of it off on your taxes as bad debt.

oh also there are some websites that are built for this, aren't there? like that send reminders and stuff?

Basically, I treat loaning money like playing the lottery. It'd be great to get some return on the investment, but I'm not expecting it. That attitude cuts down severely on both the level of disappointment and the number of people I will loan money to.

^^^otm. Works surprisingly well too (in the sense of getting money back) - which is nice.

Basically, I treat loaning money as something I don't do any more, having been burned too many times. Same thing goes for smaller stuff like DVDs, musical instruments etc. No-one ever pays you back, so fuck 'em. If they could deal with money they wouldn't need to borrow it in the first place, in my experience.

Glad I've got that off my chest.