I loan money to people and never expect to be repaid. If someone asks for $2k I give them $5k. $400 give them $1k.
Sometimes I get paid back. Usually not. It’s because people are aware I have money so various people ask.
The goal isn’t to get paid back. Often these acquaintances cut off all contact. The goal is to never be asked for money again and slowly bled out by frequent sob stories. If they know they are already into me for more than they thought they would get, they won’t come back, and I don’t look like a jerk.
That is so surreal to me. I had to loan money from friends for real emergencies and always made sure they get paid - often more than they gave. How can one not be guilt-ridden until their deathbed?
Or, at the most charitable, people in really bad places (either by choices or bad luck)... and are doing what they need to get by.
And honestly, habitually soliciting money from friends shares a lot of similarities with using venture capital -- the reasoning that it's better to explode with someone else's money than your own.
It's an efficient and polite way of determining if your "loan" actually helps them, or they are going to be a bottomless pit of misery and $ requests. If the loan helps them, they will be able to pay it back and all will be well. If it doesn't help them, then there's likely no value in giving them more money.
If you want be charitable, there's certainly more efficient ways than giving free money to random people who ask you.
You loan someone money not expecting them to pay it back, you never bring it up or bother them, they decide to leave your life forever. You are the bad guy. Only on the internet.
No... if you have some messed up system that involved that process to filter people from your life, you're the bad guy, yeah. Not just on the internet, either.
Sorry to say, but not everyone you meet is worth keeping in your life. This is just one way of filtering the people who aren't worth keeping, out. Those that are worth keeping, and really are just temporarily down on their luck, will repay the loan and continue interacting with this person, none the wiser.
I think it's not about the value but about the deal (or principles). Some people in trouble really improve after a debt for a friend/family like that (some don't).
But given we're talking about loans and gifts while a person is living, I think the correct tax to invoke is the gift tax that has a limit of $17,000 per year.
If taxpayer A gifts taxpayer B $1M today, taxpayer B owes $0 in taxes to the US federal government. Taxpayer A also owes $0, assuming that is all they have gifted in their life. But they do have to file a form with the IRS tabulating the total they have gifted, minus the annual exclusion ($17k).
Neither taxpayer A nor taxpayer B have a federal tax liability for gifting more than the annual exclusion amount.
So I do not see how the gift tax, which would implicitly involve a tax liability for the gift, has a limit of $17k.
> The donor is generally responsible for paying the gift tax. Under special arrangements the donee may agree to pay the tax instead. Please visit with your tax professional if you are considering this type of arrangement.
> Second, gifts in excess of the annual exclusion may still be tax-free up to the lifetime estate basic exclusion amount ($11.58 million for 2020).[9] For estates over that amount, however, such gifts might result in an increase in estate taxes. Taxpayers that expect to have a taxable estate may sometimes prefer to pay gift taxes as they occur, rather than saving them up as part of the estate.
Because if they weren't, I'd gift my work to my employer and they'd gift me money to live on. And there would be a similar exchange of gifts with customers and suppliers, rather than purchases and subscriptions.
The paperwork only starts when you gift one person more than $16k (2022 value) in one year, which is quite a large gift and the lifetime estate tax exemption is also very high (currently $12M), so even if you do need to file paperwork because a gift is taxable, the tax rate is likely to be 0% for almost everyone. And as much as people complain about death being taxable, most people don't have that many tears for the tax impact on people who had a $15M estate.
I said "private". I employer gives you money out of his own pocket it is a valid gift. If the money came out of corporate account - that just does not qualify.
But I understand the rest. I simply did not know that the rules are very reasonable. Myself I am in Canada not the US.
Private gifts are not taxed until it is over $12 million dollars (the estate tax limit).
The IRS does require you to report it if it goes over $16k from one individual to another. This is solely to keep track of that $12M lifetime gift limit.
Totally reasonable IMO unless you don't believe in inheritance taxes at all.
so you could do $48k from a couple to their child and child's spouse.
In several European countries this is a trick to get around inheritance tax so, if you die several years after the gift, it's taxed as per inheritance.
Yeah. In the UK it is a common trick to back date a gift to your children 7 years so you don't have to pay inheritance tax on it. Sometimes it needs to preparation, you need some sort of evidence that the gift happened 7 years before death, but faking that evidence is far from impossible.
The $17k per year is just a reporting limit. No taxes are owed until gifts exceed the lifetime amount, which is somewhere around $12M, or maybe $13M now as you write.
(I'm not a tax advisor... just reading the IRS website.) The annual limit for gifts from one individual to another is $17,000 for 2023. Even so, nothing kicks in until you cumulatively gift enough to cover the "Basic Exclusion Amount" is reached, which is currently north of $10 million.
Further, that tax is payed by the donor, not the recipient.
In other words, the IRS won't care if you can't pay rent and somebody gifts you $1000.
Some people don't like to borrow money. For such people, it's usually not about whether the lender needs the money back, it's about how they see themselves.
This 100%. I try to cultivate friendships with people whose mental model of themselves and their friendships with me would require that they treat a loan seriously (even if, in the end, they couldn’t pay it back).
