Disclaimer: I’m not asking for help from the Teeming Millions, nor anyone else. I don’t think my family is at that point - there are many, many folks who need more help than my family. I could not, in good conscience, ask, because yeah - we have a home, we’re fed, we have 'most everything we need, etc. I/we have actually declined very generous offers from this board, based on the fact that we aren’t as badly in need as too many others.
But…
What would be your threshold for asking for anonymous help for a terrible financial situation? I find myself making judgments - maybe unfair ones - say, when an old school mate has a house fire and needs home furnishings because her insurance didn’t cover those costs (but she has the $$$ to travel through several southeastern states to go to spring training baseball games) or when another old acquaintance goes on a Caribbean cruise in May, but doesn’t have the money to pay for rent/security fees when her family needs a new home in June.
When someone feels the need to ask for financial help, how do you make that judgment?
Tough question and I’m sure the answer is different for different people and different situations.
As a general rule, I only make loans to family or people I have some kind of relationship with. I never loan any money that I need or expect back (very, very important), so am always very pleased it if returns. If I do make a loan, I try very hard to not get involved in the person’s financial stuff because the things you mentioned can make one angry. People make shitty decisions about money all the time and I try to not get too informed about their decisions.
All that said, I do get stuck loaning to a particular family member a bit too regularly. I feel like I’m a easy bank for this person. I loan to this person in chunks and get it back in dribs and drabs, but I do get it back, so that’s good. It’s annoying. I’m an “ant” and this person is a “grasshopper” when it comes to money.
So, I just try to not let their decisions bother me.
I’d need to be on fire. I mean, There was more than one month in our twenties we had trouble making the rent payment, and we scrounged it together somehow and never let on how much in dire straits we were.
Never give money to someone who has demonstrated they are incapable of handling it responsibly. If you want to pay your friends’ rent, pay it directly to their landlord.
If someone is in dire straits because of an emergency or some sort of disaster, I’ll do what I can. I think that’s a no-brainer.
On the other hand, there’s someone in my life who’s been fired from his last 4 (I think) jobs and who won’t even consider a position he considers to be beneath him, even tho there are bills to pay. He even sponged off his parents (they’re retired and he’s in his 50s, fercryinoutloud!!) Years ago, we took him in, rent free, for several months. In the years since, a few times we’ve loaned him one of our cars and gave him an old computer. There was never any payback or even insincere hints at paying back. He didn’t even put gas in the car!! This guy is Entitlement Personified. If he was standing in front of me on fire, I’d get the hose to put him out, but that’s the limit.
Between those two extremes, it depends entirely upon the individual and the circumstances.
Early in our marriage, my husband and I did some dumb stuff and had to turn to one or the other set of our parents. We always paid back, always with interest, and it’s been a long time since it was even an issue for us, thank goodness. With luck, now our finances will get us to death without needed to hit up anyone.
I would be pretty reluctant to ask for or accept financial help from individuals. If I had exhausted any and all other possibilities of sustaining life for myself and my dependents, I guess I would have to do it. As a young single mother, I did ask my parents for financial help at times, which they grudgingly provided and did not expect repayment. We ended up starting a business together, so it became a moot point.
I suppose I would maybe ask someone for a very short-term loan to cover rent or something if and only if I had an absolutely certain means to repay it by the promised time.
I would probably not need to be at the point of true desperation to apply for assistance from an organization, although I would not do so in order to sustain a higher-income lifestyle.
As far as getting people to pay for my vacation or cover my rent so I can squander my money on luxuries, no way, and I am perfectly comfortable negatively judging others that do this. I don’t get how this has become socially acceptable at all.
Extending kindness to others can sometimes get you killed:
Tanya Tandoc, Wichita restaurateur, who extended a kindness to a friend, by letting him live in her basement for months was repaid with him killing her.
I saw where Spock’s son is trying to create a documentary about him and is crowdfunding. That kind of pissed me off, and I am not the only one. He’s the son of a fairly rich man; why are you asking us poor people to fund you?
I also see all the time on tumblr people begging us to give them money for their pets (birds and reptiles, I don’t follow dog posts). Pets are a huge commitment. Why would you even adopt one if you knew you didn’t have the money to take care of them?
The worst is the honeymoons. You want me to pay for your honeymoon?
It amazes me that people actually give money to these people. I know, it’s their money, and they can do what they like…but jeez louise.
I guess maybe people would donate for the documentary if they are huge fans and are dying to have one created, but it seems greedy when the doc maker is his son, not a starving film student. It isn’t as if the film wouldn’t ultimately pay for itself via commercial distribution.
Yesterday I saw that a local restaurant was begging for “help” to buy expensive appliances to open a new location. A $50 donation got you a t-shirt. This is a normal for-profit business, not benefiting a charity of any kind! I could see if they were asking for investors who ultimately had at least some chance of being paid back/profiting or were pre-buying meals or something, but nope it was just a straight-up request for cash.
