In February I loaned a large sum of money to my sister for an emergency home repair. I told her at the time that I was taking the money from my son’s college fund, as we don’t have that kind of money in a savings account. I explained that we would need the money paid back by August. She agreed to a monthly payment plan, and in March she did send some (less than agreed on but a good faith effort). Since that time, we received nothing further. She explained that her job hours had been cut and was having a difficult time. We understood, and since our son is only six, we were very willing to wait until circumstances improved for her family. I did explain that we would need at least a small portion of it by August, as we are planning a vacation to Malaysia and due to some of our own unexpected car repairs, would be a little short of spending money. We did understand that if she lost her job, which is their only source of extra income, we would have to plan for these expenses and did set aside a little extra these past few months by doing without unnecessary small luxuries. Today, she called to tell me that she would not be able to pay anything until her job situation stabilizes, which would not be until one of her clients returns to her home (sister is a PCA for a woman who is in a short-term nursing home stay). That would not happen until August at the earliest. I told her that we understand and we moved on to a discussion of how our kids are doing. She mentioned in a very off-hand way that she and her husband just bought a $2000 fixer upper car for their 21-year-old son as be is newly married, would not qualify for credit, and needed a car to job search. I was astonished and asked her, where did she get the money. She said that they had set it aside to send to me as her ex-husband had settled up on some child support arrears but that the car situation had come up and they knew I would understand that they needed to help their son. I was too surprised and upset to say anything, so made a quick but pleasant excuse to end the call. I am still angry about this. My husband says it is not that big a deal, and in honesty, had she told me about my nephew’s situation, I would have probably said to go ahead and buy the car. Probably, because they already have one car, his wife is a student, and they live in a city large enough for public transport to be readily available. We really could have used the money; I know it is not life or death for us, but we had planned on visiting India while we were in Malaysia and without that money, we will likely not be able to stretch our budget to accommodate that. Still, I really likely would have decided that my nephew’s need – even if it is not a basic need – should trump our extra vacation destination. It is just that I am so mad that she was so cavalier about it. Husband says let it go. I am thinking I should at least let her know that I am upset, and why. So I am throwing the issue to an anonymous group of complete strangers who are not at all vested, and am asking: am I overreacting? Should I let this go for sake of family harmony? Since it is not life-or-death for us, and my sister knows that, I don’t know. We have loaned her money in the past and while she did not have a stellar track record of a timely return, she always made an effort and sometimes when she just could not come up with the funds (back when she was newly divorced and had a deadbeat ex and struggled to survive) she would offer a service, like painting our house, in return for the debt. We always felt that it was a good and fair exchange.
Whoever borrowed all your carriage returns apparently hasn’t given them back either.
Holy FUCK! If I could open a pit thread, and see a rant or two that didn’t consist of wordsandwordsandwordsandwordsandwordsconstructed in roughly the shape of a paragraph. Good luck with whatever the fuck your word jumble spoke of.
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Paragraphs are terrific. Look them up. I know, “Sue me for not formatting posts in the proper fashion,” but this kind of pointless nitpicking about posting style is how we operate around here. Better it come from me than someone else… for reasons I haven’t thought through yet. (Plus, it actually is kind of hard to read.) That said, I do have actual advice.
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Let it go, my friend. Let it go and never loan (i.e. give) her ass money again unless it’s life or death. I’ve been there, I know this drama firsthand. About a year ago, two weeks after I got laid off from my job, my cousin/very good pal died at 33 years old in a car wreck. It was terrible, we all had to fly out to an emergency funeral, and two of my siblings didn’t have money to travel so I loaned the travel costs to them. Well, one of them never paid me back. I reminded him more than once, but it became pretty clear that I was never going to see that money again. Oh, did I mention I wasn’t even working, spent 8 months unemployed, he was working, AND --oh yeah, there’s an all-caps “AND”-- he lives at home. So my ass had no job plus rent to pay while he had a job with no rent to pay. No, we’re not 21. My brother and I are both adults in our 30s.
So my broke ass, with expenses and no job, not particularly in the mood to give money away, did so because it was important, and he never repaid me. Meanwhile, he’s posting Facebook photos of himself living it, high-fiving himself for the boss ass shit he’s bought himself, but couldn’t afford to pay me back a single red cent. Nothing at all.
Is it irritating? Yes. Did it anger me? Yes. Does talking about it now make me think “What an asshat”? Yes. But am I going to be mad at my brother forever? No. It is a shitty thing to do to family, of course, but he’s going to be my brother until one of us dies which is important to me, but at the end of the day, nobody cares about a few hundred dollars. So I know how frustrating it is; I’ve been there. Still, let it go. Your sister’s an asshat. Move on.
Edit: See, toldja there were going to be formatting nitpickers with nothing to add. So my nitpicking wasn’t so bad.
I didn’t slog through that block of text either. Formatting is important.
My apologies for the lack of paragraph breaks. I am using my phone and the return button doesn’t work (keeps returning me to the top of the page instead of adding a break).
Basically, folks who couldn’t get through it (understandably so because it is a wall of text) but still needed to post anyway, the story is:
[ul]
[li]She loaned sister money for emergency with an agreed upon payment plan[/li][li]Said payment plan keeps shifting around because of arising issues[/li][li]OP didn’t have a whole ton of money to be sparing anyway, so the payment plan was pretty important[/li][li]Sister drops in off-hand manner dropping of $2,000 on non-necessity[/li][li]OP is like DUDE, WTF![/li][/ul]
And if I’m wrong, I’m sure I’ll be corrected.