With such a friend, whether to loan money is an easy question to answer: yes, as long as I can afford to.
With anyone else I figure I’m not a bank (or a loan shark), so I shouldn’t get into a bank’s business.
Some people like to do things that are totally irrational from a utilitarian perspective (defined on whatever concept of “utility” you find important I suppose) but like to defy the nihilism of it all by adhering to this weird concept called “principles”. It’s more common than you might think.
The majority of requests for money come from a minority of people with sad stories. You are clearly a member of the majority of people with sad stories.
I think the minority would call you a victim of 'temporarily embarrassed millionaire syndrome'.
It's peculiar. Some people sometimes kind of resent those that saw their weakness, responded to it and helped them.
Misplaced pride? Or lack of self-awareness and acceptation of their shortcomings? Guilt that builds upon itself (where just talking about it first could ... just clear things up)?
Or they don't know/understand/weren't explained how to repay it (even if that's as simple as just paying back, or only saying "thanks"). Social rituals definitely help here.
Would telling them to go fuck themselves not be cheaper and easier?
Edit: I don’t have fuck you money, so I am actually ignorant of the dynamic you’re describing. I’d rather be known as an asshole with backbone than a rich sap though. One of those looks more like a mark than the other.
This is certainly from my religious tradition and won't work for everyone but I consider it a blessing and a freedom that such discernment is not required of me:
> when you see on earth the man who has encountered the shipwreck of poverty, do not judge him, do not seek an account of his life, but free him from his misfortune. Why do you make trouble for yourself? God has excused you from all officiousness and meddlesomeness. How much most of us would complain, if God had bidden us first to examine each person's life exactly, to interfere with his behavior and his deeds, and only then to give alms? But as it is we are freed from all this kind of annoyance. A judge is one thing, an almsgiver is another.
No, for those people who would “ride for me” and vice versa I have loyalty and don’t mind helping them with money, but I’d expect to stay involved in their lives.
If they scuttle off, then they weren’t real at all, and I got played. I guess this supports OPs point, so I kinda get it.
However this group of people is not very large, most people I know aren’t getting money willy-nilly.
Why not? I've borrowed thousands of dollars from family at times, lent thousands of dollars to them at others, and we've always repaid each other eventually.
It's normal to forgive a loan to family if circumstances change, or to give money no-strings-attached if they need it, but it's equally normal to loan money to help with cash flow problems and then expect repayment eventually.
>I've borrowed thousands of dollars from family at times
Is this common? Such a thing is unthinkable to me, and even friends from more businesslike families than mine have expressed major shame to me that they had to get a couple grand from their dad to cover closing costs (paid back within weeks)
This has less to do with having money and more to do with understanding whether the person asking actually values you and your generosity regardless of their ability to pay.
It's unfortunate that some people seem incapable of feeling guilty. They have a victim mentality which only gets worse whenever people don't do anything nice for them.
If they're redeemable there is a point where you give them so much that they finally escape their problems and their attitude improves. Sadly this doesn't always happen and it doesn't always last.
Its better to not focus on the amounts, as everyone has "fuck you money" at some level. I see it as something that scales based on your financial state.
Surely you've spent some amount of money on frivolity.
> I’d rather be known as an asshole with backbone than a rich sap
This may be your particular disposition, but it is by no means universal. Given these two choices, I would much rather be known as a rich sap.
I think it’s important to note that a person can knowingly run the risk of being ripped off, not because they’re too stupid to know better, but because of their philosophical attitude toward money and how they relate with their fellow humans.
True, I guess my motivation is to break free of the crabs in the bucket that would bleed me of the success I’ve managed to acquire.
If one came from a different environment, material concerns might not be as pressing, and it might be a better strategy to placate said crabs in order to not lose one’s social standing.
Same here. If I'm able, I'll loan whatever amount necessary. Some people pay it back, some don't. I never tell them they have to and I never expect them to. In most cases it's been worth it, because 1) they know they can count on me when they're having trouble (and that's important to me) and 2) I've found they'll help me in whatever they can if I do need help.
I've also asked friends for money and I've been incredibly grateful to have people who have had my back in that way. There's a sense of security there that's invaluable.
Some people are just perpetually bad with money and always come back for more, and that's okay too. As long as I can afford it, I don't mind helping somebody out of a tough spot, even if it's semi-regularly.
I wonder if Carmack ever regrets lending money to somebody.
Instead of rewarding the antisocial behavior and therefore causing it to happen more frequently, albeit to other people, I would recommend one of these:
- "I'm sorry but I've lost my job. I cannot afford this."
- "I'm sorry but no means no."
- If they insist: "Which part of the two letters in 'No' do you not understand?"
You aren't the jerk. Someone who doesn't accept "no" is the jerk.
There's places to go to to lend money, they're called banks. If you're not a bank it's not your job.
Nothing is your job except your job, but how impoverished would your life, family and your community be if everyone stuck to strictly that?
You might be right on the specifics in this case, I'll abstain from making judgement. But as a guideline, as a framework, "it's not your job" is monstrously insufficient.
