My spouse and I have received as well as given away big loans (not talking about loans in the range of a hundred dollars or less):
- Back at university, a friend dabbled in online trading and I loaned him about $2000 at a pretty steep interest rate (as he was sure he would make a multiple of that). Yeah, we were both pretty stupid and greedy. We put it into a contract, however. As expected in hindsight, he lost almost all of it, and I wrote off getting anything back, and we were still friends (At that time, I had a strange relationship with money; I lived pretty frugally, and put leftover money in the bank, but to me it was just useless sitting there, and I'd rather use it for something, even if it's risky). A few years later he surprised me by announcing that he is going to pay me back, which I actually didn't really feel too comfortable with. In the end, I could not talk him out of it, but could get him to *not* pay back the interest at least.
- A bit later, my brother loaned a few thousand from me as well for a (perceived/expected) emergency. The emergency actually didn't happen, but I think he bought a bunch of emergency-related stuff with it. Later he paid me back about a third of it, and promised he would pay back the remainder, but never did. I actually believe that initially, he really wanted to. I think it frustrated him when, a few years later, my spouse and I bought our house while he was not doing well financially, and he never talked about the loan or about paying anything back, and I never mentioned it as well. This was at a time when our relationship started to become less open and trustful for other reasons as well, so I don't think it's because of the loan primarily.
- After university, I had to pay back a study loan. When you pay it back in one heap, you get a sweet discount on the total sum, so my spouse lend me maybe two or three thousand to be able to do so. No contract here, but I paid her back in monthly increments over around three years.
- The friend from before was struggling to finish university, alternating between actually studying and working to finance his degree. When he was just starting to be on a roll study-wise and said something about having to work for a while, I offered to support him monthly so that he can focus on his degree. We knew this was going to be about many thousands of dollars and long time durations, so we made a very detailed contract which left no room for interpretation. We followed everything to the letter, and after around six years, he had paid me back early. Every time he had a major windfall, he paid back something extra. I feel, and maybe this sounds paradoxical, that this loan has been a positive experience for us. It showed us how much our friendship is worth to us (not in dollars, but in terms of going out of one's way as to not make the other party feel weird over money).
- My father tried to talk me into "loaning" him a thousand for filling the oil tanks at his oversized house (or act as a guarantor). He has a history of cheating people (including me) out of money with lies and false promises, and was refusing to move to financially sustainable housing, so I didn't give him anything (particularly as there was no sign that this was going to be just a one-time thing).
- When my spouse and I bought our house and had signed all the papers including the mortgage, we found that we had miscalculated the associated cost (rookie mistake), and were around 15.000 short. My mother lent us 10.000 and friends of us lent us 5.000. Paying everything back in addition to the mortgage payments was tough, but we made it (friends faster, mother a bit slower). That our friends trusted us with that much money, when I asked them, still blows my mind, and I am still very grateful to them and my mother for helping us out (this has been about ten years ago).
- My spouse financed the university degree of our niece. For a while she lived with us, then separate, then with us again (I think the degree took our niece almost ten years to finish). My spouse recorded the university- and COL-related expenses she paid for (nothing for living with us). My niece had always said she would pay everything back, including interest. Somewhat late into her study, we created a contract along the lines which I had with my friend above, with a modest interest rate only for the time after starting work. The niece signed it without reading it, which is odd, but should already have raised some alarms. She also refused to discuss any details of the contract. And now, years after finishing the degree, she starts calling my spouse greedy and the 3% interest rate outrageous (she pays 0% interest for the 10 accumulating years). She was never an easygoing person, but this is a new level after living for free with us for more than six years, gee. Actually, thinking back at some ...odd... situations we had with her (getting extremely aggressive out of the blue), I think that she has some mental issues. Fortunately we have her signature on paper, and she is currently paying back fast. I hope that when she's done, we won't have anything to do with her any more (and this feeling is probably mutual). After my niece's tantrums and abuse, my spouse reduced the interest to inflation-only (which I can understand, but teaches my niece one last terrible life lesson of how to get her way by means of emotional blackmail). Again, in this case, the relationship had already worsened before, because the niece's mother thought it would be a class move to try to extort my spouse (who was currently supporting and living with her niece) out of the major part of an inheritance. This made everything very ... complicated, as you can imagine. Oh, by the way, the person who had died was my spouse's mother, but still my spouse is treated as the deplorable person here, just because she is not ok with everyone suddenly demanding money from her when her own mother had suddenly died.
- Pretty recently, I loaned the same friend from above another few thousand (I offered it, he didn't ask me for it), because he was feeling overwhelmed with having to organize a lot of stuff at the same time, some of which was sending out bills to customers, which restricts his cash flow. No interest or complex contract there, only "to be paid back by <month>". I'm confident this loan will go well.
