The Money Mustache Community
Around the Internet => Antimustachian Wall of Shame and Comedy => Topic started by: Jenny1974 on May 09, 2017, 11:03:53 AM
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Ok . . . I'll start. I was once asked to borrow $1,500 from a "friend" who wanted to buy her underemployed DH new rims for the truck they can't afford. I politely explained that I am not in the business of making bad investments.
You?
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This one wasnt from me(my sister knows better) but my sister asked my parents and my grandma for money for gas to get to a town an hour away because she claimed her husbands dad was in the hospital because he had a heart attack. Found out the next day that they got money from both my parents and my grandma and his dad was not in the hospital and had not had a heart attack.
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How much gas money does one need to drive an hour back and forth? Seems like a shitty and inefficient way to burn bridges.
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Probably cigarettes. I have a simple policy of "Never ever lend money to anyone", though every once in awhile someons till asks.
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Not my money, but my partner's. He was asked by our neighbour to borrow 2k to pay her mortgage. Because she refused to get a job that was "beneath her" or not "fulfilling" to her, as an MBA graduate and former insurance rep. Fair enough, but if you're about to lose your roof and your credit is maxed out, perhaps now is not the time to get choosy.
He said no.
She now sells essential oils in an MLM.
We don't speak to her much anymore.
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How much gas money does one need to drive an hour back and forth? Seems like a shitty and inefficient way to burn bridges.
I have no idea. Her husband isnt allowed around our family any more due to drug issues and stealing. So they arent the smartest ones.
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I loaned money in high school at a then reasonable rate. I held your collateral until you repaid me. Only lost money once: 10 cents. That was when I starting holding collateral.
Chase is not my name. :)
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Hm...the "thing" really isn't that dumb, but situation is nutty. I became Treasurer of a small non-profit organization. Shortly afterward, one of the members asked for a personal loan out of the Treasury because he'd crashed his car and wanted to lease or buy another brand-new one. Then they started telling me about their financial situation and it went even further downhill from there. It was an emphatic "No."
I can't resist: "asked to borrow money" implies one was encouraged to take out a loan. "asked to lend money" would work.
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I can't resist: "asked to borrow money" implies one was encouraged to take out a loan. "asked to lend money" would work.
I'm with you! Every time I see this thread it takes me a second to remind myself what it's really about.
In other news, I've never been asked to loan money. Maybe word hasn't got out yet that I have some.
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My alcoholic uncle who I hadn't spoken to in years once asked me to borrow $500 for bail money for his alcoholic girlfriend's daughter who was arrested for a drug offense. I had never met GF or daughter, although another uncle had so I knew they actually existed. I lied and said I didn't have it. Inside my head I wondered if there was any possible scenario where I would ever see a cent of that $500 again.
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Did you mean "lend" money?
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I can't resist: "asked to borrow money" implies one was encouraged to take out a loan. "asked to lend money" would work.
Oooh! My FIL asked my husband and I to get a $15k home equity loan and then "loan" (give) him the money so he could pay off his high interest debts, does that count? :)
Spoiler alert: we said no.
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How much gas money does one need to drive an hour back and forth? Seems like a shitty and inefficient way to burn bridges.
I have no idea. Her husband isnt allowed around our family any more due to drug issues and stealing. So they arent the smartest ones.
Ahh, I need to stop and consider the other person's intelligence (or lack of).
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Wow, I'm really surprised by these stories. I'm interested to hear more, although I don't have anything juicy.
The only time I can recall ever being asked to lend someone money was about 1.5 yrs ago. A former coworker, who I hadn't spoken to in 5+ years, contacts me on Facebook to ask if I can loan him $50 so he can buy work clothes for a new job he's starting. It really seems like he's trying to turn his life around. I respect his former GF, who has two of his kids, and don't mind taking a chance to put him in a position to make her life a bit easier.
Well, I gave him the $50, and heard back from him several times over the next couple of days, as he said he would have the money to pay me back after a few shifts (it was a restaurant server job). Then he stopped responding. Every few months I send him a message asking if he's got the $50 yet. I think I'll send another one today.
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I fronted someone a new fancyish laptop when I was 18 and got burned (naively assumed everyone is decent with money and would prioritize paying someone back, I saw about $0). I tolerated a little too much bullshit with a tenant in a rental house when I was 23 (but got paid back for that mess at least).
Never again. Expensive lessons, but lessons none the less. If I give someone money in the future, it'll be a gift, not a loan.
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Not as dumb as some other examples, but I lent a friend money because he couldn't pay his rent. Rent is not rediculous, but what is is that he couldn't afford it because he had just bought a new $500 suit that he "needed"(he works at a laundromat, it was not a work necessity). I really lent him suit money. For the record I did get the money back relatively promptly.
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A mutual acquaintance once asked to borrow $300 from my husband in the same conversation where she admitted to spending $600 on fast food. He told her that I handle the finances, so she would have to ask me. I guess she changed her mind.
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Ok . . I corrected the title.
Just thought of another good one. Co-worker asked me to lend her money to replace the carpet in her house . . that she ripped out knowing she didn't have money to replace it. The best part is, within a couple months of asking, she took out a 401k loan to get a boob job. Of course, she'd rather I pay for her carpet! Needless to say, I said "No".
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My BIL is going through a divorce and trying to sell their house since his wife and kid moved out. He asked DH to borrow money a few times (a few thousand here and there) and we were happy to loan him some to help him through a tough time. The first couple times he paid us back within a week or two but the last time he didn't and then asked to borrow a little more just to get him to his next paycheck where his raise/promotion would go through. We told him we wanted to help him make a plan so that he didn't have to keep asking to borrow money and we wouldn't give him more money without letting us see where its all going. He was a good sport/very desperate and linked everything to Mint and gave us the login. We quickly realized that while his income is more than enough to cover his bills and high eating/drinking out expenses, he was >20K in debt and spending 3K+ at casinos every month. There were multiple times where we could see the money we loaned him go into his account (he insisted on transfer via facebook since it was instant) and 5 mins later most of it was withdrawn at the casino ATM.
We tried to talk to him about priorities and what he could do to fix his situation but he kept insisting that he couldn't make any progress regardless of what he did. Last week he told DH that he went and talked to a guy about filing for bankruptcy. I'm just writing the 2K he still owes us off as a loss and moving on at this point.
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I'm a really slow learner.
2004 - 22yo. I'm in the Marine Corps Reserves and a few of us were flying back home from NC after a deployment. We had to personally pay to for our extra bags to fly back with all our gear. We were supposed to get reimbursed, but only up to a certain amount per person. I loan a buddy around $200 to ship his bags back because he didn't have any $ in his bank account. But I had to put the receipt in his name because I maxed out my allowance to ship my own gear back. I never got paid back.
2004 or 2005 - In college. A classmate (I went to a relatively expensive private school) was behind on his tuition payments. I loan him around $900. He drops out of school a few weeks later and I never hear from him again.
2006 - My best friend is engaged to a girl who lives in WA, half way across the country. He wants to move there for a few months to remodel the house she just bought and asks for me to loan him about $20k to pay for materials and his living expenses. Why on earth would someone even consider that. He was and still is like a brother to me. I lived rent free on his couch for about 9 months while in college. He helped me a ton with my dad in 2005/2006 when my dad was going down a huge spiral of ruining his life with alcohol. We spent lots of Friday and Saturday nights pulling my dad out of bars. We fixed up my dad's house to sell to keep my dad from getting foreclosed on. That was a ton of work. My friend's family life was also pretty messy and I think he just wanted to get out of town and try to build a productive relationship with this girl. He and the girl ended up breaking up within a year though. He actually made decent efforts to pay me back for a couple years but he had a lot of family problems. Two of his siblings had addiction problems and all the associated legal/financial problems that ensue. He helped them both with treatment programs. He was the stable person in the entire family. After several years I just told him to forget about paying me the rest back. In total I ended up getting about $12k back from him.
I will never loan $ again. I might give some $ to a close relative in the right situation, but never a loan.
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Friend who was in debt to family, friends, and the IRS, and who had been unemployed for two years, though who had landed a part-time gig of uncertain duration, asked to borrow $1000 for a vacation. I declined and explained my reasoning, which resulted in being attacked for being unempathic.
The part-time gig didn't last long, and two months later I paid the dude's rent so he wouldn't be evicted and homeless. No acknowledgement that I had been right before, and subsequently was attacked as an insulting, lecturing, condescending, haughty prig when I wouldn't provide funds for another trip.
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Ok . . I corrected the title.
Just thought of another good one. Co-worker asked me to lend her money to replace the carpet in her house . . that she ripped out knowing she didn't have money to replace it. The best part is, within a couple months of asking, she took out a 401k loan to get a boob job. Of course, she'd rather I pay for her carpet! Needless to say, I said "No".
LOL!! Good one. Mine:
I loaned 20K to my bro-in-law for something business-related. He had to keep it from my sis, as she would have (rightly) freaked. My bro-in-law and sis both mean a lot to me, BUT they are spendy, whereas I am a frugal, bike-riding, coupon-clipping, anti-consumer saver who earns way less than my bro-in-law.
He swore that he'd pay me back in a year. I loaned the money on the explicit condition that he would in fact pay me back within a year. It took two years, during which period I had to listen to excuses and watch them buy a new (albeit lightly used) Lexus, and go on vacations.
So it wasn't a "stupid" thing per se, but it was very annoying.
More recently, I've been tapped to make a donation to a family member's theater project. Not a loan, but I feel obliged to shell out, and theater is not really my thing.
Other than that, I've been suckered two or three times, a long time ago, by street-corner solicitations to loan someone $10-20 so that they could call some sort of assistance to get back to / into their cars which they were locked out of and/or contained medication that they urgently needed. The first time this happened was when I was working as a bike messenger, barely earning a living myself, and soaked in rain and street grime. I was a soft touch back in the day.
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Other than that, I've been suckered two or three times, a long time ago, by street-corner solicitations to loan someone $10-20 so that they could call some sort of assistance to get back to / into their cars which they were locked out of and/or contained medication that they urgently needed. The first time this happened was when I was working as a bike messenger, barely earning a living myself, and soaked in rain and street grime. I was a soft touch back in the day.
Crap like this pisses me off, because it screws anyone who legitimately does need help. I got snookered once by a woman who asked me about the location of the nearest women's crisis center, and then ultimately spun a tale of needing to get to Bakersfield, and her soon to be ex husband trying to take her kids, etc., and $35 would solve it all. I was so naive I insisted on driving her to the train station. She had no choice but to play along. When I figured out I had been had, I was pretty disillusioned,
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Wow. These stories are horrible.
I was once the guy. A friend loaned me money to kill my credit card debt acquired during unemployment. I got out of college just after the recession hit. Then he told me it wasn't his money he lent me and his family member needed it back.
I was pretty angry. I was going to take the debt seriously in the first place, but I wouldn't have knowingly taken it from a stranger in his family. I ate an awful lot of ramen noodles and walked to work to start working on it. After a few months, a different friend at work actually offered to loan me the balance so things wouldn't be so tight. So, he lent me someone else's deceptive financing on my credit card debt. I did ultimately take him up on it, but I paid him something like 40% of my take-home every week. I was only a clerk at the time, so he was a pretty generous guy.
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A coworker once asked to borrow a rather large sum of money from me, knowing that I was low income and had student loans, to fund their antimustachian hobby. I didn't even dignify that with a response.
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Wasn't me that got asked, it was my dad. He was the trustee(?) of a fund put aside for a young man who had some health problems/disorders who was not able to look after the money himself because of said disorders. His family, on behalf of his sister, asked to borrow a significant amount (i think it was $30k+) from the fund to use as a downpayment for a house for her. And she was just starting college, with no job. And the market here is stupid overheated. Besides the fact that the money is not to be used for that kind of thing, and can only be used for the young mans well being. Of course he said no.
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I was renting a room in a single family home from a women when in grad school. Apparently, she was renting the house from someone else and not paying them rent. She asked me to pay two months rent in advance and I would get some sort of a discount. I agreed and we were evicted in less than 2 weeks.
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A friend of mine loaned money to a young woman we both knew to help her with her rent. She was supposed to pay him back come payday. She didn't, and instead spent her paycheck on new clothes, then wrote him a bum check.
This pissed him off.
So he took the canceled check that had bounced and waited until her next payday. He showed up at the bank bright and early the next day and cashed the check. She went out and spent that paycheck on more clothes at lots of different stores.s
All her checks bounced so she was out gobs of money in fees.
Sweet revenge.
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Great stories. I have a few to add.
In 1993 an acquaintance asked to borrow 40 cents for a pay phone. She didn't pay me back. I have never forgotten.