If someone asks me for money I make it clear they aren't obligated to pay it back at all or in full. In this way I have never "lost" money only given it away. Well over $10k in any year I was adequately employed. Less in others but still tens of dollars here and there even when I was homeless. It's never been hard to find people who seem more in need of it than I am.
I've loaned out way more than $10k over the course of my life, but this is the oppression of growing up poor.
If you grew up rich, you didn't have friends or uncles or aunt's constantly asking for money and never paying it back so parent poster's mindset seems dramatic/extreme. It is not.
I'd like to point out my experience of taking the loan and never repaying it. I felt guilty for decades and more distant from the loaner. They never brought it up but my guilty mind did.
So I'm not 100% sure it was a net positive for our relationship.
If I was to do loan money and they didn't pay back in some reasonable amount of time I think I'd tell them explicitly it was a gift. Though I'm not sure that would fix things in the guilty person's mind (yea, I get I'm projecting my feeling on guilt on them. They might not feel any guilt at all)
That is not how the psychology of that interaction would work. If someone doesn't want more than what they asked you for they wouldn't accept it. If they did want more then they aren't going to stop asking because you gave them extra.
This is an obvious fabrication by someone with little to no actual life experience.
Same. Several years ago I had an ex-GF of sorts reach out to me in SF. She was passing through and wanted to say hi, etc. I had a couple hours before my shift at a bar I worked at so I swung by where she was, bought her a drink, etc. Immediately could tell she was in a bad place, looked like her occasional drug use had become a permanent, more hard kind. About halfway through the drink was a clumsy come on and a push for some cash, she was out of gas, couldn't get home, whatever. I ended up giving her like $40, a big hug, said goodbye. The whole time she is swearing up and down she will be back next week, will pay me back, etc.
I got to work and told a coworker what had happened. She thought I was crazy and was laughing cause I had been conned by an ex. I then explained if I never saw my $40 again it was money well spent. One less person in my life bringing with it their chaos, and our history had made it hard to totally write off.
Sure enough, never heard from her again...
> She thought I was crazy and was laughing cause I had been conned by an ex. I then explained if I never saw my $40 again it was money well spent. One less person in my life bringing with it their chaos
I was surprised by some of this, especially this last part.
Firstly, $40 is not a lot of money. Hardly a "big con".
Second, I think the "money well spent" part is that you helped her in some small amount, when it was obvious she was suffering, and you didn't expect anything in return.
I think if she had come back expecting continued/sustained support, then you'd be right to pull away. But that sounds like the story of somebody who struggled in that moment and you gave some small gesture of support. I think it's good. Hardly an "investment to get her to leave you alone". That sounds too cynical and harsh.
> Second, I think the "money well spent" part is that you helped her in some small amount, when it was obvious she was suffering, and you didn't expect anything in return.
It seems you have been lucky enough to be living a sheltered life, without any acquaintance having tried to chat you up to their advantage.
Unfortunately there are plenty of people in the real world who are either takers or outright set to exploit you. Not many, but enough to have people learn the wisdom of saying "no" to sob stories.
I once came across a guy who apparently lived close to me who was asking for money for a taxi ride because he was out of gas and had to go to the hospital to check up on his kid who had an emergency and blablabla. I gave the guy 10€ and wished him well. Fast forward a couple of weeks and I stumble upon the same guy right on the same spot. He clearly didn't recognize me as he asked me again for money for a taxi ride because he ran out of gas and his kid was just admitted to the hospital and blablabla. I asked him if he didn't asked for that same request a few weeks ago, to which he just stood there looking at me without saying a word, and after a couple of seconds he turned back and proceeded to walk away and never be seen again.
In the pre mass online shopping days I also had a close friend who just moved to another city. Our friend group had thrown him a big farewell party and everyone promised to keep in touch and visit all the time and all those things. After a few days that friend reached out to us saying he now lived right next to a consumer electronics megashop, and if any of us wanted anything shipped then we could simply send him the cash and he would buy the stuff we needed. A couple of guys from the friend group took him on his offer and sent him cash transfers, and that friend proceeded to ghost everyone.
Sadly I have other personal anecdotes, some of which real sob stories.
It really depends on what you mean by helping people with a small amount. Those who profit from your actions do benefit from the money they get from you even if it's under false pretenses. Robbers who steal stuff from people around them are also helped by getting their hands on il gotten gains.
> It seems you have been lucky enough to be living a sheltered life, without any acquaintance having tried to chat you up to their advantage.
I'm sorry good sir or madam, I stopped reading here.
In my personal life experience with abusive people, I find it makes me want to be more in favor of unconditional help for others, not less. Though I have experienced the urge to want to help people less, which you seem stuck in, and I was formerly stuck. I think it's a stress response. It creates a lot of anxiety to keep sizing people up for how they're going to screw you, instead of just accepting them and treating them well. (Yes, there is a difference between treating them well and letting them abuse you.)
> In my personal life experience with abusive people, I find it makes me want to be more in favor of unconditional help for others, not less.
