Have you ever betrayed someone over money? This a common theme in ficiton, but I cannot see it happening much in real life. So if you ever betrayed a friend or family member over money, what were the circumstances? Would you do it again?
Define “betrayal” in the sense you want to know. Have I drifted over to someone else’s table when they’re buying drinks at the bar? Sure, but I’ve never poisoned my brother over an inheritance.
Like Clurican said, define “betrayal”. There are countless incidents of people loaning friends or family tens, hundreds, or even thousands, never to be seen again. As Dave Ramsey says, if it only took $100 dollars to realize that it wasn’t worth the person being your friend, it was probably money well spent.
I have felt betrayed by friends in situations where money exchanged hands. Is that what you are talking about? I have been put in the unfortunate situation of having to sue a guy that I once thought of as a friend because of a situation like that.
Daytime court shows would lead you to believe it happens more than you suspect.
No…I’ve never done it, and I wouldn’t. Money is just not that important. I mean, yeah, it’s important to have enough to meet your life needs, but it’s just not worth betraying someone else and myself by not living up to my own moral code.
I think most of the people whodo this don’t think they’re actually betraying anyone. They twist the facts up in their heads until they’re convinced that they’re owed the money, dammit.
I gave up on a person over money. She, a good friend, embezzled nearly $200K from her parents’ estate - money that should have gone to her sister and nephews. She seemed to think it was okay, because her relatives weren’t very nice people. I realized that I really didn’t want to be around her anymore.
Shit. If I had a 19 year old son who pulled that crap, they would be out of my house and probably in jail. “Son…Normally I would say you can’t put a price on family…and yet…here we are…”
Agreed. My mom was my grandma’s primary caretaker (out of 5 children) and was entrusted with going to my grandma’s bank to deposit and take out money (it was a small Catholic bank that my family has been members of forever). Despite my mom constantly griping at the unfairness of the situation, it didn’t stop her from taking my grandma’s money whenever she felt like it. Nobody found out until $11,000+ had been taken. I think in my mom’s mind, she felt like she was owed it.
In my experience, this seems to be by far the most common rationalization. I’ve seen families split because of this kind of crap, especially over inheritances.
I knew someone who was fired from two different jobs because she embezzled money. Her justification each time was that she was borrowing the money and would pay it back.
My ex did her best to screw me over in our divorce. Too bad I had all the cancelled checks to prove otherwise.
Previous to that I had found out that, before our relationship, she had borrowed $500 from a good friend, bought a TV and never paid it back. I would have paid it back while settling her other roughly $40k in debts, but I was only told this by a third party under complete confidentiality. I kept hoping that she’d tell me or her friend would mention it, but it never came up.
A few bucks here and there I don’t mind and generally forgive. But long term patterns over even small amounts become problematic.
Years ago I had a sort-of friend, more a friend-of-friends that I couldn’t get rid of. Long reputation as a moocher. Promised me gas money if I’d follow him out to his brother’s place in the country with my pickup truck and help him haul some stuff home. Along the way, we stop for food. He has no money, so I end up paying. Big Red Flag. Unfortunately, we almost there. We pick up the stuff and are driving back when I stop for gas. He not only begs off paying for it, but the fucker puts gas in his tank and then begs me for money because he doesn’t have any! I refused, over his insistent claims to be flat broke, telling him that was between him and the gas station, because I was obviously being fucked over on the promise of gas money and wasn’t about to give him MY MONEY too!
Last time I really dealt with him. Of course, I was in the wrong. :rolleyes:
I haven’t. Then again I don’t lend or borrow money. And if I do lend money, you can bet I’m getting it back. All my friends are like that. Two of my friends actually had this huge spreadsheet of all the cash they lent each other for rounds of drinks, cabs and whatnot during their various trips to foreign countries WITH exchange rates. After several weeks of debate over when specific rates applied to specific transactions, they settled what ended up being about a $20 deficit.
My girlfriends extended family of aunts and uncles apparently had a big fight over her grandmothers estate after she died. At stake - her vast fortune of about $40,000.
I am a little concerned though about our family summer house. It’s divided up between my parents and a couple of older aunts and uncles (who happen to be morons). Then again, they are all 30 years older than me and mostly childless so it’s not like it’s going anywhere.
In my youth, I stole from family and friends whenever the opportunity presented itself. Is that betrayal?
Well, she probably was.
Hiring a primary caretaker for an elderly person for even a year will cost you much more than $11,000. If all these other members of your family sat around and expected your mom to do this for nothing, she was quite right: that was unfair, and she was owed compensation.
No. Nobody ever sat down and sorted out anything but it doesn’t mean that my mom was exactly entitled to it anyways, at least not the way she chose to go about it. Two of the sisters live in Alabama with jobs or a family to raise. The brother lives in Germany. The only remaining sister here has a job, but would occassionally help out. My mom had no job and never put any time into raising the family. They could have hired a caretaker-I recommended it over and over- but I guess they were just too cheap. We can see how great that was in the long run. :rolleyes:
My grandma would offer her money in compensation. My mom would always say “No, ma” and refuse, probably in an attempt to look like the golden child as she stole behind my grandma’s back what she felt she was “owed”. She would bitch and moan and complain about the unfairness and how she hoped she would get the vacation trailer or a little extra something out of it in the end, and I agreed with her until I found out that she had been stealing the whole time. There was NO reason for her to steal, we weren’t short on money by any means. She just wanted her cake and to eat it, too. At the very least she could have sat down and talked to my grandma about some type of monetary compensation but again, she chose to bypass any mature steps.
Eventually we figured out what was going on after she started meticulously ripping up bank letters. Her family forced her to pay it all back and she did, but of course it was with somebody else’s money that she didn’t earn, so she walked away scott free and not learning a damn thing from the experience.
No. It’s just being a dick.
I don’t even get how that happens.
“So, your qualifications look great and you have a gung-ho attitude. Now, why did you leave your last job?”
“Oh, I got fired for embezzling. I learned my lesson, though.”
“Great! How would you like to work in accounts payable?”