In 2000 I bought concert tickets for myself and some friends. They all paid me back except one who kept putting me off. She didn't pay me back. And she ditched me at the concert for some other people she knew. She still owes me $15.
My husband lent $100 to a mate for car repairs. DH was a groomsman at his wedding. They are no longer friends and the $100 is still outstanding. I could tell some stories about his financial situation but I won't go on here. Suffice to say he is the epitome of antimustachian.
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2006 - My best friend is engaged to a girl who lives in WA, half way across the country. He wants to move there for a few months to remodel the house she just bought and asks for me to loan him about $20k to pay for materials and his living expenses. Why on earth would someone even consider that. He was and still is like a brother to me. I lived rent free on his couch for about 9 months while in college. He helped me a ton with my dad in 2005/2006 when my dad was going down a huge spiral of ruining his life with alcohol. We spent lots of Friday and Saturday nights pulling my dad out of bars. We fixed up my dad's house to sell to keep my dad from getting foreclosed on. That was a ton of work. My friend's family life was also pretty messy and I think he just wanted to get out of town and try to build a productive relationship with this girl. He and the girl ended up breaking up within a year though. He actually made decent efforts to pay me back for a couple years but he had a lot of family problems. Two of his siblings had addiction problems and all the associated legal/financial problems that ensue. He helped them both with treatment programs. He was the stable person in the entire family. After several years I just told him to forget about paying me the rest back. In total I ended up getting about $12k back from him.
I will never loan $ again. I might give some $ to a close relative in the right situation, but never a loan.
That last one wasnt so bad. You stayed with him rent free for 9 months so the $8K loss you could mindfully balance out. Good karma is all I can say.
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I was pretty angry. I was going to take the debt seriously in the first place, but I wouldn't have knowingly taken it from a stranger in his family.
But a debt is a debt. How can you take it less seriously because of where it came from? That's like saying, I borrowed from a Rothschild and I know how well off they are so I will take my sweet time paying it off.
You should be firstly angry with yourself that you got into debt, not with your friend who was trying to help you out and had to ask a member of his family to help you because he felt that sorry for you. How do you think that would have gone down on said family member? Alternatively, maybe said friend used the excuse of a family member to ensure you paid the debt asap.
Presumably you did not pay interest on said loan....
As Polonius said to Laertes before he went to uni: neither be a lender nor borrower be.
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I was renting a room in a single family home from a women when in grad school. Apparently, she was renting the house from someone else and not paying them rent. She asked me to pay two months rent in advance and I would get some sort of a discount. I agreed and we were evicted in less than 2 weeks.
Ouch! That really must have hurt.
I have one from DS: when he was in Year 5, his then best friend asked him for $10 for some toy or something. He came home bawling his eyes out because a) he didn't have an allowance at the time b) he had to ask money from me. Needless to say, I said if he were a true friend, he would never ask money off you (he was 10!) and what was so special about the toy? I have a feeling DS must have told him about his bank account where his birthday money goes into (which I have been transparent with eg taking him to the bank to deposit money).
They're no longer best friends.
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But a debt is a debt. How can you take it less seriously because of where it came from? That's like saying, I borrowed from a Rothschild and I know how well off they are so I will take my sweet time paying it off.
I literally said I was already going to take it seriously - ergo, the source did not change that. Why do you hate raspberries?
You should be firstly angry with yourself that you got into debt, not with your friend who was trying to help you out and had to ask a member of his family to help you because he felt that sorry for you. How do you think that would have gone down on said family member? Alternatively, maybe said friend used the excuse of a family member to ensure you paid the debt asap.
My actions were my responsibility, and... his actions were my responsibility? You'll have to work on that one. The story was supposed to be about the second guy who helped my broke bum in a bizarre situation, but we can talk about raspberries instead if you want. I know you're not a fan of them.
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What raspberries?
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When my wife told her mother that my business was doing really well, rather than being happy for us, her reaction was to lay on the guilt and imply that we should be helping with her eye-surgery costs.
This coming from a family who just bought a brand new minivan, because they are all too overweight to fit, or get in and out of, normal cars.
Nope.
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Quite the opposite story here, to balance:
Sister got into a total loss car crash, needed a new one for work. I heard my sibling was planning to take a loan at the bank. Realised it would compromise her ability to get a mortgage soon. I offered her an interest free loan, myself.
She hesitated to accept, but took it in the end. Paid me back far earlier than agreed, to the last cent. The experience really strenghtened our bond.
I would do this again without hesitation. Or if I would be in need myself, I'd not hesitate to ask her for help.
(My other siblings though, not a penny, ever. I'd rather eat my shoe. Even if it had dog shit on it.)
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Ok . . I corrected the title.
Just thought of another good one. Co-worker asked me to lend her money to replace the carpet in her house . . that she ripped out knowing she didn't have money to replace it. The best part is, within a couple months of asking, she took out a 401k loan to get a boob job. Of course, she'd rather I pay for her carpet! Needless to say, I said "No".
Of all of these, for some reason this one makes me the saddest. What a mess her head / life must be.
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My brother asked to borrow 1k...to fund his bankruptcy
Yup, I gave it to him, and surprisingly, he paid it back.
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Ok . . I corrected the title.
Just thought of another good one. Co-worker asked me to lend her money to replace the carpet in her house . . that she ripped out knowing she didn't have money to replace it. The best part is, within a couple months of asking, she took out a 401k loan to get a boob job. Of course, she'd rather I pay for her carpet! Needless to say, I said "No".
Of all of these, for some reason this one makes me the saddest. What a mess her head / life must be.
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You got that! This girl is a hot mess is ALL areas of her life. Surprisingly, she is a really good employee because if her job depended on how she managed her life, she'd have been fired YEARS ago.
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When I was in my early 20's, leaving Citibank's ATM one night after getting paid. Can't recall, but I had pulled out 3-5 $20 bills. As I'm walking to the car where my now-hubby is waiting, a woman came up to beg. Big sob story about the kids at home without food, and how anything could help. Hubby was about to reach in his pocket, but he had way less money than I did (he owed me $$, lol!), I felt a wave of pity and compassion for these starving children, sitting in a cold and unfurnished apartment. Out came one of those crisp $20 bills, and in an even dumber move, we even agreed to drive her to the grocery store! When we got about 1/2 block from the store, she thanked us and insisted to get out right there. We let her out, and watched her run away, in the opposite direction of the store. Guess I helped finance a drug habit that night.
A week later, same Citibank ATM. Same woman, same sob story! I told her she wasn't going to get me for a second time, but she clearly had no recollection of the incident. I stopped going to that ATM.
As for hubby and his loan to me, I kept a spreadsheet to track it all over the many years we dated. It was a considerable amount, but once we got engaged, I destroyed the spreadsheet. 21+ years later, I can say that was one of the best investments I've ever made. :)
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I used to be a lender on prosper.com, so I've been asked to lend money for all sorts of ridiculous things. Weddings, divorces, making a movie, catching up on 8 payday loans, buying a new car because the borrower's professional image depended on looking successful. (That last borrower defaulted, natch.) My favorite were the many requests for loans to pay off the borrowers' credit cards, other loans, etc., "so I can be debt free."
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A coworker once went around asking people to donate sick leave to her so she could take a vacation to Jamaica.
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A clerical employee who makes far less then I wanted to borrow $50 to buy lottery tickets. Even though she didn't get the money from me she did manage to buy her tickets; she took a $50 cash advance on a credit card.
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As I'm walking to the car where my now-hubby is waiting, a woman came up to beg. Big sob story about the kids at home without food, and how anything could help. Hubby was about to reach in his pocket, but he had way less money than I did (he owed me $$, lol!), I felt a wave of pity and compassion for these starving children, sitting in a cold and unfurnished apartment. Out came one of those crisp $20 bills, and in an even dumber move, we even agreed to drive her to the grocery store! When we got about 1/2 block from the store, she thanked us and insisted to get out right there. We let her out, and watched her run away, in the opposite direction of the store. Guess I helped finance a drug habit that night.
There is a somewhat well-known scam where someone will hang around outside grocery/drug stores and go so far as to get you to buy a big pack of diapers for them (it can't be a scam if you're buying the actual diapers for their poor starving kids, right? and maybe you'll throw in some baby food or formula or whatever else they need...) and then as soon as you leave they go back in and return the diapers for cash.
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The people that are making bank in the weed business are the ones that order several greenhouses and want them tomorrow and yes we have cash.
Amazing times we live in.
I've seen a lot of people try to make bank with the green crop but most of them walk away with their tail between their legs. It takes a lot more than desire to get started.
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I used to be a lender on prosper.com, so I've been asked to lend money for all sorts of ridiculous things. Weddings, divorces, making a movie, catching up on 8 payday loans, buying a new car because the borrower's professional image depended on looking successful. (That last borrower defaulted, natch.) My favorite were the many requests for loans to pay off the borrowers' credit cards, other loans, etc., "so I can be debt free."
I was a lender on Prosper as well, back in 2007. I put in $7k on three-year loans. I only got $5k of that back. My last payment (debt recovery) was in 2015... Other than the lost money, my biggest regret was complicating my taxes for nine years.
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I guess I have the opposite story to tell. A friend of mine who is rather poor, through no fault of his own due to a medical condition, and his wife (who is stupidly spendy) had the misfortune that her Honda actually died.
He used to be a mechanic so he had been maintaining the vehicle but alas eventually time eats even a Honda.
Now being a smart guy he actually prepared for this scenario and put away about $1000 for a downpayment on a somewhat newer Honda. But that meant that they were still missing the last $3400 for a used car.
So he goes to the bank and asks to lend $3400 and gets told that the interest would be around 12-15%. I should at this point add that they have no debt, never paid a bill late and generally are stable people. They just don't have much income.
I actually got so pissed at that bank that I called my wife instantly and said that I was going loan him $3400 interest-free if she was ok with it. Turns out she was fine with it and him and I went to get the car.
Fast forward 12 months and the debt has been repaid in full, and it was even 6 months faster than we agreed on.
And even better, the car has been stable and working fine :)
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I actually got so pissed at that bank that I called my wife instantly and said that I was going loan him $3400 interest-free if she was ok with it. Turns out she was fine with it and him and I went to get the car.
Not sure why you were pissed at the bank. 12-15% interest mitigates the large risk of loaning money to someone who can't afford a $4000 used car. They don't know borrowers personally, and can't judge them on character, as you were able to. On paper, they were a risky investment.
Fast forward 12 months and the debt has been repaid in full, and it was even 6 months faster than we agreed on.
And even better, the car has been stable and working fine :)
I may have been more cautious given his "spendy wife", but I'm glad it worked out for everyone involved.
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My brother asked to borrow 1k...to fund his bankruptcy
Yup, I gave it to him, and surprisingly, he paid it back.
Key word. You gave.
Never lend to family or friends. If their need is real, give without expectations. Never be afraid to say NO.
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I actually got so pissed at that bank that I called my wife instantly and said that I was going loan him $3400 interest-free if she was ok with it. Turns out she was fine with it and him and I went to get the car.
Not sure why you were pissed at the bank. 12-15% interest mitigates the large risk of loaning money to someone who can't afford a $4000 used car.
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A different perspective: such a loan would legally be considered usury in Belgium (any loan actually between 1250 and 5000€ with a total yearly cost equal to or higher than 12.5%). Usury loan means the borrower can walk away from making payments and just keep the principal.
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I actually got so pissed at that bank that I called my wife instantly and said that I was going loan him $3400 interest-free if she was ok with it. Turns out she was fine with it and him and I went to get the car.
Not sure why you were pissed at the bank. 12-15% interest mitigates the large risk of loaning money to someone who can't afford a $4000 used car. They don't know borrowers personally, and can't judge them on character, as you were able to. On paper, they were a risky investment.
I concur that while the loan interest seems high I can understand the bank doing it. For them I doubt it would be an auto loan as it is a used car, but rather a personal loan. I applaud you for being willing to lend them the money interest-free. You didn't have to and I'm guessing your friend wouldn't have faulted you for not loaning him the money, but it is great that you did so.
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I was loading my minivan at Costco when an Escalade pulls up. Two twentysomething girls, both eating from Chipotle bags.
"Excuse me, Sir. Wondering if you could help us out. We're (sob story) and we need money for gas......."
I didn't even respond.
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Ex boyfriend, nice guy. Terrible with money. He was living in an apt when he really couldn't afford it, and due to his inability to not eat out, ran out of money. I loaned him about $2-3k for living expenses. Wrote it off when we broke up 6 months later and I moved 2000 miles.