This has nothing to do with conditional or conditional help, or help at all. You feel compelled to fool yourself into believing you're not being exploited, but you're the only one believing that nonsense. You're dealt with like the mark in a con, and not exercising any common sense does not make you more pious, just an easy mark without self esteem.
The people that leech off of you are not the ones who need it the most. They are just the ones that don't mind profiting from less than ethical and moral means.
Enjoy your paranoid life. Imo the ideas you're writing indicate very high levels of stress, which can lead to unfounded mistrust of others and general misanthropy. If you could see it more broadly you might see that the people "taking advantage" are also suffering, and have more in common with you than you appreciate.
It's ok to be yourself around those people, to let down your proverbial guard, while having appropriate boundaries and not being exploited ... But over focus on who exploits and who is exploited blah blah blah ... All of that is quite toxic. It can make you just as miserable as the people you're accusing, if not more. And if you see every interaction this way, it's only a matter of time before you start seeing potential exploitation where it doesn't exist.
>Second, I think the "money well spent" part is that you helped her in some small amount, when it was obvious she was suffering, and you didn't expect anything in return.
Let's be clear here: the "out of gas" story was almost certainly a lie and OP knew it. He helped her buy a small amount of drugs.
I have a sibling struggling with drug addiction for the past 6+ years, constantly "borrowing" money from others and never quite hitting a serious enough "rock bottom" to decide to get help/rehab. My brother "borrows" $10+k/year from my dad and it's poisoning their relationship and draining my dad's finances. (my dad recently took out a 401k loan because he's so cashflow-negative and that money's gone already) My dad enables him every day while dreaming about moving to another state and cutting off all contact.
$40 for OP to cut ties with someone like that is indeed money well spent, IMO.
> Firstly, $40 is not a lot of money. Hardly a "big con".
I offered my seat on the subway to a young woman about my age who looked very tired. She didn't say anything, or even look in my direction: she just seemed like she was having a difficult time. She said "yes, thank you" and I got up.
When I got up, the dude I was standing next to whispered in my ear "can't believe you let yourself get conned out of your seat like that."
Some people just don't want others to be helped I guess.
This is not the standard I can tell you, lend $40, 100 or more to someone, especially with an addiction problem and you see them the next time they need more. You're now the easiest path forward. same thing happens when you over-help someone at work so their job.
But that’s the reverse relationship? One guy asking several people for money. Additionally, I think most people who borrow or lend money do not make a habit of discussing it.
In the movie mention in the original post, the character looks up to a mobster. A mob guy would typically do loan sharking, so people would go to them for a loan.
If you're going to be a loan shark you can't have people thinking they won't have to pay you back. You have to break their kneecaps.
Why would you pay so much just for them not to annoy you? That seems a very high price for some peace and quiet.
I would just cut off contact with those people. I don't really get this much because I'm not rich, but if people ask me for loans just to get money out of me I will be the one breaking off contact.
On the other hand I have a friend of mine who has loaned money and never paid me back, but she is always in a financial hard spot and she is extremely generous to the community she drives. I never really expected to be paid back for that either but in this case I just wanted to help someone who cares more about others than herself.
Guessing from the username Monero-xmr, they accidentally found themselves in the $100-millionaire bracket. More money than a person could spend in a lifetime. What do you do with that kind of wealth?
Fair enough, I suppose it really changes your view on money (though I notice that super rich people I know are actually less generous in general). For me $1k would really be a lot especially just for someone to shut up.
What is a dollar worth to you? Stupid question, right? A dollar is a dollar. How about a penny? Would you bother to pick up a penny? How about a million pennies?
If you're making $10 million/yr, $1k to get someone to buzz off is cheap.
The inequalities of capitalism are gross, but while we're here, that's the way the world works.
Sure, money or anything can be used as a test to determine someone's character. But you can do so without putting money on the line and save yourself some headache.
One way to determine someone's character is to spend time with them, listen to what they say about themselves and others, and whether or not their claims about themselves line up with their actions across time.
Maybe money is "cheaper" and "faster" than this route, but... Guess that's just been my go-to method to determine whether or not someone has integrity, is trustworthy, and has a sense of responsibility, parity, and respect for self and others.
Giving money without expecting it in return, or even being clear about expecting to be paid back, is more about having gauged people's characters & motivations, even when I get it wrong or things don't pan out as agreed-upon.
This reminds me of the one lady from my previous job that lost her daughter. We held a fundraiser at work. She made a lot of money out of it. Then she lost her niece. It was so sad to have misery strike twice. Until she lost another niece. Then we checked up on it. Nobody had died.
Could it be that by loaning more money than they expected, they spent that money and then entered into a negative cycle where they were never able to gather the money again?
I used to do the same thing as you on a smaller scale (in the hundreds, never the thousands). I noticed that while loaning more money made more sense to me, whenever I did that it was a struggle to get the money back. Meanwhile when I loaned the exact amount, it more often came back.
