You are a class act, Ellen. Besides, it was the first time I’ve ever been called an asshat, and I was kinda laughing at it.
In fairness to me, this is what she initially agreed to do when she first asked for the loan. She was anticipating receiving the money in April, as per a court order. Also, this is not current child support. Her son is 21. It is arrears and the money legally (and I think morally) belongs to her. She and her current husband were fully supporting her son during the time when the child support should have been paid. It is a large part of the reason that I agreed to the loan, knowing – as did she – that given the size of the loan, this lump sum that she was anticipating would make all the difference in terms of timely repayment. The loan was for $7000. To date, she repaid $500 of that.
This is also why I had firmly established with her and her husband that this is a loan. It is not a small amount. To my husband and I, it is huge. It represents in part the sacrifices that we make so that we can responsibly plan for our family’s future. We drive old cars, live in the same modest home we bought in 1994, do not have high tech gear and fancy furnishings and luxuries. My sister has a gorgeous home, new vehicles, kids have cars and laptops and iPods and iPhones and tablets and basically every fancy gadget imaginable. To me, that represents choices that she makes which are none of my business at all… Until I am involved in getting them out of a crisis situation based largely in part on their lifestyle of living past their means. They needed the money to replace the furnace and make mandated repairs on their previous home (a beautiful 6 bedroom turn-of-the-century Victorian mini mansion they bought in 2006 for their family of 5 and subsequently realized they could not afford). When they sold that house earlier this year, it was at a small loss. They bought a smaller new home (still far nicer than my own) with a much smaller mortgage payment. Again, part of why she told me that they could repay at least $500 per month as well as the lump sum she was expecting.
I am feeling like a very reluctant ant to her cavalier grasshopper. In the past, she struggled so much, and for reasons that I could readily sympathize with. Bad divorce, no marketable skills (she had been a stay-at-home mom), two small children to support. Loans that we made back then were really more gifts in my mind, in that most of the time I knew she would struggle to repay them and would have been fine with never seeing a dime in return. My sister firmly established up front that they were loans, and she did over time repay them, either with cash or by sweat equity (at her request, and much to our delight, as she is amazingly talented at interior design and remodeling). She turned a horrifying and heartbreaking situation with her ex-husband into building a good life for her children - all on her own. I admire her for that. I am not sure I could have gotten through what she suffered. When she remarried 10 years ago, her circumstances improved dramatically. But she built a comfortable life for her children long before she met her current husband.
I just wanted to be clear that I don’t live a life of luxury. I am not complaining. My husband and I choose to live as we do, which is a very comfortable existence for us. We do not borrow money, ever. We pay cash for everything we own, except our home. We adopted our son from Malaysia in 2006, a circumstance that we initially thought would require me living in Malaysia for 3 months while we waited for the adoption to go through. It was a private adoption of an infant arranged by his family and only possible because my husband is a citizen of that country. It ended up being a year. It was the happiest year of my life, having the chance to focus exclusively on becoming mama to our beautiful son, but a staggeringly costly year, as my husband was the sole provider, remaining in the U.S. to work and supporting my apartment and living expenses in Malaysia as well as our home in the U.S. Not to mention the staggering legal costs of lawyers in both countries. Every time I feel a twinge of envy at a friend or family member’s new luxury vehicle or mini McMansion, I look at my son and feel proud and grateful that our sacrifices made bringing him into our lives possible.
I want to say thank you to everyone who responded with some really great advise and personal stories of their own. I was particularly moved by the comments about letting go of my resentment towards family who do not step up to help us support our ailing mother. I had not thought of the situation in that way. But it is true that we made this choice with eyes wide open.
I agree for the most part with you. However, this is family, and it’s not life and death for the donor.
Friends come and go, stab one in the back etc, but family is forever ( or should be ).
My two cents to follow:
In the US, people might lose a job at the drop of a hat, so mutual family assistence may be called for. But over here in the Netherlands, anyone who needs to borrow money (aside from mortgages and education) has basically admitted in the same breath that he can’t handle money. That he can’t save money. That his idea of saving money is to borrow and then repay and then borrow again.
It is strange, that if your sister just save 5000 dollars, she would never have to borrow again but could treat that cushion as she now treats you.
I’'m reminded of that Dickens quote, also known as the Micawber Principle,
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But I shouldn’t talk. I’m the same way with being just a few minutes late. My Micawber principle would be:
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Perhaps there’'s some self-help book about money management you could give your sister. She won’t read it, but I’ve found such gifts convey the right mix of genuine help, annoyance, and passive-agressive resentment. 