More recently, I agreed to be a co-applicant on a loan for my sister for law exam costs & living expenses. I grilled her on her finances first, but was pretty willing to do so since she has a track record of decent financial choices. She's accepted a gov't job offer, so I'm not concerned about it. I also told her that if she defaults, or pays late, she will regret it. Apparently, I am capable of scaring people.
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I was renting a room in a single family home from a women when in grad school. Apparently, she was renting the house from someone else and not paying them rent. She asked me to pay two months rent in advance and I would get some sort of a discount. I agreed and we were evicted in less than 2 weeks.
I kind of had the reverse of this; rented the lower part of a house as a student, it had 2 bedrooms, so I split it with another friend. After the first semester of the year, she left, and laughed at me when I said she was responsible for the other half of the rent or had to find another renter. I didn't find anyone else to sublet it mid-year, so ended up just having to carry double the cost for the rest of the year.
One I've told elsewhere on the forum but fits here, a couple of days after moving into a new place in a new state, the 17 year old son of the next door neighbor, to whom we had chatted briefly on moving in, knocked on the door and wanted to borrow $5 for gas to get to his band practice. I gave him $10, since $5 didn't buy much gas at the time. I figured it was worth the investment to see how trustworthy he was, in case we wanted someone to water plants while we were away or something. I did remind him about a month later, but he said he would have to wait to pay me back till he got a job. Finally, 6-8 months after the loan, he paid me back out of the blue. Diagnosis; well-intentioned, but not reliable enough to trust with anything important. :)
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When I was 22 years old, and had recently joined the working world, a colleague who was senior to me privately asked me if she could borrow $200. She said she would be able to fully repay me in one week, but also confided that she could not tell me what the money was for. It was sorta a lot of money for me, or rather, I would have been upset if it were not repaid. I really liked her personally and sort of felt pressure to help, like it might be bad for me if I said no. She did, in fact, repay me in full one week later and was very gracious and thankful. But I always wondered what that $200 was for...I speculated abortion or bail money...though the truth is I have no idea and will never know. At the least, that all ended with our friendship/work relationship intact. Plus, she never asked me for another loan or put me in an uncomfortable position like that again.
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I fronted someone a new fancyish laptop when I was 18 and got burned (naively assumed everyone is decent with money and would prioritize paying someone back, I saw about $0).
Never again. Expensive lessons, but lessons none the less. If I give someone money in the future, it'll be a gift, not a loan.
I watched my nephew go through this. 4 friends decided to buy friend #5 a game system, so they could all play together (friend #5 had some family challenges). Nephew bought the system and the gift was given and joy all around. But darn if nephew could not get the 3 others to pitch in their share after.
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I once lent a family member a five figure sum so that they could gift a new bell to their church. Utterly dumb in my opinion, but utterly reliable family member who quickly paid me back in full as agreed.
As the gift to the church counted as a gift to a charity, I made a tax claim on it and got back more tax than my family member would have, so some good came out of it.
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My FIL asked my DH for $13k so he wouldn't lose his house to foreclosure. DH said no. FIL borrowed it from DH's brother, he still lost his house and he never paid a cent of it back and that was a few years ago.
My sister just asked my parents for a "loan" to completely remodel her kitchen after crying poor after her break up with her bf and having to be a single income household. They bought a house together a couple years ago and she claims she is struggling and living paycheck to paycheck. I know she is not struggling by any stretch of the imagination. She lives larger than anyone in my circle. She owns her own business and shelters her cash from the IRS which falsely qualifies her for state health insurance for herself and her child (the child can be on his fathers plan but she lies about that too otherwise she looses her benefits), heating assistance and reduced school lunch. This is all while she gets her nails done every week, botox injections every few months, just got the veins on her legs zapped, invsalign, a new tattoo, has a vacation scheduled next month and posts pictures of her at restaurants and bars at least twice a week on social media. I made sure that my parents knew the truth in case the were not on to her deception. I can't believe that my father who is like the original MMM couldn't say no. She hasn't pick all the finishes yet but according to day it will be north of $20k. I told him he is enabling her behavior. It's not as if her roof is leaking or something. She is ripping out a wall to open up the space and replacing all appliances, back splash, cabinets, counters sink etc. For no other reason other than because she is selfish and wants to.
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My FIL asked my DH for $13k so he wouldn't lose his house to foreclosure. DH said no. FIL borrowed it from DH's brother, he still lost his house and he never paid a cent of it back and that was a few years ago.
Oh, damn!
My sister just asked my parents for a "loan" to completely remodel her kitchen after crying poor after her break up with her bf and having to be a single income household. They bought a house together a couple years ago and she claims she is struggling and living paycheck to paycheck. I know she is not struggling by any stretch of the imagination. She lives larger than anyone in my circle. She owns her own business and shelters her cash from the IRS which falsely qualifies her for state health insurance for herself and her child (the child can be on his fathers plan but she lies about that too otherwise she looses her benefits), heating assistance and reduced school lunch. This is all while she gets her nails done every week, botox injections every few months, just got the veins on her legs zapped, invsalign, a new tattoo, has a vacation scheduled next month and posts pictures of her at restaurants and bars at least twice a week on social media. I made sure that my parents knew the truth in case the were not on to her deception. I can't believe that my father who is like the original MMM couldn't say no. She hasn't pick all the finishes yet but according to day it will be north of $20k. I told him he is enabling her behavior. It's not as if her roof is leaking or something. She is ripping out a wall to open up the space and replacing all appliances, back splash, cabinets, counters sink etc. For no other reason other than because she is selfish and wants to.
Disgusting.
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A friend of mine loaned money to a young woman we both knew to help her with her rent. She was supposed to pay him back come payday. She didn't, and instead spent her paycheck on new clothes, then wrote him a bum check.
This pissed him off.
So he took the canceled check that had bounced and waited until her next payday. He showed up at the bank bright and early the next day and cashed the check. She went out and spent that paycheck on more clothes at lots of different stores.s
All her checks bounced so she was out gobs of money in fees.
Sweet revenge.
Filing this in the "knowledge that could come handy one day" cabinet. Is it standard to be able to keep a check that's already bounced? I would have assumed that the bank would destroy it.
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Never again. Expensive lessons, but lessons none the less. If I give someone money in the future, it'll be a gift, not a loan.
Key word. You gave.
Never lend to family or friends. If their need is real, give without expectations. Never be afraid to say NO.
This. If a relative or close friend needs money for good reasons, I'm willing to give it to them, but I won't loan it. Complicating a relationship that should be a good thing, just for some prospect of repayment just isn't worth it.
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A friend of mine loaned money to a young woman we both knew to help her with her rent. She was supposed to pay him back come payday. She didn't, and instead spent her paycheck on new clothes, then wrote him a bum check.
This pissed him off.
So he took the canceled check that had bounced and waited until her next payday. He showed up at the bank bright and early the next day and cashed the check. She went out and spent that paycheck on more clothes at lots of different stores.s
All her checks bounced so she was out gobs of money in fees.
Sweet revenge.
Filing this in the "knowledge that could come handy one day" cabinet. Is it standard to be able to keep a check that's already bounced? I would have assumed that the bank would destroy it.
Nowadays, with some banks you can deposit cheques with the bank app on your phone, allowing you to "deposit" AND keep it. Just a thought.
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Lent $800 to an old boyfriend who was not going to be able to afford rent. Learned my lesson.
Recently, was asked to lend money to a fellow bridesmaid for parking. Both of her credit cards were maxed and she wasn't going to get paid until _whenever_. I paid the parking cost ($7? $10?) knowing I would never try to collect from her. I resented paying but also felt bad for her poor money management. To top it off, she later got a $75 ticket for not having paid for a long enough time in the parking spot. Made me see how poor money management can really spiral.
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Filing this in the "knowledge that could come handy one day" cabinet. Is it standard to be able to keep a check that's already bounced? I would have assumed that the bank would destroy it.
You can redeposit a bad check. You don't need additional authorization for a check written to you in the first place and which has not been cashed. I'm not sure if you can redeposit a bounced bounce, though. In business, redepositing a bounce is kind of routine. They can't tell you what's in an account, but they can sort of look at their crystal ball and give you a clue as to whether you should recash a check. I'm not sure if that's legal or in a gray area on the teller's part, but charging the person who GOT bounced a fee is ridiculous in the first place.
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This happened on my birthday in 1984 - I had gotten out of the Navy 18 months earlier, had gotten married in December, 1983, and finally had gotten a low-paying job in a town 25 miles away. (By low-paying, I mean I was making $3.50 an hour). Anyway, I got a call from work by my (now ex-)wife, saying that her sister was in jail for shoplifting and needed $100 in bail money. Yes, I was being tapped for a loan on my birthday. Being a newlywed and wanting to be an upright guy, I agreed, even though my weekly pay was $160. What galled me at the time was that their brother worked a very well-paying job at the time, but they wouldn't ask him. I don't know exactly why, but I have my suspicions.
Needless to say, I've never seen any dime of it back. I haven't spoken to ex-sister-in-law in at least a decade, and hope never to ever see her again.
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Money for booze and hookers, requested by my brother who'd run his SSI card dry mid-month. He said he did that every month, then stole stuff the rest of the month to get by. I asked him, well what about next month? What about this cycle you're asking me to support? He said blankly, "What cycle?". Er...no, just no.
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In my late teens, a friend hit me up for a loan. She had gotten behind paying a mobile phone bill, to the tune of a few hundred dollars. Naive me loaned her the money to help her get back on her feet (at least that was the pitch). Habits didn't change, and no repayments were forthcoming. I ended up getting my money back eventually, but only by relentlessly chasing the debt. Needless to say, the friendship didn't last.
The ironic thing - her parents were pretty well off (father is a judge). I should have known better.
At the end of the day, it was a very good lesson for me about money and friends/relations. Just don't do it, unless you are prepared to gift it, and not loan it.
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When I was in grad school, there was a guy who would say, "Hey, do you want to go get a smoothie?" or "Do you want to go grab lunch at the food carts?" When you got there with him, he would say, "Oh, by the way, can you loan me the money?" Fortunately his reputation spread quickly, so I knew to rebuff him.
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At the end of the day, it was a very good lesson for me about money and friends/relations. Just don't do it, unless you are prepared to gift it, and not loan it.
I remember loaning $1 for someone in middle school to buy a soda. He promised to pay me back the next day. Of course he didn't and then kept making up excuses, including saying, "My mom is sick." WTF, I let it go because it was a dollar. To me it was the principle more than anything else. Either way I learned a valuable lesson, namely that people can be real POS when it comes to their obligation and that I shouldn't expect people to follow their word or pay their obligations.
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This morning --
My daughter asked me for $5 to top up the $75 she needed, as today was the last day to buy graduation dinner / dance tickets at school (no debit). I offered to take her to the bank before school, but when I found out it was just $5 (the last $5 in my wallet), I just gave it to her.
As I was giving it to her, she asked if I had another $60 to pay back her friend who lent her money for a different ticket, about a month ago. WTF. I gave her a look and said "I think that would be a bad idea, don't you? I can take you to the bank..."...
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Money for booze and hookers, requested by my brother who'd run his SSI card dry mid-month. He said he did that every month, then stole stuff the rest of the month to get by. I asked him, well what about next month? What about this cycle you're asking me to support? He said blankly, "What cycle?". Er...no, just no.
That sounds like a promising career path - stealing stuff. Did he ever get into trouble?
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Money for booze and hookers, requested by my brother who'd run his SSI card dry mid-month. He said he did that every month, then stole stuff the rest of the month to get by. I asked him, well what about next month? What about this cycle you're asking me to support? He said blankly, "What cycle?". Er...no, just no.
That sounds like a promising career path - stealing stuff. Did he ever get into trouble?
I am probably a jerk, but I would be so tempted to say to this brother, "Gee, all I can spare this month is the taxes that I paid for my share of your SSI check."
Of course, I would never say this, but I would probably think it.
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^^ he would not understand your meaning^^
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^^ he would not understand your meaning^^
Indeed. A person would have to be an even bigger jerk and say: "I already paid my share of your expenses through the portion of my paycheck deducted for SSI." Which, come to think of it, is the sort of thing I myself might say one day. I think I'll put that phrase in my hat next time I need to say something sarcastic to a welfare recipient.
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Money for booze and hookers, requested by my brother who'd run his SSI card dry mid-month. He said he did that every month, then stole stuff the rest of the month to get by. I asked him, well what about next month? What about this cycle you're asking me to support? He said blankly, "What cycle?". Er...no, just no.
Sorry, I know this is tough love, but if I KNEW my brother was doing that to other people month after month, I'd turn his ass in.
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I guess I have the opposite story to tell. A friend of mine who is rather poor, through no fault of his own due to a medical condition, and his wife (who is stupidly spendy) had the misfortune that her Honda actually died.