I lost several friendships this way for a short while, with the only way to get the person out of the guilt cycle to surprise them at some random Christmas or birthday with "my gift to you this year is to give you the money you owe me". With them later telling me that they were feeling so guilty about the money they avoided talking to me because every conversation would make them feel miserable.
Now when I loan money, I enter the amount in an app we have in common and then actually put in place a (vague) payment plan. I find it helps people structure the entire situation and since they get to pay some money back the guilt is less present. It seem to remove the expectation that they need to gather the full amount before paying back.
Similar thing happened to me. I had a roommate who regularly needed a loan for rent. They eventually descended into drug use and chaos and we wanted them out of the house. They kept missing their supposed move-out dates, so I offered to cancel out their ~$5k in debt if they were out on a certain date.
Keep in mind I was unable to afford groceries many of these months.
In the end, they cleared out on that date and I never heard from them again. Even though we were quite close at one time.
> The goal is to never be asked for money again and slowly bled out by frequent sob stories
Sometimes if you "loan" people money they will cut contact and disappear from your life.
The much more likely scenario is that you will get the reputation of someone who has money and is generous with it, and these requests and sob stories will increase 100x.
"Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry."
-Shakespear
I've just followed this my entire life and it has served me very well.
Other than a mortgage, I never borrow, and other than family emergencies, I never lend.
Worth noting that this quotation is spoken by Polonius in Hamlet. According to Wikipedia:
> He is chief counsellor of the play's ultimate villain, Claudius, and the father of Laertes and Ophelia. Generally regarded as wrong in every judgment he makes over the course of the play, Polonius is described by William Hazlitt as a "sincere" father, but also "a busy-body, [who] is accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent".
This is more or less the same advice that Kevin O'Leary gives in his book "The Cold Hard Truth on Men, Women, and Money". His stance is that money is basically like blood since you need it to live, so it should be protected from predators and leeches
I do not loan money to people, ever. I will give money to people I know to help them out from time to time.
Sometimes people ask for a loan and insist they will repay me. Fine, I will call it a loan because that's what helps them frame things in their own heads. If they repay me, also fine, why would I turn down free money?
But for my own peace of mind, I think of these things as gifts to help a good person out. If I don't think of them as loans, I don't find myself chasing former friends for repayment.
I am not a bank. I am not a debt collector. I do not wish to become a bank or debt collector as a side hustle. If you ask me for more money than I can afford to gve you without repayment, it is far less stressful to say "no" and get the conflict over with on the spot.
> The goal is to never be asked for money again and slowly bled out by frequent sob stories. If they know they are already into me for more than they thought they would get, they won’t come back, and I don’t look like a jerk.
This only works if the people have fucking shame.
I have a relative who has no shame and will keep taking as much money as you'll let him take.
So I limit what i give.
He keeps saying to me it's ok if I borrow and charge him points ... but in the Christian tradition usury is a sin so I don't and though I'm not a religious person, I was raised with mainly Christians principles that I adhere to because they just seem like good principles in general to live by.
Plus I'm pretty sure if I did charge interest I'd just be disappointed when he doesn't follow through with interest payments knowing how flaky he is with his money.
I'd rather just give money and give what's comfortable.
I knew a person who this wouldn't deter them. We were sort of friends through a common industry, and I talked to him once in a blue moon. Gave them some money after they posted a real bad sob story on FB during the pandemic and not even a week later they asked for more (a lot more).
Kept asking me for money for some new reason every time I popped onto Facebook via Messenger until I stopped updating my active status. A bit later they deleted that profile and created a new one, and I decided not to become friends with him again.
Looking the guy up, and he was always posting GoFundMe's for some cause or family illness or another, and you'd see links to people in the industry asking for things on his behalf periodically across various websites, going back more than a decade.
I do believe he dug himself into a deep hole and he was in a hard place, but I also believe he's willing to take advantage of anyone as much and as often as possible until he can't get anything more from them, then moves on to the next person (well, probably multiple people at the same time).
So anyway, that's too fresh in my head, and I'm hesitant to give anyone money for anything right now. I've got plenty of crap going on for the forseeable future that needs a bunch of money anyway (implants, roof replacement, flooded basement, etc).
If you give money, the other side will always resent you when you try to get it back. They'll think "I'm struggling to pay this, and this person had it" however irrational that may seem.
If you care enough to give, just give. If you don't, don't.
You're paying people off to go away and leave you alone and not be your friend, in a way that doesn't make you look like a jerk like you would be if you just didn't loan them money?
The only way this makes sense to me, especially at that kind of money you're talking about, is if you are fairly wealthy.
And, man, to me what this says is that it's impossible to have real solid relationships with people if you are rich and they aren't. It makes me think of all these people who only are interested in you for your money, and your fear that people will think you're a jerk if you don't give them money (over and over again!) anyway because you have so much money, all these people approaching you with "sob stories." It seems like it makes it almost impossible to be real friends with people, if they aren't as wealthy as you.
I guess it's a reason to be glad I'm not that rich, after all.
Meanwhile, I go through life wondering if I borrowed $20 from someone and forgot to pay them back for months and kinda hope they would just say something if I did.