Holy shit, that is a lot of typing to be done on a phone.
So, the first answer is to threadshit. Good job on making a noob feel welcome.
To the OP, I never lend money that I expect to get back when promised or even at all. I never plan on that money coming back to me, but I do remember if it doesn’t.
When you lend money, the person who gets it often assumes that you didn’t really need it if you have it to give away.
About 8 years ago, someone at work borrowed 5 bucks for lunch, promised to repay me the next day. That didn’t happen. About a year later, she wanted a postage stamp and promised to bring me another one the next day. That didn’t happen either. I kept a big box of AA batteries in my desk and one day she wanted to borrow one.
I refused because she didn’t return stuff and she was totally confused. When I reminded her about the 5 bucks and postage stamp, she called me petty and greedy.
That’s when I really learned that loaning stuff becomes a gift to the recipient.
While calling them “noobs” isn’t condescending at all… :rolleyes:
Traci - Welcome to the Dope. We like paragraphs here, and not everyone is an asshat like Flatlined.
You contributed nothing other than “PARAGRAPH FAIL!” while he actually responded to the OP, and he’s the asshat. Interesting theory.
(Hope the mods don’t mind my re-formatting your OP for better readability.)
No, it isn’t. It’s only insulting when you call a long-term poster a noob. “Noob” is just a slang, not much more, unless you are actually taunting the newcomer or calling a long-term poster by that name.
I do all my SDMBing on my phone.
(Carriage return)
But I digress.
Never lend family anything you care about having returned, and understand that once you cheerfully forgive a loan that has been welched on, you’ll probably be asked for more “loans” in the future. When you refuse future “loans” you’ll be made to feel guilty. It’s like feeding a stray cat and then cutting it off.
(One more carriage return for good measure :p)
I think you should have a very frank discussion with your sister about money and finances and loans and giving the money she should have paid you to her son instead. This is obviously causing some friction between you (and I don’t blame you for that - it would bother me, too), and it sounds like she will probably ask you for more money in the future, and you need to be prepared for how you will handle that, too.
I’ve always thought it extremely rude, regardless of whom one is addressing. More rude than suggesting the use of paragraphs - and while first, I did that relatively gently. So you can all cram it with walnuts.
As for loaning money to family… I did it once and never expected to get it back. I would have considered it a bonus if there was any repayment.
I did not realize just how long my rant session would be, and seeing that huge block of text after posting it, I can understand the irritation. While I am indeed a noob here, I am familiar with general board etiquette. I will be more succinct when posting from my iPhone in future.
The amount loaned makes it impossible for me to just forgive it, and given her past history, am optimistic that it will be returned eventually. Have to admit, part of the gut-punched feint I had though was that if she was so nonchalant about priorities in repaying a large chunk of the debt, would she make it much of a priority at all. Her circumstances are stable now, with husband holding a good job. They didn’t want to take out a loan at the time because they were in the middle of selling existing home and purchasing another (added debt could have impacted financing). Which is to say, I really thought at the time it was just temporary help to a family member that I otherwise have a very good relationship with.
Though if I am honest, part of my ire probably has less to do with the current loan and more to do with the fact that I am solely responsible for overseeing care of our mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s and was placed in memory care last August. She lived with me for two years prior. Aside from a small social security benefit, she is penniless. We have been solely responsible for providing her care, and now that her entire check goes towards cost of care, we pay her cable and phone bill and provide the extras that her facility does not cover. I know that the rest of my family claims an inability to help, but after years of us footing these bills and me being my mother’s only support (we live in a different state) my mild annoyance has turned into a slowly simmering and very dark resentment.
My family seems to believe that we are wealthy. We are not. We work for a living like everyone else, and we choose to live below our means so we can save for retirement and our son’s education and plan for emergencies. In fact, my sisters have much nicer homes and vehicles than we do. Never a penny to spare though.
Thank you to everyone for very thoughtful responses. I do agree with the adage that you don’t lend to family with an expectation of getting it back. I would not have loaned if I thought that was a possibility though. She was always somewhat reliable in the past. I hope this doesn’t turn into a very difficult lesson learned. That money constitutes several years of conscientious savings for us.
Seriously, this is more or less the best advice ever for loaning family money. I’d heard it said before and understood it intellectually, but after experiencing a deadbeat family member failing to repay, this turned from copy pasta conventional wisdom to actual advice that real people should employ in the real world. And even if you don’t regard it as gift money initially, if they don’t pay you back then you struggle with how to move on, which means you ultimately have to hold a grudge against a family member forever or let it go? So yeah, treat all loans as gifts, and repaid loans as bonuses.
Of course, this advice strangely only comes up after the money has been lent, so heh.
Edit: OP’s latest response addresses some stuff I say here. Edit window is too brief to fix accordingly, so… bla bla.
I’m another in the loans to family are gifts (or not made at all) camp. I’m always leery of lending anything more than a few hundred dollars anyway. I figure if someone’s in the hole for more than that lending more isn’t really helping them at all, as all you’re doing is just becoming another creditor. Better to sit them down and try and work out where things are going wrong, and how they can get their finances under control.
Not so pointless. How many more people would’ve read the OP had it been organized in a, well, readable manner?
But that’s beside the point of the OP. Although it would probably be absolutely the wrong idea to do, I wonder what would happen if the OP asked the sister to pay for the India trip leg that the loaned money would’ve gone towards, as part of the repayment? Would the sister get the point, or just be all offended and huffy?