He used to be a mechanic so he had been maintaining the vehicle but alas eventually time eats even a Honda.
Now being a smart guy he actually prepared for this scenario and put away about $1000 for a downpayment on a somewhat newer Honda. But that meant that they were still missing the last $3400 for a used car.
So he goes to the bank and asks to lend $3400 and gets told that the interest would be around 12-15%. I should at this point add that they have no debt, never paid a bill late and generally are stable people. They just don't have much income.
I actually got so pissed at that bank that I called my wife instantly and said that I was going loan him $3400 interest-free if she was ok with it. Turns out she was fine with it and him and I went to get the car.
Fast forward 12 months and the debt has been repaid in full, and it was even 6 months faster than we agreed on.
And even better, the car has been stable and working fine :)
Now if you want to do him a really good turn, see if you can report the loan and timely payments to the credit bureaus to improve his credit score.
I once lent a family member a five figure sum so that they could gift a new bell to their church. Utterly dumb in my opinion, but utterly reliable family member who quickly paid me back in full as agreed.
As the gift to the church counted as a gift to a charity, I made a tax claim on it and got back more tax than my family member would have, so some good came out of it.
You did not donate the bell money, as you were repaid; the tax deduction was not yours to take.
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I once lent a family member a five figure sum so that they could gift a new bell to their church. Utterly dumb in my opinion, but utterly reliable family member who quickly paid me back in full as agreed.
As the gift to the church counted as a gift to a charity, I made a tax claim on it and got back more tax than my family member would have, so some good came out of it.
You did not donate the bell money, as you were repaid; the tax deduction was not yours to take.
I was thinking the same thing as you, WTH. I hope this tale happened a long time ago, or that fp's income was so high it didn't spark any notice. Over a small amount ($100?) the donation must have a letter of verification from the charity.
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I once lent a family member a five figure sum so that they could gift a new bell to their church. Utterly dumb in my opinion, but utterly reliable family member who quickly paid me back in full as agreed.
As the gift to the church counted as a gift to a charity, I made a tax claim on it and got back more tax than my family member would have, so some good came out of it.
You did not donate the bell money, as you were repaid; the tax deduction was not yours to take.
I was thinking the same thing as you, WTH. I hope this tale happened a long time ago, or that fp's income was so high it didn't spark any notice. Over a small amount ($100?) the donation must have a letter of verification from the charity.
Technically in tax terms there were two gifts (one from me to charity, fully verified, and one from family member to me) in two different tax years, and it was all done entirely correctly: I did check at the time, specifically that the arrangement with my family member was legally a gift and did not qualify as a contract. (Also, yes, a very long time ago, way past the time for a case to be opened, and in relative terms the financial advantage was small. But satisfying, you know, given that I started earning in the UK in the 1970s and I've lived through long periods of paying high taxes on low income and this was the first deduction I could ever claim. So, perhaps my "not so dumb" bell?)
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I once lent a family member a five figure sum so that they could gift a new bell to their church. Utterly dumb in my opinion, but utterly reliable family member who quickly paid me back in full as agreed.
As the gift to the church counted as a gift to a charity, I made a tax claim on it and got back more tax than my family member would have, so some good came out of it.
You did not donate the bell money, as you were repaid; the tax deduction was not yours to take.
I was thinking the same thing as you, WTH. I hope this tale happened a long time ago, or that fp's income was so high it didn't spark any notice. Over a small amount ($100?) the donation must have a letter of verification from the charity.
Technically in tax terms there were two gifts (one from me to charity, fully verified, and one from family member to me) in two different tax years, and it was all done entirely correctly: I did check at the time, specifically that the arrangement with my family member was legally a gift and did not qualify as a contract. (Also, yes, a very long time ago, way past the time for a case to be opened, and in relative terms the financial advantage was small. But satisfying, you know, given that I started earning in the UK in the 1970s and I've lived through long periods of paying high taxes on low income and this was the first deduction I could ever claim. So, perhaps my "not so dumb" bell?)
"You make a gift if you give property (including money), or the use of or income from property, without expecting to receive something of at least equal value in return" - the IRS
So perhaps you aren't being clear in what you wrote but sure sounds like you were expecting to receive something of at least equal value in return. I just wouldn't want someone reading this thread to think they could take a deduction when they can't and get jammed up.
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Different rules applied, I'm not subject to the IRS. No tax advice to anyone else was implied by my post.
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My brother worked through a series of startups that didn't pan out, so he was out of work at three successive jobs after about 18 months each. Bad spending habits meant that they were in debt to begin with and each unemployment stint just made it worse. At the third layoff, the company that just laid him off got another round of venture capital, but not enough for him. So so the company stayed in business but didn't need him anymore. One of his benefits had been to buy stock options, but open severance from the company, he only had 30 days to buy them. So with no job, a looming bankruptcy that he still didn't see coming, and back taxes unpaid, he asked me for $7000 to buy options in a company that didn't even get enough capital to keep him employed.
5 years later, I asked him how the company was doing, but I already knew. Nowhere.
My brother is really smart - like weird smart. But he doesn't make good decisions financially and when I tried to explain to him why I thought investing in this company wasn't a good idea, he thought I was making a horrible decision.
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My FIL asked my DH for $13k so he wouldn't lose his house to foreclosure. DH said no. FIL borrowed it from DH's brother, he still lost his house and he never paid a cent of it back and that was a few years ago.
Fun, I'm living this at the moment, except they initially asked us to buy their house for them. They suggested that we could buy it from the bank for the original purchase price less all the payments they have made. It is an interest only mortgage, so not a penny has gone to repayment. They are now asking for money so that they can stay in the house. It never ends.
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Not a loan. I was asked by my manager to contribute a few hundred dollars for a farewell gift for a coworker who was retiring. But we're talking about dumb things, right? So what did they purchase?
A sheet of decorative stamps. With a price tag of a couple thousand dollars. That could not even be used to mail letters.
Apparently, the stamps were given at a dinner which cost each attendee another hundred dollars or so. I'm not actually sure because I ignore the email and made an excuse so I didn't have to attend the dinner.
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Money for booze and hookers, requested by my brother who'd run his SSI card dry mid-month. He said he did that every month, then stole stuff the rest of the month to get by. I asked him, well what about next month? What about this cycle you're asking me to support? He said blankly, "What cycle?". Er...no, just no.
That sounds like a promising career path - stealing stuff. Did he ever get into trouble?
I'm not sure, he'd been homeless for awhile and we'd lost track of him. He did get into trouble for stealing, as a teen though, among other things.
I am probably a jerk, but I would be so tempted to say to this brother, "Gee, all I can spare this month is the taxes that I paid for my share of your SSI check."
Of course, I would never say this, but I would probably think it.
I'd thought of that many times, but was so stunned when he showed up asking for money that it didn't come to mind. We hadn't seen him for a couple years, and there he was one day sleeping on our lawn when my husband came home.
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Money for booze and hookers, requested by my brother who'd run his SSI card dry mid-month. He said he did that every month, then stole stuff the rest of the month to get by. I asked him, well what about next month? What about this cycle you're asking me to support? He said blankly, "What cycle?". Er...no, just no.
Sorry, I know this is tough love, but if I KNEW my brother was doing that to other people month after month, I'd turn his ass in.
I'd like to turn him in, if not for that, for other things. He skipped out on a lot of bills totaling tens of thousands of dollars, and also owed rent to our parents. He has nothing and is currently living with his daughter many states away. That's probably less expensive to the taxpayers than jail. Hope it lasts.
Our folks should have done the tough love thing decades ago. But no, they kept bailing him out, giving him chance after chance.
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My brother asked to borrow 1k...to fund his bankruptcy
Yup, I gave it to him, and surprisingly, he paid it back.
Key word. You gave.
Never lend to family or friends. If their need is real, give without expectations. Never be afraid to say NO.
I've loaned money 3 times in my life. Every time I consider it a gift (though I don't tell the borrower that). In fact, I frequently forget that they owe me money!
-I loaned a coworker $600 (Whaaa? - making over 100K a year and you can't pay your bills? smh), she did pay me back.
-I loaned my BIL 3K for tuition. A couple months after the divorce he emailed me the money that I had forgotten that I gave him!
-I currently have a loan to my sister 15K for tuition. She is a super hard worker with high grades (I'm receiving her mail right now so I've seen the transcripts) and even if I never get it back, I'm glad to help her get back on her feet after her divorce.
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When young and dumb I loaned a girl about $450 for a new mobile phone. Obviously never saw a dime. Did I learn my lesson? Hell no... because like a year later I co-signed a loan with a different girl for a new mattress, and 3 months later promptly got a call from collections because she had not payed anything.
Also had my parents ask to borrow a few hundred dollars here or there for years while living in a 2000+ sq ft house and watching HBO on their cable TV. Finally I handed them $500, said "this is it, make it count" and flatly stated it would never happen again. Our relationship has improved dramatically since that point, as I no longer cringe and avoid phone calls believing they are just going to ask for money. Now we can hang out without me becoming infuriated by their wasteful spending. I am pretty sure they ask my siblings for money sometimes, but that is their business, not mine.
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A former GF drunkenly drove her car into a meridian, and ended up needing a $1000 repair she couldn't afford... Since we were together at the time, and she had no way to pay for the repairs(and needed the car to get to work)... I lent her the money. To my surprise, after she got a DUI, thousands of lawyer fees, fines, etc later, and well after our break up... She actually paid me back the money in full.
The only loans I've ever made that have gone bad are ones I have done out of necessity... Loaned a friend/roommate a month's rent as I didn't want to search for a new roommate, and I've never been one to live with randoms. He moved out a few months later never paying back the rent I covered. I ended up just living in the place on my own for 6 months after this, so it wasn't really much of a loss.
Also essentially loaned my neighbour at the time $1000 so we could finish our mutual fence. He never paid it back. But in all fairness, I was fully prepared to never see that money, as that fence was easily worth the full cost to me as I needed it for the dog. The dumb part on my behalf though, was when I bought all the materials, I bought the materials for his gates as well.
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Ok . . I corrected the title.
Just thought of another good one. Co-worker asked me to lend her money to replace the carpet in her house . . that she ripped out knowing she didn't have money to replace it. The best part is, within a couple months of asking, she took out a 401k loan to get a boob job. Of course, she'd rather I pay for her carpet! Needless to say, I said "No".
Did you pay for a Brazilian?
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Anyone ever seen the movie A Bronx Tale? It's a quality flick. Robert DeNiro directed, his first (and basically only) time as a director. You should watch it if you haven't seen it.
Anyway, there's a part in the movie where the young protagonist briefly yells at and chases someone who owes him $20. The lesson from his mob boss mentor is that now the guy is out of his life for $20. He never has to see or talk to him again, so it's a good deal.
https://youtu.be/I3L1Tokh3Pg?t=44s
This popped into my mind multiple times when reading multiple posts about loaning small amounts of money and not getting paid back.
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I ran into an old friend in the street not so long ago, hadn't seen him in years. I didn't actually recognise him because he'd lost so much weight. He used to be the big fat happy party boy of our extremely middle class little group. Anyhoo, turns out that he's just come out of prison for drug offences. He was very open, gone back to live with his mother, has a job etc etc, starting over. So we swapped cell numbers. That night he calls me wanting borrow $100 cash, in $5 notes....... NOPE. Haven't heard from him again.
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Call me a contrarian, but taking out a loan to pay for a boob job could fall under the "borrow money cheaply to invest" category under the right circumstances.
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My alcoholic uncle who I hadn't spoken to in years once asked me to borrow $500 for bail money for his alcoholic girlfriend's daughter who was arrested for a drug offense. I had never met GF or daughter, although another uncle had so I knew they actually existed. I lied and said I didn't have it. Inside my head I wondered if there was any possible scenario where I would ever see a cent of that $500 again.
Never lie. Change your answer to "I don't have it to lend". Now you don't lie and you don't lose money.
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Never lie. Change your answer to "I don't have it to lend". Now you don't lie and you don't lose money.
I can foresee where this phrase may be very useful. Thanks!
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I'm a really slow learner.
2004 - 22yo. I'm in the Marine Corps Reserves and a few of us were flying back home from NC after a deployment. We had to personally pay to for our extra bags to fly back with all our gear. We were supposed to get reimbursed, but only up to a certain amount per person. I loan a buddy around $200 to ship his bags back because he didn't have any $ in his bank account. But I had to put the receipt in his name because I maxed out my allowance to ship my own gear back. I never got paid back.
2004 or 2005 - In college. A classmate (I went to a relatively expensive private school) was behind on his tuition payments. I loan him around $900. He drops out of school a few weeks later and I never hear from him again.
