Haven't posted in a while but the day before Thanksgiving is already dragging and work is like a ghost town.
I have the following discussion questions and a story but you can feel free to skip the story and just talk about your experiences:
1. Have you ever loaned money to a friend? Let's say more than $1k or an amount that has some significance to you.
2. Did the friend pay you back timely?
3. Did the loan impact your friendship?
4. Did you find yourself holding a bit of a grudge if, rather than pay you back, they engaged in discretionary spending?
Last night H and I were talking about friends and money. It comes up a lot with him. As background, we make pretty good money for people our age and are (as a couple) fairly responsible with money (H is more responsible than I am to be honest). We put a full 20% down on our house, we have a 15 year mortgage, we both either max or close to max out our retirement contributions. We buy what we want within reason and eat out a couple times a week, we don't take expensive vacations.
Before H and I got together he loaned one of his best friends $8k to pay off a car loan with a very high interest rate and helped the friend and his wife get out of credit card debt. The deal with the loan was that the friend would pay it in full with interest (very low interest rate) in 3 years (yes, there is a note). Well, that period of time has come and gone and the friend has never paid back H. In theory he will pay it back in February when he gets his tax refund but I personally am not holding my breathe. I have told H several times that we need to just have the friend start paying us a small amount (like $200) every month because there is no way this friend can budget well enough to just give H $8k as a lump sum.
In addition to friend 1, friend 2 is currently renting a condo H owns. Friend 2 lost his job and was unemployed for about three months and probably has only paid rent for about 5-6 months this year (he does have a job now). H decided to just raise his rent a little until he can pay off what he owes in back rent (this time he listened to me when I said I didn't think friend 2 could just pay us back $3k in a lump sum).
H is glad he has been able to help his friends BUT he cannot help but dwell on the fact that both friend 1 and friend 2 have done a (seeming) lot of discretionary spending. Friend 1 has spent about $10k on vacations in this year alone and bought a second car and Friend 2 has gone on a series of smaller vacations, made some large purchases. Last night he was frustrated again that we live a fairly conservative lifestyle fiscally but his friends are doing all sorts of things we do not feel we can afford to do. I feel like it is slowly ruining his/our friendship with these people.