I _constantly_ try to evaluate where I stand with people. If they bought the most recent round of drinks, the next one is on me. If we split dinner, I'm thinking about how their total averaged out compared to mine. If I paid for something, I'm thinking about how much I add to their ledger. I have a "disadvantange" threshold of ~$100 where I won't say anything, but if the imbalance continues to tilt in their favor and they don't do anything to correct it, I might start insulating myself from their financial involvement..
I'm sure most people don't care about it as much as I do, but I have this deep-seated need to make sure I'm as square with as many people as I can be and I expect the same from everyone else. It's not just about being owed, it's about owing, too. I wish I knew where it came from. I wish I was better about just letting it go.
It's interesting because I — and as far as I can tell, most of my circle — do a similar sort of thing but it's much fuzzier. Nobody is really keeping track of particular dollar amounts, but we seem to have excellent group memory of who last bought who what, who paid for the last round of drinks, etc. I wonder which style (particular vs. fuzzy) is more common.
"I _constantly_ try to evaluate where I stand with people. "
I am, or rather used to be, quite similar. Now I am much more relaxed, as I think I understand better what a gift is. It is free and comes ideally with no strings attached. Otherwise it is an transaction. And it is a bad idea, to mix them up. My default is to consider a gift as a gift and nothing more.
I just give and take freely.
If you think too much about it, it can destroy a lot.
Also, there is more than money. Maybe the one guy bought more rounds, but then he unloaded his problems on the others. Or not. So what? Life is not a balance sheet, that needs to sum up. But if you try to make it one, you might find the joy is getting lost somewhere in those numbers.
Thinking I could be insulated because of 10x $10 differences that I thought were close enough makes me sad. I think insulating can be fine, but hopefully your friends know you well enough to know why or you tell them explicitly. Could be in each transaction to split you making sure you're square, or doing a bulk square up.
Some therapists like specific goals like this, for fixed periods of time. Doesn't have to be open ended. Spend X weeks working through the challenges of letting this go.
> I go through life wondering if I borrowed $20 from someone and forgot to pay them back for months
Same. I sometimes ask my friends to tell me if they think I owe them anything. I try to keep things in mind, but I much prefer to hear if I forgot something than let the relationship detoriate.
Exactly, I don't tend to lend small quantities of money to people because I just assume other people are just as terrible at remembering these things as I am.
I'd rather just give money or buy meals now and then rather than have complicated obligations.
When you say it like that I can't help but factor in inflation. Even though McGee paid the loan back, the value of it will be significantly lower today than when he borrowed it.
Well it took me borrowing one video game to learn that lesson. "No, you must've borrowed it to someone else" when I asked.
First game I bought for my own pocket money, which at time, in Poland, was a lot for a kid as it was full price title, Baldur's Gate 1 in nice box with manual and a map, and dubbed gloriously with then-radio/TV stars, hell, the narrator voice was better than original. Needless to say I was pretty salty.
Only for your edification, as your English is 1/0 (infinitely) better than my Polish. I believe you meant "lending / lent" in place of "borrowing / borrowed." We separate the words, so "to borrow" is to temporarily take the item, "to lend" is to temporarily give the item.
In Spanish they are the same word also -- "alquilar" -- "to rent" and "to rent out".
Do any linguistics geeks reading have a word I can google for this phenomenon? That is, a word that means something like "a word or phrase that is bidirectional in one language but part of a unidirectional pair in another"
I wonder if this is due to the language that whatever large immigrant populations in Minnesota spoke. I know Minnesota had a lot of Northern European immigrants, and another commenter in this thread says German doesn't distinguish borrow/lend.
I don't have an answer but English LOVES preposition-attached verbs.
You can use lent and borrowed in both directions (I lent X to him; he lent X to me -- I borrowed X from him; he borrowed X from me) so the main difference is not in whether the verbs can be used bidirectionally, but in how you indicate the direction.
I suspect Spanish (and maybe Polish) disambiguate in different ways, but disambiguate I'm sure they do!
> You can use lent and borrowed in both directions (I lent X to him; he lent X to me -- I borrowed X from him; he borrowed X from me)
Those are both unidirectional: lent is always “the (possibly implicit) direct object moves from the subject to the indirect object prefaced with ‘to’” while borrowed is always “the (possibly implicit) direct object moves to the subject from the indirect object prefaced with ‘from’”.
Birectional would be where the subject could be the source or recipient depending on, e.g., the preposition used to relate the other party as the indirect object.
In your examples the direction seems to be the same. Or, more specifically, in regards to the verb the direction is the same.
idk if there are regional exceptions, but in general borrow and lend seem more akin to learn and teach, respectively. The have an implicit direction: (from, in the case of borrow; to in the case of lend).
I teached something from you today or I will learn you calculus in extracurricular classes don't work.