2006 - My best friend is engaged to a girl who lives in WA, half way across the country. He wants to move there for a few months to remodel the house she just bought and asks for me to loan him about $20k to pay for materials and his living expenses. Why on earth would someone even consider that. He was and still is like a brother to me. I lived rent free on his couch for about 9 months while in college. He helped me a ton with my dad in 2005/2006 when my dad was going down a huge spiral of ruining his life with alcohol. We spent lots of Friday and Saturday nights pulling my dad out of bars. We fixed up my dad's house to sell to keep my dad from getting foreclosed on. That was a ton of work. My friend's family life was also pretty messy and I think he just wanted to get out of town and try to build a productive relationship with this girl. He and the girl ended up breaking up within a year though. He actually made decent efforts to pay me back for a couple years but he had a lot of family problems. Two of his siblings had addiction problems and all the associated legal/financial problems that ensue. He helped them both with treatment programs. He was the stable person in the entire family. After several years I just told him to forget about paying me the rest back. In total I ended up getting about $12k back from him.
I will never loan $ again. I might give some $ to a close relative in the right situation, but never a loan.
I've been an even bigger sucker than this, but all told before I wised up, I've probably lost $20K to "loans" to friends. Anything for family, I've considered a gift and that has been only once.
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I co-signed a loan for needed dental work for a 'friend'. Ended up paying collections a settlement 6 months later and having to explain the poor choice to multiple lenders in the years to follow....dumb, dumb, dumb
"Lent" the needed money for a plane ticket and a deposit for a cheap apartment so that my brother in law could get a professional job and move his wife and daughter from several states away. We paid for the ticket directly, and handed him cash for the rest. I don't regret it (we knew there was a possibility that we wouldn't see the money), but we only got about 300ish dollars out of that 900 or so we lent.....hasn't been mentioned in about a year now. We have let it go.
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Anyone ever seen the movie A Bronx Tale? It's a quality flick. Robert DeNiro directed, his first (and basically only) time as a director. You should watch it if you haven't seen it.
Anyway, there's a part in the movie where the young protagonist briefly yells at and chases someone who owes him $20. The lesson from his mob boss mentor is that now the guy is out of his life for $20. He never has to see or talk to him again, so it's a good deal.
https://youtu.be/I3L1Tokh3Pg?t=44s
This popped into my mind multiple times when reading multiple posts about loaning small amounts of money and not getting paid back.
Exactly! If you loan someone $20 and never see him again, it was worth it.
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I have a happier story than most...well, happy in some ways.
Some relatives fell into very hard times financially, through no fault of their own (other than perhaps some naivete, but the thief is in prison now). They were VERY stressed about some large bills that were coming due. These are good people who are very frugal and have done a lot for us (just not financially), so we didn't hesitate to gift them $10,000. They were in tears when they saw the check from us. They refused to accept it as a gift, but they did accept it as a loan. I didn't keep track of amounts (because in my mind, this was still a gift), but over the next year or so, they gave us checks in varying thousands of dollars, so I assume they paid us back every penny. Pride simply wouldn't let them do otherwise.
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Wow, I'm really surprised by these stories. I'm interested to hear more, although I don't have anything juicy.
The only time I can recall ever being asked to lend someone money was about 1.5 yrs ago. A former coworker, who I hadn't spoken to in 5+ years, contacts me on Facebook to ask if I can loan him $50 so he can buy work clothes for a new job he's starting. It really seems like he's trying to turn his life around. I respect his former GF, who has two of his kids, and don't mind taking a chance to put him in a position to make her life a bit easier.
Well, I gave him the $50, and heard back from him several times over the next couple of days, as he said he would have the money to pay me back after a few shifts (it was a restaurant server job). Then he stopped responding. Every few months I send him a message asking if he's got the $50 yet. I think I'll send another one today.
It might be fun posting his original request on Facebook and then ask his Facebook friends to
gode him into paying the money that you lent him in good faith.
If your lucky you will be un-friended!
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Wow, I'm really surprised by these stories. I'm interested to hear more, although I don't have anything juicy.
The only time I can recall ever being asked to lend someone money was about 1.5 yrs ago. A former coworker, who I hadn't spoken to in 5+ years, contacts me on Facebook to ask if I can loan him $50 so he can buy work clothes for a new job he's starting. It really seems like he's trying to turn his life around. I respect his former GF, who has two of his kids, and don't mind taking a chance to put him in a position to make her life a bit easier.
Well, I gave him the $50, and heard back from him several times over the next couple of days, as he said he would have the money to pay me back after a few shifts (it was a restaurant server job). Then he stopped responding. Every few months I send him a message asking if he's got the $50 yet. I think I'll send another one today.
It might be fun posting his original request on Facebook and then ask his Facebook friends to
gode him into paying the money that you lent him in good faith.
If your lucky you will be un-friended!
Nah. As others have mentioned, I'm fine with paying $50 for him to not contact me again. However, if he does contact me, hopefully it's about paying me back :)
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Oh man. Where to start...
Senior year of college a "friend" (one of those college friends who drinks at your house and watches TV, but is not really particularly close) was too lazy to find a real spot so parked in a reserved spot at our apartment complex to hang out. It got towed and he needed $300 to get it back, but didn't have it. None of my roommates was volunteering so I offered to pay it, and he would just pay me back in two weeks. Never heard from him again. This was about 3 months before graduation so I actually never even saw him. Felt I got a bit of revenge in that I posted about the whole ordeal on Facebook (the only time I've ever posted about any personal drama), so all our friends ended up finding out about it, and few if any of them have talked to him since. It's like, really dude? Was it worth burning bridges with a dozen friends for $300? Terrible decision.
Shortly after college I was living with my dad (rent free to be fair, although i slept on a futon in the living room for two years), and he needed help with rent and leasing a new car. I loaned him $4,000 and got it back in a little over a year, although it impacted our relationship, and I vowed not to lend money to anyone again. In retrospect I may have been too hard on him, as the loan could have just been not paid back and used as my "rent". However he was very bad with money amongst other problems and making probably triple what I was at the time, plus I had students loans. I was bitter about it.
A couple years later dad was visiting Eastern Europe (where he lives now) and all his bank accounts got frozen I guess because it looked like fraud to the banks? Dad has been so bad with money that he's cut up all his credit cards, so this was a big crisis. I lent him $1,000 as this seemed like a real emergency, and he paid me back promptly after the trip was over. No interest charged.
Then last year mom got married and 48 hours before the wedding (she has no money and this wedding cost $30k, paid for mostly by her now husband) that some of the things she was obligated to pay for she couldn't afford. Can't disappoint mom on wedding night right? I lent her ~$4,000, and she's paying me back now (should take a year or so) with $1,000 interest. Interest is a bit high but IMO helps her feel accountable for the poor decision and keeps a similar payment from going to some sort of payday loan company or other backchannel. Of course I can't tell her husband about it, and he still doesn't know that I paid for much of "her portion" of the wedding.
So... I believe in not lending money to friends/family, but it's hard to practice it? I definitely wouldn't lend to an acquaintance, and only someone "attached" to me when I think they absolutely need it and are willing to sign a contract with interest.
I have also gotten the diapers scam. Guy on the street says he has a new baby and it's hungry and needs formula from the corner bodega. I agree and start walking with him. As we're walking I ask him how much it is: $14. I stop dead in my tracks and say no. He then asks if I can give anything and I suppose I let him win, I gave him $3 from my wallet. Found out later that the whole thing is a popular scam. Sad, but it'd be really hard for me to envision helping someone on the street at all now.
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Money for booze and hookers, requested by my brother who'd run his SSI card dry mid-month. He said he did that every month, then stole stuff the rest of the month to get by. I asked him, well what about next month? What about this cycle you're asking me to support? He said blankly, "What cycle?". Er...no, just no.
Sheesh. That may be the saddest one in the thread.
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Former friend asked me to loan him $1200. This, when I was a part timer making $9.50/hour. I still had a healthy savings account. He was full-time, making at least $45,000/yr, and so did his wife. He needed help paying his mortgage, because apparently he'd been paying his mother's mortgage. He promised to pay me back within two weeks when his 401k loan came in, and I agreed. To his credit, I did get paid back promptly, however... I handed him the check and he immediately invited me to go out for Chinese food with his family... his treat. (I know for a fact that if his family would stop eating out, they could have easily paid their mortgage. Think 4 people eating out at least twice a day, quite often three times with extra gas station snack runs thrown in there.)
...I decided to never lend him money again.
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This one wasnt from me(my sister knows better) but my sister asked my parents and my grandma for money for gas to get to a town an hour away because she claimed her husbands dad was in the hospital because he had a heart attack. Found out the next day that they got money from both my parents and my grandma and his dad was not in the hospital and had not had a heart attack.
This sounds exactly like something my brother would do. People might think I'm a jerk because I will let him sell plasma if he needs the gas $ to drive to my parents' house, but if he ever asks for money you have no idea if it's going straight to the Budweiser Corp or what.
I will say the best $3 I ever spent was when he asked to borrow money for cigarettes. I said I'd lend him the $3 but if he never paid me back, I would never lend him any money again. That was a worthwhile investment, as it was about 18 years ago and he has never asked for $ since! At one point, a bailbondsman or whoever showed up at my parents' house looking for him, and said that someone had put up their house as collateral for his bond. Those poor, poor people. I hope they didn't lose their house but I wouldn't bail my brother out for $5, and neither would anyone else in the family.
The best comeback I've had to people asking for $ was once when I was in a store parking lot, a woman came up with some sob story about needing to get a taxi to the airport because her boyfriend had ditched her with no way to get there and she had all but the $7 it cost. Could I give her $7? I happily explained that a public bus went right to the airport from a bus stop very close to the store, which meant she could already get to the airport as well as probably get a snack there with the leftover money she'd already collected! I knew this was true because I had TAKEN that bus to the airport before, and knew how much bus fare vs taxi fare was to the airport from there. I'm sure the money was going for drugs or some such. Maybe she was being trafficked or whatever which is a shame, but the story was bullshit. If she were truly desperate, she'd have been thankful for the suggestion.
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Not me, but ... a lifelong close friend of my mother's was married to a man who might have had a nice stable career in middle management if he'd had any insight into his own intellectual ability and business sense, but who dared to dream of greater things. They lived high and boasted higher. He was going to go far and he didn't care whose body he walked over to get there. He left his middle management post in an agricultural supplies company in his early forties to set up a business in direct competition with his former employer. Then one day he rolled up at my door, invited himself in, announced that he was now a financial advisor, and tried to sell us products. I was pissed that I'd come home from work to find his Jaguar occupying our entire driveway (which had room for four cars, but he'd done the parking equivalent of manspreading) and sent him packing. Besides, he and his wife had two timeshares. Even in the early 1990s, I wasn't going to take financial advice from someone who had timeshares and tried to pretend they were a good investment.
I heard later that he'd left the finance firm and become an independent financial advisor. And then my mother 'phoned me in horror telling me that when they'd met he'd taken my father, who had just retired, aside and asked, man to man, for a loan to invest in his company. Something about broadening the scope of products he could offer clients, apparently. Dad, whose attitude to money is that you do a job, take your pay, hand it over to your wife, and are given some pocket money, actually thought it was a joke and came back with a wisecrack. Next time, he took my mother aside. Having also been on the receiving end of his attempts to sell financial products, and being quite financially astute, Mum took great delight in saying that she was terribly sorry, all their money was tied up in long term savings and investments.
We learned later that by this point he was pretending to go out to work but didn't actually have a job any more, and was borrowing to maintain the façade. He had borrowed from his sister, people he played golf with, his own son, and his daughter-in-law's family. He was counting on an inheritance from his wife's mother solving all his problems. The old lady outlived him by a few months and his widow was able to use the inheritance to pay back these loans and start to scrape her life back together after being left dependent on the goodwill of her children.
Sad, but at the same time almost karmic.
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The best comeback I've had to people asking for $ was once when I was in a store parking lot, a woman came up with some sob story about needing to get a taxi to the airport because her boyfriend had ditched her with no way to get there and she had all but the $7 it cost. Could I give her $7? I happily explained that a public bus went right to the airport from a bus stop very close to the store, which meant she could already get to the airport as well as probably get a snack there with the leftover money she'd already collected! I knew this was true because I had TAKEN that bus to the airport before, and knew how much bus fare vs taxi fare was to the airport from there. I'm sure the money was going for drugs or some such. Maybe she was being trafficked or whatever which is a shame, but the story was bullshit. If she were truly desperate, she'd have been thankful for the suggestion.