Tales brass ones to pull a version of the Gene Wilder/ Zero Mostel scam from The Producers.
Unfortunately, loans to family are in a special class that you usually have less chance of getting back and less options for recovering the money.
I read your whole post and I just want to make sure I understand something: you took the money from your son’s education fund but then you were complaining that the money she paid back would have been nice to fund a trip.
Did you really get it from a college fund or just tell her that so she would be more likely to pay you back?
Since she thinks the money is for a six year olds college fund, she might not think it’s as necessary to pay it back immediately since he won’t be needing it for quite a while.
We actually have money automatically deducted from his payroll, but my employer is not set up for this to be an automatic deduction, so we set money aside into that savings account and when it reaches a certain balance, we forward that amount to the higher yielding 529 college investment plan. We had extra parked in that account earmarked for our upcoming vacation plans. We hadn’t decided yet how much would go to the plan vs. what we needed for tickets and expenses. So yes, a very large portion of what I loaned her came directly from our son’s college savings money. When we loaned her the money, we decided that we’d send her monthly payments on to the plan. I didn’t mislead her; what would be the point? It’s our money (or was), and how we choose to spend it is ultimately at our discretion.
I just didn’t think how I’d choose to spend it would be on a new furnace for my sister and a car for my nephew 
I’d rather have a family member mad at me because I didn’t lend them money than be mad at a family member because they didn’t pay me back.
I have a brother-in-law who has asked us for money a few times and had a good sob story to go with it. I basically said “Not no but hell NO!”. He borrowed from other family members and never paid them back.
There is a difference between lending to an in law and a blood relative.
I think that you should tweak this quite eloquent and comprehensive post and put it to her.
You could end by saying words to the effect of: And that is why I really need to get this money back. I see that our original plan was too cumbersome for you, so why don’t we agree on (original amount minus X) per month? Even better, leave it up to her to suggest an amount she thinks she can afford.
You could also add something about being glad that she took care of the business she borrowed for (the furnace) plus the unexpected expense that came up (the car).
My mom, who was very poor at the time, once asked her brother, who was (and is) very rich, whether he could loan her family a hundred dollars for groceries. He said he wouldn’t loan money to family members. She then asked if he would please just give her the money. He refused and they didn’t speak for almost ten years after that.
That’s my story.
(They’re all better now though. But it took their parents’ deaths to bring them together.)
My mom’s brother is extremely wealthy and as tight as a clenched fist. It’s his money, to do with as he wishes; we just laugh at his outlandish cheapness, such as buying a fast food burger without cheese and then demanding that they reduce the price accordingly. When I was finally able to get my mother into the very nice memory care facility she had been wait-listed for nearly two years at, we had to buy her furniture and personal needs items and take care of her utility hook ups. It was very costly and we asked family members to help. Even the sister who recently borrowed from me managed to cough up $100. This uncle, who could have easily afforded to buy her a freaking mansion, flatly refused to send a dime. He said, it’s your mother and your responsibility. Fair enough… Except a few months prior, HIS mother (my 86 year old grandmother, who is alive and very healthy) decided that she needed to move away from him and his persnickety skinflint ways. I ended up paying for her plane ticket back to Illinois and arranging for the movers. He would not even give her a ride to the airport. She had to arrange transport. His excuse at the time was that he won’t put an airline ticket on a credit card and couldn’t get away to purchase at the airport (I doubt they even take cash there). Of course, no offer to send me the money. I can’t even be mad. Disgusted, yes. But I think his approach towards money verges on a true mental illness. He is an otherwise pleasant and even fun person to be around.
This kind of situation is the reason I flat out refuse to lend money.
If a relative has a genuine need, and I have the money to spare, I will give it to them. Or if I have some money but not as much as they need, I’ll give them what I can afford. I’ve done that several times.
But if they say they will pay it back I tell them to instead of paying me back, save the money for emergencies so they won’t need to ask in the future. Because that’d make me happier.
I don’t have a phone I can post from. 
My ex was a paraplegic with a millionaire father ( back when a million was a LOT ) and although we had stuff all money, he never offered a cent of help.
The ultimate example of his stinginess though, was when he bought the cheapest mass produced house he could find, and wouldn’t even pay for a ramp so she could get into the house.
Her mother wasn’t much better, though less rich, buying an upstairs flat without a lift.
PS, I don’t see why it was your responsibility to pay for your grandmother unless she was being abused. There are worse things than living with a skinflint.