In Spanish it is disambiguated in a similar way as you were mentioning (to me, to you)
"Alquilo" translates literally to rent, so not really the same:
- Me alquilas un piso. (you rent me a flat)
- Te alquilo un piso. (I rent you a flat)
I think a better translation to borrow/lend is "prestar/dejar:
- Me prestas/dejas un lápiz. (you lend me a pencil/I borrow a pencil from you)
- Te presto/dejo un lápiz. (I lend you a pencil/You borrow a pencil from me)
True but in some parts of the uk (north/midlands) 'lend' can mean borrow. As kids I'd be asked by someone at school 'can I lend your pencil?' (= can I borrow your pencil). Dunno if they use that any more though. Was decades ago.
It can go both ways as slang. I've got one friend and one relative, both in London their whole lives, who'll say "can you borrow me (something they want)".
I actually don't think I've ever heard a native English (as a first language) speaker do it the way you recall - using lend when they mean borrow - I wonder if that's just coincidence, or if one way is more common up north and the other down south?
I have two more. I don't think any English speaker really cares about them, but they're fun.
One: you "bring" things toward the speaker, and "take" them elsewhere. So "don't forget to bring your umbrella!" is incorrect.
Two: "like" compares, and "as" joins independent clauses. So "I wish I could communicate like tptacek does" should be "I wish I could communicate as tptacek does." A correct use of like might be "You, like tptacek, comment insightfully." A famous example of a controversial misuse of "like" was the 1970s slogan "Nobody can do it like McDonald's can." It should be "... as McDonald's can." When that came out, grammar aficionados lost their minds.
Yeah, I thought about that case, but I still think the grammar pedants would mark the answer wrong. Not that I was there when they invented the word "bring," but I imagine they decided the specific word for movement toward the speaker was useful to make the statement more precise. I feel like allowing "bring" here just because the speaker happened to be at the destination where the listener was planning to go would let the exception swallow the rule. (To be clear, that's already happened in common English; I'd even venture that "don't forget to take your umbrella" sounds a little bit stiff, even though it's more correct.)
I lent about $25 to someone when I was in college. It was a lot of money for me at the time, you could buy 5 day's worth of food with it or pay 1/5th of the rent for my room (yeah, some places in Europe were really cheap in the aughts). He promised that he would pay me back.
After a while he asked me for some more money, about $5 and swore he'd pay back really soon. I was so shocked that I broke all contact with that guy and never saw him again.
> Carmack, it seems, was comfortable with not being paid back.
That's not how I read the tweet, at all.
> It was a learning experience for me, calibrating some general people behavior. I don’t think anyone intended to not pay me back, but things often just don’t work out the way you plan
How do you read the tweet? It seems pretty clear that he knew that getting paid back wasn't very highly probable, and he learned about how recipients handle that.
More to the point, Carmack was comfortable - had a house and was able to put food on the table for his loved ones - without being paid back. It's possible that, contrary to what that tweet says, Carmack demanded (his) money (back). By Western measures, however, he's still comfortable without being paid back.
Why would McGee be the one paying Carmack back after all these years if that were the case? Can you imagine Walter White paying back Elliot for some long forgotten debt out of his drug money?
You can feel both slighted by and indebted to the same individual.
Regardless of whether or not McGee feels like he deserved to have been better compensated by id software for his contributions, he feels personally indebted to John Carmack for the money he borrowed.
And in the case of feeling slighted, while he could justify never paying Carmack back by saying that since Carmack was one of the founder/owners of the company that slighted him, this was just money Carmack owed him, he has not taken that tack.
This is often not understood of successful ventures.
There’s usually a fairly small circle of close people that get the biggest share of the financial pie, and others don’t get very much.
I’ve seen a few situations where some friends ended up earning a regular salary at startups when the closed circle made millions. So yeah you can brag about working at $trendy_company but that doesn’t financially translate into anything special.
Definitely. We still have this unfair situation today, where "founders" get most of the upside, and "founding engineers" hired immediately after get ~1% or less.
Eh. He was a junior designer when he was fired. And if Carmack felt bad about how McGee was being treated at the company Carmack owned, he could have done a lot more about that.
3/12/98
-------
American McGee has been let go from Id.
His past contributions include work in three of the all time great games
(DOOM 2, Quake, Quake 2), but we were not seeing what we wanted.
Yes. Many people, including McGee, worked on those games.
And it is totally possible that his work wasn't sufficient to remain employed. It's possible he produced too slowly or not enough or his work needed help, etc.
Are those games still "all time great games" without McGee's contributions? Very likely. Without Carmack and Romero, that's a different story. And even though Romero had no input on Quake 2, it's built off of Quake, so it carries a lot of that with it.
And the whole question is complex. These games sold well. McGee did work for these games as an employee. Does he deserve a percentage of sales? If so, how much, etc? Or is it much the case with the people who worked on Microsoft Word. It was a job and they did their part and were paid for that part. I don't see anyone trying to get the Office team a percentage of Office sales, even though that would make some people fantastically wealthy.
He had Alice and...that was about it. Pretty much everything else he slapped his name on was a flop. Then he did the sequel to Alice and it got lukewarm reception.
Considering stress / "crunch mode" lifestyle of game development, maybe McGee hasn't felt truly comfortable enough to repay the debt until he got out of the industry.