I have a similar story. I was walking downtown when a man approached me asking for $2 for bus fare. I pulled out my wallet and handed him a bus token. He looked at it and asked, "What is this?" I replied, "It's a bus token. You put it in the fare box, and the bus driver lets you ride the bus." Then I walked away.
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The best comeback I've had to people asking for $ was once when I was in a store parking lot, a woman came up with some sob story about needing to get a taxi to the airport because her boyfriend had ditched her with no way to get there and she had all but the $7 it cost. Could I give her $7? I happily explained that a public bus went right to the airport from a bus stop very close to the store, which meant she could already get to the airport as well as probably get a snack there with the leftover money she'd already collected! I knew this was true because I had TAKEN that bus to the airport before, and knew how much bus fare vs taxi fare was to the airport from there. I'm sure the money was going for drugs or some such. Maybe she was being trafficked or whatever which is a shame, but the story was bullshit. If she were truly desperate, she'd have been thankful for the suggestion.
I have a similar story. I was walking downtown when a man approached me asking for $2 for bus fare. I pulled out my wallet and handed him a bus token. He looked at it and asked, "What is this?" I replied, "It's a bus token. You put it in the fare box, and the bus driver lets you ride the bus." Then I walked away.
We have the electronic cards that you scan to get on the bus. I always offer to wait with them and scan them onto the bus, but as of yet, nobody has taken me up on my offer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Money for a down payment on a condo, because a relative never trained their aggressive dog and no landlord will take them.
Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
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Money for a down payment on a condo, because a relative never trained their aggressive dog and no landlord will take them.
As in "I'm not responsible enough to train my pet or save my own money but you can trust me to be a responsible custodian for thousands of dollars"
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The best comeback I've had to people asking for $ was once when I was in a store parking lot, a woman came up with some sob story about needing to get a taxi to the airport because her boyfriend had ditched her with no way to get there and she had all but the $7 it cost. Could I give her $7? I happily explained that a public bus went right to the airport from a bus stop very close to the store, which meant she could already get to the airport as well as probably get a snack there with the leftover money she'd already collected! I knew this was true because I had TAKEN that bus to the airport before, and knew how much bus fare vs taxi fare was to the airport from there. I'm sure the money was going for drugs or some such. Maybe she was being trafficked or whatever which is a shame, but the story was bullshit. If she were truly desperate, she'd have been thankful for the suggestion.
I have a similar story. I was walking downtown when a man approached me asking for $2 for bus fare. I pulled out my wallet and handed him a bus token. He looked at it and asked, "What is this?" I replied, "It's a bus token. You put it in the fare box, and the bus driver lets you ride the bus." Then I walked away.
We have the electronic cards that you scan to get on the bus. I always offer to wait with them and scan them onto the bus, but as of yet, nobody has taken me up on my offer. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
A few weeks ago I was getting gas and a lady pulled up at the pump next to me but instead of getting out of her car she rolled down the window and said she needed gas to get home and could I please give her a few dollars. I said no, I didn't have any cash, and her reply was "well you could always use your card to fill me up." I was so taken aback I didn't even know what to say! I just shook my head and she sat there for a second looking angry, and then drove off! Since she was willing to have me put the gas directly in her car I guess she did need gas, but if you need gas why would you drive off again, instead of staying and either calling someone to come help you, or asking other people? This is why 99% of the time I only get gas at Costco - I've never been asked for money while at Costco. Unfortunately that week was out of the ordinary and I got a bit off schedule, so I needed gas when it wasn't a Costco day.
Later I actually felt bad about not helping her, but my SO helped put it into perspective and pointed out that her lack of planning did not mean that it was a complete stranger's problem to deal with.
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Money for a down payment on a condo, because a relative never trained their aggressive dog and no landlord will take them.
As in "I'm not responsible enough to train my pet or save my own money but you can trust me to be a responsible custodian for thousands of dollars"
Bingo, along with an unhealthy dose of "you have something I don't [because we worked and saved], so you owe me."
Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk
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Recently I ran into a situation like that. For sending money to people I despise Western Union with a passion. A friend of a friend was asked to come down to help her with some housework due to her bad hip. He promised to come provided he was sent $20 via Western Union. She asked me to do it since we're friends of long standing and she has never ever failed to repay me when money changes hands between us alone. This particular friend of a friend is known to be unreliable and seems to use Western Union as his only way to obtain funds. Presently he's in a shelter due to his own stupidity (long story). So for her I went after work to the nearest Western Union sent the $20 and told him point blank I despise him and was only doing it for her due to our long friendship. Not surprisingly he never showed up, she reimbursed me out of guilt for his wrongdoind though I am still irritated on general principle.
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Recently I ran into a situation like that. For sending money to people I despise Western Union with a passion. A friend of a friend was asked to come down to help her with some housework due to her bad hip. He promised to come provided he was sent $20 via Western Union. She asked me to do it since we're friends of long standing and she has never ever failed to repay me when money changes hands between us alone. This particular friend of a friend is known to be unreliable and seems to use Western Union as his only way to obtain funds. Presently he's in a shelter due to his own stupidity (long story). So for her I went after work to the nearest Western Union sent the $20 and told him point blank I despise him and was only doing it for her due to our long friendship. Not surprisingly he never showed up, she reimbursed me out of guilt for his wrongdoind though I am still irritated on general principle.
You threw out $20 of a friend's money in order to secure an opportunity to be hostile to a homeless person?
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I am not hostile because he's homeless. I am hostile to this one only because of the way he lives his life. The friend in question offered for him to come stay with her while he gets his act together. That offer he promised he'd take her up on yet has not shown up to the house. I also do not like seeing her hurt due to his being unable to keep his word yet again.
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PTF.
I've been lucky and blessed. My minor contribution.
When dating my now DH, we were in college and found an item he wanted to get for his aunt (Disney snow globe, expensive for college kids). His debit card didn't work, so I paid for it. I figured it was a good test to see if he was trust worthy. Paid me back the next day. 17 years later, the aunt still loves that globe.
LV
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My gf's car window got smashed, and someone grabbed my backpack--which contained my laptop--out of it. My gf insisted that she buy me a replacement, so I set aside the money she spent as a CD with my own bank in case we ever broke up. It didn't work; we're married now.
I have no idea what a break up with an asset like that would even look like.
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I still remember when I was in 5th grade a classmate borrowed $1 to buy something during a field trip. He promised to pay me back the next day and for the next year kept making excuses. At one point he mentioned that his mom was "sick," as a reason not to pay back the $1. I kept hounded him not for the dollar, but just to see how he would react.
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Sounds like pretty cheap entertainment
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I lent my friend $200 some years ago and he did not like having to pay me back but I kept hounding him on it until I got it. He borrowed money from other people and even did payday loans after that but never asked me for money since I was so aggressive with getting my money back after he didnt pay me when he said he would.
My wife has "lent" her brother or other family members money in the past but she says she would never ask for it back because she knows they wont try to pay her back very quickly if at all. This also means no one has asked for money in a long time so I think we've set ourselves up well according to the "Bronx tale" theory.
I appreciated the most from this thread, reading the line "My money is tied up in investments and long-term savings" because it is not a lie, not judgey, and also a small glimpse into how you are living, should the borrower ever feel like asking how to save and replicate MMM ideas.
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I remembered one. A woman at our church asked for donations for her "mission" trip to Africa.
It was really a safari trip for her plus maybe 6 days in Uganda with one of the missionaries who is a son of another member in the congregation. This mission is ok, but more because it is set up as a working locally run co-op business where the organizer only takes living expenses and modest stipend, and does not help a lot of people because of the nature of it. i.e., it is not registered or funded as a charity in any way, and there would be nothing for her to do other than tour it and learn about it.
I think she heard rumours that a mission trip can generate a lot of donations to offset your costs, and she jumped on it. Our church body does not tend to send any people to start missions anywhere.
A relative badmouthed about it behind her back, "she wants us to fund her personal trip"... it got back to her and caused a big flare up. But the next thing I know is that she stopped asking for money. She gets back in two weeks, so I hope to find out how it went and if she got off the tourist track.
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I remembered one. A woman at our church asked for donations for her "mission" trip to Africa.
It was really a safari trip for her plus maybe 6 days in Uganda with one of the missionaries who is a son of another member in the congregation. This mission is ok, but more because it is set up as a working locally run co-op business where the organizer only takes living expenses and modest stipend, and does not help a lot of people because of the nature of it. i.e., it is not registered or funded as a charity in any way, and there would be nothing for her to do other than tour it and learn about it.
I think she heard rumours that a mission trip can generate a lot of donations to offset your costs, and she jumped on it. Our church body does not tend to send any people to start missions anywhere.
A relative badmouthed about it behind her back, "she wants us to fund her personal trip"... it got back to her and caused a big flare up. But the next thing I know is that she stopped asking for money. She gets back in two weeks, so I hope to find out how it went and if she got off the tourist track.
Ah, the miracle of the mission-cation. Disaster relief tourism is also popular. I frequently badmouth such operations, but I do it to the face of the people involved just so I can see their reactions.
Not all disaster relief travel is stupid. I've got a cousin with a doctorate in nursing who does relief missions: on her vacation time, she piggybacks on MSF operations and through her church. She's got the credentials to actually educate the people she meets and routinely sets up nurse training while she's in-country and converts illiterate field hands into competent hospital staff. She's a hardcore badass and I salute her for it often. But she also doesn't solicit for donations to fund that work, because she's got funding out the wazoo already. That's not what I mean by relief tourism. I mean the stuff like in this following anecdote.
Some years ago, following a big disaster in the Philippines, I got hit up by a daughter of a family friend (our families are still friends... kind of...) for a donation to send her and some other young volunteers from her church group to Manila to help with a rescue operation. Now these are high school and college aged students with big hearts but not a lot of skill at logistics. So I put a velvet glove on my scythe and went Socratic. The conversation went roughly like this.
Me: So, they need to rebuild roads, bridges, houses and such. Are you a civil engineer?
Kid: No.
Me: Plumber? Electrician? Even a first-year apprentice could do some useful work getting power and plumbing back on-line.
Kid: No.
Me: OK, do you have a background in construction? Can you drive a forklift, maybe, or operate a bulldozer to help get the roads open?
Kid: No.
Me: All right, maybe you can work in the hospital. You're too young to be a medical doctor, but do you have nursing credentials? A bit of clinical study, maybe?
Kid: No.
Me: Do you know any Tagalog? Like if someone came up to you and said (here I inserted a Tagalog phrase meaning "I need a drink of water"), could you tell what that person was trying to say?
Kid: No. What's Tagalog?
Me: It's the local language. Very few of the people you're trying to help speak English.
A few other questions established that none of the other young people going on the mission had the credentials I was asking about either. So I told the kid that as much as I respected her desire to help, I couldn't support the plan in its current form because it would do more harm than good. In a disaster zone they'd be unable to do anything really useful that the locals couldn't do better, and in the meantime they'd be in the way, vulnerable to danger, and consuming food and housing resources that could instead be given to local people who had lost their homes. But if they were willing to collect for a real and experienced relief group like MSF or the Red Cross, I'd be willing to donate (and I said a number that, for me, was a sizable but affordable amount). Sometime later I heard from the parents that the trip had been cancelled. They never did collect for a real relief group, so I ended up donating elsewhere.
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I remembered one. A woman at our church asked for donations for her "mission" trip to Africa.
It was really a safari trip for her plus maybe 6 days in Uganda with one of the missionaries who is a son of another member in the congregation. This mission is ok, but more because it is set up as a working locally run co-op business where the organizer only takes living expenses and modest stipend, and does not help a lot of people because of the nature of it. i.e., it is not registered or funded as a charity in any way, and there would be nothing for her to do other than tour it and learn about it.
I think she heard rumours that a mission trip can generate a lot of donations to offset your costs, and she jumped on it. Our church body does not tend to send any people to start missions anywhere.
A relative badmouthed about it behind her back, "she wants us to fund her personal trip"... it got back to her and caused a big flare up. But the next thing I know is that she stopped asking for money. She gets back in two weeks, so I hope to find out how it went and if she got off the tourist track.
Ah, the miracle of the mission-cation. Disaster relief tourism is also popular. I frequently badmouth such operations, but I do it to the face of the people involved just so I can see their reactions.
Not all disaster relief travel is stupid. I've got a cousin with a doctorate in nursing who does relief missions: on her vacation time, she piggybacks on MSF operations and through her church. She's got the credentials to actually educate the people she meets and routinely sets up nurse training while she's in-country and converts illiterate field hands into competent hospital staff. She's a hardcore badass and I salute her for it often. But she also doesn't solicit for donations to fund that work, because she's got funding out the wazoo already. That's not what I mean by relief tourism. I mean the stuff like in this following anecdote.