Don’t even get me started again on the cash-grabbing wedding invitations!
I have a list (well, a mental list) of people from my past who have borrowed money and not repaid me.
When someone asks for money these days, I offer to share the list with them. If they can collect any of that money then they can have it.
So far no one has taking me up on it, and it is an convenient way of saying no and having the person asking not think I am being a stingy jerk about loaning money.
If the situation was reversed and I needed money, I am not sure if there is a low that is low enough for me to ask for money not exchanged for goods or services.
But promising nothing in return besides the pleasure of helping them continue to turn a profit? They could ask for investors or pre-sell their goods/services instead of thinking anyone ought to just hand them money. If their business is actually profitable, they would probably qualify for a normal loan, and if it isn’t, I’d need a darn good reason to agree to help prop them up.
I’d rather be homeless than ask for help. I have a wife and kids and can’t do it though. We had to stay with some of my wife’s family some years back and I despised every minute of it.
If something like that every happens again I may eat a bullet. Seriously. There’s only so much pride you can swallow and still look at yourself in the mirror.
Not saying that anyone else should subscribe to my view, I know it’s not exactly healthy.
If irrevocable harm would be done without help then I wouldn’t hesitate to seek it. Short of that I know that help is a two-edged sword and I’m always hesitant to ask for it or accept it if offered. If I were in dire financial straits I’d much rather ask for work than for money. It sounds puritanical as I write it down, but you don’t get to be an old man not in dire financial straits without learning a thing or two along the way. Someone above said ‘neither a borrower or a lender be’, it may sound trite but it works well in real life.
I guess I’m a softie on this kind of stuff. I can appreciate moxie and chutzpah in small quantities. People who afraid to ask for help when they actually need help are kind of pathetic.
My only hard rule is that you solicit help from me only once in a three year period, at the very least. Taking up a collection for your senior trip? Great! But I don’t want to see a letter from you the following year, asking for donations for your books and college fees. Especially if I already cut you a check for your graduation present.
I don’t mind chipping in for someone’s bridal shower and honeymoon. But unless they are a close friend or family member, that’s going to be it for awhile. As long as people understand that, they can send me as many baby shower and housewarming party invitations they want.
I don’t have a problem with people asking for money to cushion the blow of bad decisions on their part, as long as they have a good excuse for making those “bad” decisions. Like, if someone only has liability car insurance because they can’t afford comprehensive, and then their car is totaled. Now, I probably wouldn’t donate to this cause unless I knew the person well. But I don’t think it’s crass for a person in this situation to make a public plea for help UNLESS they’ve done so in the recent past.
There are two situations in which I would seek out a loan from friends or family.
The first is small amounts of money to prevent a “problem snowball” from happening. If I am looking at my finances and I know that by borrowing a few hundred bucks now I can prevent the debt pileup - pay X now to prevent paying x + Y% late fees (and potentially having to pay for damages caused by not keeping up the payments) then I will swallow pride and borrow that money with a repayment plan or agreement to exchange work for the loan if need be. For example, we just discovered that we have a SERIOUS carpenter bee infestation. We were told when we bought the house by the inspector that the holes in the retaining wall were for drainage. Turns out that no, they aren’t, they are where carpenter bees were nesting and waiting for winter to melt away before coming out in droves during the summer. We are paying for an exterminator and then to have someone come look at the damage to see if the wall needs to be replaced. Luckily we have savings and home owner’s insurance, but if we didn’t have those things I would absolutely borrow to cover the work because ignoring it could turn into constant bee stings and a collapsed retaining wall, destroying our car and costing significantly more to repair and replace at that point than it will now.
The other is if I am in a situation and I need the money bad enough to consider doing something horrible to get it. If I am seriously considering turning to prostitution or theft or some other horrible option to get the money that means I need it really, really, terribly badly and I would rather go to a parent or sibling or something to get it than delve into the criminal end of things to pay the bills. I’ve never gotten to this point, but if I ever get to a point where I’ve sold my house and my car and all of my stuff and I’m not able to find a job or any other legitimate means of income I would try to borrow money to cover necessities at that point.
A couple of years ago I was being foreclosed on. I had already borrowed as much as I could from a relative. I thought about asking for money here, but I didn’t, as I had zero income and zero prospect of paying anyone back with a defined time range. And to me it just doesn’t seem right to ask people to give you money. To sum up – I don’t know. Perhaps it would have been different if I had a spouse or kids to support, but there was just me.
I did start to look really closely at what kind of support the government could provide, and I ended up getting food stamps. That was the only extra I had during that time. Fortunately I got a job soon after, still own my home and I am paying everybody back what I owe, including my relative.
As an example: If an unemployed friend of mine needed help to pay rent, I wouldn’t do it. However, if an unemployed friend of mine needed money to go buy a suit so he can interview for jobs, then I’m more likely to help.