Some years ago, following a big disaster in the Philippines, I got hit up by a daughter of a family friend (our families are still friends... kind of...) for a donation to send her and some other young volunteers from her church group to Manila to help with a rescue operation. Now these are high school and college aged students with big hearts but not a lot of skill at logistics. So I put a velvet glove on my scythe and went Socratic. The conversation went roughly like this.
Me: So, they need to rebuild roads, bridges, houses and such. Are you a civil engineer?
Kid: No.
Me: Plumber? Electrician? Even a first-year apprentice could do some useful work getting power and plumbing back on-line.
Kid: No.
Me: OK, do you have a background in construction? Can you drive a forklift, maybe, or operate a bulldozer to help get the roads open?
Kid: No.
Me: All right, maybe you can work in the hospital. You're too young to be a medical doctor, but do you have nursing credentials? A bit of clinical study, maybe?
Kid: No.
Me: Do you know any Tagalog? Like if someone came up to you and said (here I inserted a Tagalog phrase meaning "I need a drink of water"), could you tell what that person was trying to say?
Kid: No. What's Tagalog?
Me: It's the local language. Very few of the people you're trying to help speak English.
A few other questions established that none of the other young people going on the mission had the credentials I was asking about either. So I told the kid that as much as I respected her desire to help, I couldn't support the plan in its current form because it would do more harm than good. In a disaster zone they'd be unable to do anything really useful that the locals couldn't do better, and in the meantime they'd be in the way, vulnerable to danger, and consuming food and housing resources that could instead be given to local people who had lost their homes. But if they were willing to collect for a real and experienced relief group like MSF or the Red Cross, I'd be willing to donate (and I said a number that, for me, was a sizable but affordable amount). Sometime later I heard from the parents that the trip had been cancelled. They never did collect for a real relief group, so I ended up donating elsewhere.
My honest, uncensored opinion is that some people go on mission trips as glorified vacations. It's especially telling when they don't even know any of the local languages of the places they are traveling to and have no useful skills to help anyone. Their only useful skill is posting selfies and photos of their trip on Facebook.
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Our Costco is in a good area, but the panhandlers must go out of there way to show up there. The worst one, though, was when I was putting my groceries away once and a Tahoe pulls up. Two girls in their twenties. Driver rolls down the window, says she needs money for gas. Both she and her friend are drinking out of soda cups from Chipotle. I could smell the burritos, too.
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Ah, the miracle of the mission-cation. Disaster relief tourism is also popular. I frequently badmouth such operations, but I do it to the face of the people involved just so I can see their reactions.
...
My honest, uncensored opinion is that some people go on mission trips as glorified vacations. It's especially telling when they don't even know any of the local languages of the places they are traveling to and have no useful skills to help anyone. Their only useful skill is posting selfies and photos of their trip on Facebook.
TGS: love the use of Tagalog in your story.
Can I add in that I also hate people who want others to pay for their "experiences". As in: sponsor me to do a parachute jump on behalf of X charity. Or run a Marathon on behalf of Y charity (you are more likely to get a place in the fashionable marathons if you are "running for charity"). Or sponsor me to save turtles on this tropical island.
Give me a break.
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I remembered one. A woman at our church asked for donations for her "mission" trip to Africa.
It was really a safari trip for her plus maybe 6 days in Uganda with one of the missionaries who is a son of another member in the congregation. This mission is ok, but more because it is set up as a working locally run co-op business where the organizer only takes living expenses and modest stipend, and does not help a lot of people because of the nature of it. i.e., it is not registered or funded as a charity in any way, and there would be nothing for her to do other than tour it and learn about it.
I think she heard rumours that a mission trip can generate a lot of donations to offset your costs, and she jumped on it. Our church body does not tend to send any people to start missions anywhere.
A relative badmouthed about it behind her back, "she wants us to fund her personal trip"... it got back to her and caused a big flare up. But the next thing I know is that she stopped asking for money. She gets back in two weeks, so I hope to find out how it went and if she got off the tourist track.
Ah, the miracle of the mission-cation. Disaster relief tourism is also popular. I frequently badmouth such operations, but I do it to the face of the people involved just so I can see their reactions.
Not all disaster relief travel is stupid. I've got a cousin with a doctorate in nursing who does relief missions: on her vacation time, she piggybacks on MSF operations and through her church. She's got the credentials to actually educate the people she meets and routinely sets up nurse training while she's in-country and converts illiterate field hands into competent hospital staff. She's a hardcore badass and I salute her for it often. But she also doesn't solicit for donations to fund that work, because she's got funding out the wazoo already. That's not what I mean by relief tourism. I mean the stuff like in this following anecdote.
Some years ago, following a big disaster in the Philippines, I got hit up by a daughter of a family friend (our families are still friends... kind of...) for a donation to send her and some other young volunteers from her church group to Manila to help with a rescue operation. Now these are high school and college aged students with big hearts but not a lot of skill at logistics. So I put a velvet glove on my scythe and went Socratic. The conversation went roughly like this.
Me: So, they need to rebuild roads, bridges, houses and such. Are you a civil engineer?
Kid: No.
Me: Plumber? Electrician? Even a first-year apprentice could do some useful work getting power and plumbing back on-line.
Kid: No.
Me: OK, do you have a background in construction? Can you drive a forklift, maybe, or operate a bulldozer to help get the roads open?
Kid: No.
Me: All right, maybe you can work in the hospital. You're too young to be a medical doctor, but do you have nursing credentials? A bit of clinical study, maybe?
Kid: No.
Me: Do you know any Tagalog? Like if someone came up to you and said (here I inserted a Tagalog phrase meaning "I need a drink of water"), could you tell what that person was trying to say?
Kid: No. What's Tagalog?
Me: It's the local language. Very few of the people you're trying to help speak English.
A few other questions established that none of the other young people going on the mission had the credentials I was asking about either. So I told the kid that as much as I respected her desire to help, I couldn't support the plan in its current form because it would do more harm than good. In a disaster zone they'd be unable to do anything really useful that the locals couldn't do better, and in the meantime they'd be in the way, vulnerable to danger, and consuming food and housing resources that could instead be given to local people who had lost their homes. But if they were willing to collect for a real and experienced relief group like MSF or the Red Cross, I'd be willing to donate (and I said a number that, for me, was a sizable but affordable amount). Sometime later I heard from the parents that the trip had been cancelled. They never did collect for a real relief group, so I ended up donating elsewhere.
My honest, uncensored opinion is that some people go on mission trips as glorified vacations. It's especially telling when they don't even know any of the local languages of the places they are traveling to and have no useful completely useless skills to help anyone. Their only useful skill is posting selfies and photos of their trip on Facebook.
FTFY
That's a great story TGS.
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Our Costco is in a good area, but the panhandlers must go out of there way to show up there. The worst one, though, was when I was putting my groceries away once and a Tahoe pulls up. Two girls in their twenties. Driver rolls down the window, says she needs money for gas. Both she and her friend are drinking out of soda cups from Chipotle. I could smell the burritos, too.
:(
I'd give them a cookbook.
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Ah, the miracle of the mission-cation. Disaster relief tourism is also popular. I frequently badmouth such operations, but I do it to the face of the people involved just so I can see their reactions.
...
My honest, uncensored opinion is that some people go on mission trips as glorified vacations. It's especially telling when they don't even know any of the local languages of the places they are traveling to and have no useful skills to help anyone. Their only useful skill is posting selfies and photos of their trip on Facebook.
TGS: love the use of Tagalog in your story.
Can I add in that I also hate people who want others to pay for their "experiences". As in: sponsor me to do a parachute jump on behalf of X charity. Or run a Marathon on behalf of Y charity (you are more likely to get a place in the fashionable marathons if you are "running for charity"). Or sponsor me to save turtles on this tropical island.
Give me a break.
I've given to one particular charity runner, however it wasn't any GoFundMe nonsense. In his particular case there weren't any quotation marks in his running for charity. He really was picked for a team organized by his charity, and they gave him a special uniform to wear and assigned him races. He made use of social media to raise awareness, but all the donations went through the charity. He didn't have a choice about where or when he competed, and his plane ticket wasn't dependent on the money he raised. Part of what he raised went to travel expenses for him, but most of it went to the charity and I got a tax deductible receipt for the donation. In his particular case, he'd been volunteering for that charity since his teen years and had even been recognized for it by a local TV station.
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Can I add in that I also hate people who want others to pay for their "experiences". As in: sponsor me to do a parachute jump on behalf of X charity.
Study showing that parachute jumps for the NHS cost £13 for every £1 raised (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10476298)
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Can I add in that I also hate people who want others to pay for their "experiences". As in: sponsor me to do a parachute jump on behalf of X charity.
Study showing that parachute jumps for the NHS cost £13 for every £1 raised (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10476298)
Thank you PlayingwithFire. I am now basking in the glow of having my unreasoning prejudices justified by published scientific research and my job here is done.
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Can I add in that I also hate people who want others to pay for their "experiences". As in: sponsor me to do a parachute jump on behalf of X charity.
Study showing that parachute jumps for the NHS cost £13 for every £1 raised (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10476298)
Thank you PlayingwithFire. I am now basking in the glow of having my unreasoning prejudices justified by published scientific research and my job here is done.
You can't argue with science (when it supports what you were going to say anyway).
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I remembered one. A woman at our church asked for donations for her "mission" trip to Africa.
Ah, the miracle of the mission-cation. Disaster relief tourism is also popular.
I'm from East Africa. The (British) Anglican church was fine, as were the Seventh-Day Adventists. Now it's all American-style Mega Churches. Not only in the big cities, but the small towns too. Go big or go home... You have to tithe more at the mega-church and the shaming is front-and-center.
As a teen/young adult, used to see plenty of white American kids in Nairobi/Mombasa night clubs and party spots. Yeah... charity trip story does work on your parents.
“When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught us how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible.”
― Jomo Kenyatta (Kenyan anti-colonial activist, politician, 1st President)
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I loaned money in high school at a then reasonable rate. I held your collateral until you repaid me. Only lost money once: 10 cents. That was when I starting holding collateral.
Chase is not my name. :)
I had the same exact thing happen to me. I gave out loans in elementary/middle school and charged interest. I only had one person not pay and it was 10 cents. My mom found like $50 in change in my backpack on the last day of school. She wouldn't give it back to me.
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I actually got so pissed at that bank that I called my wife instantly and said that I was going loan him $3400 interest-free if she was ok with it. Turns out she was fine with it and him and I went to get the car.
Not sure why you were pissed at the bank. 12-15% interest mitigates the large risk of loaning money to someone who can't afford a $4000 used car.
A different perspective: such a loan would legally be considered usury in Belgium (any loan actually between 1250 and 5000€ with a total yearly cost equal to or higher than 12.5%). Usury loan means the borrower can walk away from making payments and just keep the principal.
[/quote]
That is crazy. 12% does not cover the risk of lending to most of this sector of society.
I do a lot of asset backed P2P lending at rates 12 - 15% in the UK
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Can I add in that I also hate people who want others to pay for their "experiences". As in: sponsor me to do a parachute jump on behalf of X charity.
Study showing that parachute jumps for the NHS cost £13 for every £1 raised (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10476298)
And that cost is massively understated because it only accounts for injuries and not the other hidden costs.
It does not mention that these people often make a GP appoinment (free to them but at cost and burden to society) to ask their GP to complete forms saying they are fit to jump, which is not the GPs job and they are not trained to do.
Never sponsor anybody doing anything that costs money for charity.
If they want to do a sponsered walk,swim, hike etc I'm fine with it but the rest of them are just pretending to do something charitable but really just want the free experience.
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I'll play. I learned young also and have been lucky so far.
In middle school, my best friend's family took me on a few of their vacations because she was an only child. On one trip, we were in the hotel gift shop and she borrowed $20 from me to buy a gift for some extended family member, a grandparent or something. When we went back to the room, her mom gave her money for the gift. Instead of giving me the $20 that should have been my share, she bought herself a jacket. This was a big deal to me as all of my money at the time was from babysitting or birthdays, and this friend got an allowance every week for breathing, and more for doing things like making her bed.
A few years ago, I was out of college working two part time jobs. My sister was a freshman at our local university (in town). At the time, our mom had recently passed away and my dad was dating someone 8 hours away, and would spend some weekends with this lady. My sister didn't have her car on campus because my dad wouldn't buy her the $400 parking permit, but on weekends he was gone she would come home and get it. One day a parking ticket showed up in the mailbox in my name. I went out of state for college, but had taken a summer class and used that car, so they sent me the ticket for my sister. My friend worked for parking at the time, so I called her and she switched it to my sister's name/dorm room address/student account. One morning she called me at my job on the work phone bawling because the car had been towed, and she had no money and no way to get there. Apparently she had already called my dad (out of town) and he told her to call me. I had to work both jobs that day with only a half hour break in between, so I told her the only way I could help was if she found a way to my side of town she could take my debit card to my atm across the street and get $200 out (the limit).
So she borrowed her roommate's car and drove over and did that. Then proceeded to not pay me back, always with an excuse when I reminded her. She had a job during this time. She bought Christmas gifts, she bought me a birthday gift, she went to Cancun all expenses paid by her roommate's family, etc. I also found a bank statement where she blew through her $2000 student loan refund in a month on food, weight loss supplements, and cash from the atm (I assume booze). Later I also found out she got the car towed 4 or 5 times throughout the year, on top of paying several hundred bucks in parking tickets.
I got the money back eventually, probably due to a combination of shaming/lecturing and a windfall. I finally told her that what disappointed me the most was that she just dodged me and didn't ask to pay it back over time, or to do it after her trip so she'd have spending money, blah blah blah. A few weeks after we had a huge garage sale because we were going to rent the family home, and her and I got most of the money because my dad did nothing, so she gave me the $200 out of her share.
Never again. Definitely looking at stuff as a gift and not a loan for close friends and family, and only in certain circumstances. But I haven't been in that situation yet since.
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The 19 year old daughter of a family friend, who had recently dropped out of college, asked to borrow money for breast implants to jump start her budding career as a stripper.
Had I been foolish enough to make that loan, I'm pretty sure I never would have seen that money again.
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Sexy underwear. Yeah, really. I declined to make the loan.
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The 19 year old daughter of a family friend, who had recently dropped out of college, asked to borrow money for breast implants to jump start her budding career as a stripper.
Had I been foolish enough to make that loan, I'm pretty sure I never would have seen that money again.
Oh, I don't know. Had you made the loan, you might've had the opportunity to SEE your investment several nights a week ... on stage.
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The 19 year old daughter of a family friend, who had recently dropped out of college, asked to borrow money for breast implants to jump start her budding career as a stripper.
Had I been foolish enough to make that loan, I'm pretty sure I never would have seen that money again.
That doesn't seem that dumb. I would go the corporate route, setting up an office in the right neighborhood, with a sign that reads "Paul's Balloon Financing Services", and partner with a local surgeon for referring business, and the local establishments for ensuring repayment.
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I teach in a professional school where the graduates are doctors. I had a student email me his GoFundMe, as he was trying to get charitable donations to start a business.... Not that they would be repaid, or you got in as an investor, just donate to him to start a for profit business. I checked and of the 200+ people asked, not a single donation was raised. weird.
another one I had 2 teenage girls knock on my door and say they were fundraising for their dad's roofing company. Um, no. also you're trespassing....
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Fundraising for a company... Hmmm... In olden times you work a second job until your new company begins to make a profit - which ought to be pretty quick for a small roofing company. Overhead is pretty small, no?
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I teach in a professional school where the graduates are doctors. I had a student email me his GoFundMe, as he was trying to get charitable donations to start a business.... Not that they would be repaid, or you got in as an investor, just donate to him to start a for profit business. I checked and of the 200+ people asked, not a single donation was raised. weird.
another one I had 2 teenage girls knock on my door and say they were fundraising for their dad's roofing company. Um, no. also you're trespassing....
Sad: instead of fundraising he could have taught them how to measure a roof and give out free estimates.
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I remembered one. A woman at our church asked for donations for her "mission" trip to Africa.
It was really a safari trip for her plus maybe 6 days in Uganda with one of the missionaries who is a son of another member in the congregation. This mission is ok, but more because it is set up as a working locally run co-op business where the organizer only takes living expenses and modest stipend, and does not help a lot of people because of the nature of it. i.e., it is not registered or funded as a charity in any way, and there would be nothing for her to do other than tour it and learn about it.
I think she heard rumours that a mission trip can generate a lot of donations to offset your costs, and she jumped on it. Our church body does not tend to send any people to start missions anywhere.
A relative badmouthed about it behind her back, "she wants us to fund her personal trip"... it got back to her and caused a big flare up. But the next thing I know is that she stopped asking for money. She gets back in two weeks, so I hope to find out how it went and if she got off the tourist track.
Ah, the miracle of the mission-cation. Disaster relief tourism is also popular. I frequently badmouth such operations, but I do it to the face of the people involved just so I can see their reactions.
Not all disaster relief travel is stupid. I've got a cousin with a doctorate in nursing who does relief missions: on her vacation time, she piggybacks on MSF operations and through her church. She's got the credentials to actually educate the people she meets and routinely sets up nurse training while she's in-country and converts illiterate field hands into competent hospital staff. She's a hardcore badass and I salute her for it often. But she also doesn't solicit for donations to fund that work, because she's got funding out the wazoo already. That's not what I mean by relief tourism. I mean the stuff like in this following anecdote.
Some years ago, following a big disaster in the Philippines, I got hit up by a daughter of a family friend (our families are still friends... kind of...) for a donation to send her and some other young volunteers from her church group to Manila to help with a rescue operation. Now these are high school and college aged students with big hearts but not a lot of skill at logistics. So I put a velvet glove on my scythe and went Socratic. The conversation went roughly like this.
Me: So, they need to rebuild roads, bridges, houses and such. Are you a civil engineer?
Kid: No.
Me: Plumber? Electrician? Even a first-year apprentice could do some useful work getting power and plumbing back on-line.
Kid: No.
Me: OK, do you have a background in construction? Can you drive a forklift, maybe, or operate a bulldozer to help get the roads open?
Kid: No.
Me: All right, maybe you can work in the hospital. You're too young to be a medical doctor, but do you have nursing credentials? A bit of clinical study, maybe?
Kid: No.
Me: Do you know any Tagalog? Like if someone came up to you and said (here I inserted a Tagalog phrase meaning "I need a drink of water"), could you tell what that person was trying to say?
Kid: No. What's Tagalog?
Me: It's the local language. Very few of the people you're trying to help speak English.
A few other questions established that none of the other young people going on the mission had the credentials I was asking about either. So I told the kid that as much as I respected her desire to help, I couldn't support the plan in its current form because it would do more harm than good. In a disaster zone they'd be unable to do anything really useful that the locals couldn't do better, and in the meantime they'd be in the way, vulnerable to danger, and consuming food and housing resources that could instead be given to local people who had lost their homes. But if they were willing to collect for a real and experienced relief group like MSF or the Red Cross, I'd be willing to donate (and I said a number that, for me, was a sizable but affordable amount). Sometime later I heard from the parents that the trip had been cancelled. They never did collect for a real relief group, so I ended up donating elsewhere.
My honest, uncensored opinion is that some people go on mission trips as glorified vacations. It's especially telling when they don't even know any of the local languages of the places they are traveling to and have no useful completely useless skills to help anyone. Their only useful skill is posting selfies and photos of their trip on Facebook.
FTFY
That's a great story TGS.
Thank you for posting this. I completely agree. I always thought that the cost of sending someone to build some house in third world countries are just silly. Lets say it cost $1K for the airplane, another $1K for food, place to stay etc. I always think it is better to just send $2K and let the local folks buy the materials and build that house or whatever needed to be built. It is not like they do not have anyone who can swing a hammer, use a saw, and pour cement foundation. It is a whole different conversation if one is a medical doctor, and go there to do surgeries. I can see that in certain area, there is no access to medical doctor, but to just have someone use a hammer, cut some lumber, that just a complete waste of resources (money).
I am probably the only person who thinks this way at church that I attended.
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I teach in a professional school where the graduates are doctors. I had a student email me his GoFundMe, as he was trying to get charitable donations to start a business.... Not that they would be repaid, or you got in as an investor, just donate to him to start a for profit business. I checked and of the 200+ people asked, not a single donation was raised. weird. Weirdly good.
another one I had 2 teenage girls knock on my door and say they were fundraising for their dad's roofing company. Um, no. also you're trespassing....
Hmmm, pretty sure any funds raised by the two teenage girls were not given to "Dad". He probably would have been mortified if he found out what those two were up to.
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I remembered one. A woman at our church asked for donations for her "mission" trip to Africa.
It was really a safari trip for her plus maybe 6 days in Uganda with one of the missionaries who is a son of another member in the congregation. This mission is ok, but more because it is set up as a working locally run co-op business where the organizer only takes living expenses and modest stipend, and does not help a lot of people because of the nature of it. i.e., it is not registered or funded as a charity in any way, and there would be nothing for her to do other than tour it and learn about it.
I think she heard rumours that a mission trip can generate a lot of donations to offset your costs, and she jumped on it. Our church body does not tend to send any people to start missions anywhere.
A relative badmouthed about it behind her back, "she wants us to fund her personal trip"... it got back to her and caused a big flare up. But the next thing I know is that she stopped asking for money. She gets back in two weeks, so I hope to find out how it went and if she got off the tourist track.
Ah, the miracle of the mission-cation. Disaster relief tourism is also popular. I frequently badmouth such operations, but I do it to the face of the people involved just so I can see their reactions.
Not all disaster relief travel is stupid. I've got a cousin with a doctorate in nursing who does relief missions: on her vacation time, she piggybacks on MSF operations and through her church. She's got the credentials to actually educate the people she meets and routinely sets up nurse training while she's in-country and converts illiterate field hands into competent hospital staff. She's a hardcore badass and I salute her for it often. But she also doesn't solicit for donations to fund that work, because she's got funding out the wazoo already. That's not what I mean by relief tourism. I mean the stuff like in this following anecdote.
Some years ago, following a big disaster in the Philippines, I got hit up by a daughter of a family friend (our families are still friends... kind of...) for a donation to send her and some other young volunteers from her church group to Manila to help with a rescue operation. Now these are high school and college aged students with big hearts but not a lot of skill at logistics. So I put a velvet glove on my scythe and went Socratic. The conversation went roughly like this.
Me: So, they need to rebuild roads, bridges, houses and such. Are you a civil engineer?
Kid: No.
Me: Plumber? Electrician? Even a first-year apprentice could do some useful work getting power and plumbing back on-line.
Kid: No.
Me: OK, do you have a background in construction? Can you drive a forklift, maybe, or operate a bulldozer to help get the roads open?
Kid: No.
Me: All right, maybe you can work in the hospital. You're too young to be a medical doctor, but do you have nursing credentials? A bit of clinical study, maybe?
Kid: No.
Me: Do you know any Tagalog? Like if someone came up to you and said (here I inserted a Tagalog phrase meaning "I need a drink of water"), could you tell what that person was trying to say?
Kid: No. What's Tagalog?
Me: It's the local language. Very few of the people you're trying to help speak English.
A few other questions established that none of the other young people going on the mission had the credentials I was asking about either. So I told the kid that as much as I respected her desire to help, I couldn't support the plan in its current form because it would do more harm than good. In a disaster zone they'd be unable to do anything really useful that the locals couldn't do better, and in the meantime they'd be in the way, vulnerable to danger, and consuming food and housing resources that could instead be given to local people who had lost their homes. But if they were willing to collect for a real and experienced relief group like MSF or the Red Cross, I'd be willing to donate (and I said a number that, for me, was a sizable but affordable amount). Sometime later I heard from the parents that the trip had been cancelled. They never did collect for a real relief group, so I ended up donating elsewhere.
My honest, uncensored opinion is that some people go on mission trips as glorified vacations. It's especially telling when they don't even know any of the local languages of the places they are traveling to and have no useful completely useless skills to help anyone. Their only useful skill is posting selfies and photos of their trip on Facebook.
FTFY
That's a great story TGS.
Thank you for posting this. I completely agree. I always thought that the cost of sending someone to build some house in third world countries are just silly. Lets say it cost $1K for the airplane, another $1K for food, place to stay etc. I always think it is better to just send $2K and let the local folks buy the materials and build that house or whatever needed to be built. It is not like they do not have anyone who can swing a hammer, use a saw, and pour cement foundation. It is a whole different conversation if one is a medical doctor, and go there to do surgeries. I can see that in certain area, there is no access to medical doctor, but to just have someone use a hammer, cut some lumber, that just a complete waste of resources (money).
I am probably the only person who thinks this way at church that I attended.
I once had a Spanish student come up and tell me she was very motivated to do well because she wanted to go to Brazil to bring The Good News...
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A roommate in college asked me to pay her share of the utilities one month because she was short. About $60 or so was her split and I'd be mad if they shut off the power because I wouldn't lend her money so I paid it no problem. Two weeks later she comes home with a brand new dog. I'm pretty sure I bought her a dog.
She did repay me and wasn't late on stuff so I guess it worked out. But I'm still pretty sure I bought her a dog...