This is rarely ever the case. If you "loan" someone money once they will just keep coming back and asking for more. Even worse, they will tell people and you will get the reputation of someone who is generous with money, and soon everyone will be asking you for some.
Is this your personal experience or are you non-American? Americans generally don't lend more money to people who already owe them money, unless they are close family.
Seems like the case of wealth that cannot be hidden from one's circles (and the outside world) due to him being so well known as a person in tech at the time of Doom's cultural zenith and being in the news cycle so often.
I wonder if most often the smart move is to make sure that one's sudden acquisition of wealth (say the sale of a startup-now-a-successful-scaleup) is hidden from one's even closest circles to avoid the curse of the lottery winner as well described in the famous reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vo34/comment/c...
But I also wonder if trying to hide one's wealth that much comes at the price of social isolation, where you have to reduce your contacts with the outside world to avoid flashing the new possibilities that your wealth opened to you. Or you make sure your lifestyle doesn't change at all, but then you cannot take advantage of your wealth either.
The vibe I got from Carmack after reading Masters of Doom recently is that he's never had a big focus on money. When they struck it rich he certainly divulged himself in a few luxuries - going a bit more extravagant on his nerdy hobbies, decking out a Ferrari, building rockets. But he still seemed to mostly just want to do his programming work, and that seems to be what he's continued to do after all these years. So it doesn't entirely surprise me he was willing to be generous with his money like that.
> you might consider picking another G7 or otherwise mainstream country other than the U.S. according to where you want to live if the United States dissolves into anarchy or Britney Spears is elected to the United States Senate.
Things can (and did) get much worse with our national politics than Britney being elected to the Senate.
> You know you will be getting $638,400 per year unless the capital building is burning
It almost always makes more sense to just give money (or frame it as a "payment" for something) than to loan friends / family money. The usual thing I ask is that people do it for someone else later in life if they can. It just makes everything less icky if there's no nominal expectation of repayment. Occasionally I've had things repaid anyway.
I rarely loan $$ to ither people but when I do it's usually small and considered as a gift, not a loan. I really hate piggybacking other peoplebto claim my principal.
On a side note, everytime I see the name of John Carmack popping up my heart goes to game programming and I have the impulse to create a game. Masters of Doom really is magical.
I hate that there are two types of people, people who ask for money and have no issues ghosting, and then those who ask and pay back like it's a loan shark coming for them in their eyes.
I have only had to ask to borrow money a few times, and man it hits so hard. I loath the experience. I sent $50 to someone who needed some cash to buy groceries and they said they would send it back when they could but didn't and I'm ok with it.
It hurts knowing how little (depending on wealth) it would take to change someones life. I'm still paying back a loan from someone so I could afford to buy my first house and damn does it still sting. I had to save every single cent just to afford the down payment, and it wasn't enough.
I think you should pick friends rather than choose whether you loan or not.
I’ve never loaned money to folks who I don’t have a strong relationship with. Extended Family has found this out the hard way. On the other hand - I’ve never thought twice about money transactions with closer friends. Obviously they value the relationship the same as I do. I’ve had friends loan me 5 digits for a couple of days because my Schwab didn’t settle in time and I wanted to close a property. We’ve have done so many vacations with friends where thousands are transacted and settled. It seems weird that you’d special case money alone.
Sometimes in the 90s I had a software product. It so happened that there were competitors for the same very niche market right here in Toronto - tiny company of 3 people. So they came to me with the offer to sell them a product and start working for them. The money offered was absolute peanuts, so was the salary proposed. Obviously I refused. 2 years after they called me back again and asked for a meeting. I assumed that they've probably come to their senses and had agreed to meet even though I was already employed with 6 figures.
Now the depressing part. They came and tried to pitch to me some bullshit (snake oil type) products to sell. Basically they went to multilevel marketing. I did not like it at all.
My father taught me early on that lending a friend $20 was one of the cheapest ways to find out what kind of a friend you were actually dealing with. It's a valuable lesson, for sure.
I did a version of this in elementary through high school. Lend someone $1 for the vending machine today. If they blow off repaying you, don't lend them $5 for lunch tomorrow.
When I was younger I learned that loaning money to friends, and then asking to be repaid, sucks. You're made to feel like you're some sort of Scrooge character. Now I either simply give whatever is asked, and make it clear I do not wish to be paid back, or just say no.
Initially it seemed logical to say OK you need 100 bucks for this or that and you'll get me back. But then a month later I'd mention it and was met with this sort of "why are you being a jerk about it" response. Now I'm in a position that its not a big deal, but back then even that relatively small amount of money was a big deal. It was a tough lesson to learn that some people just use the term 'loan' to make themselves feel less guilty for asking, or maybe intend to ghost you regardless.
I think this also gets into Americans (or maybe just Southerners?) being weird about money and personal finance. Talking about money is taboo.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell. My blessing season this in thee.
In cases where I feel I need to, I clarify it's a gift and if they really feel the need to repay later, they can pay it forward or gift back. The key is removing the guilt which is what kills friendship.
The challenge is that friends and family are seen as the lowest priority for repayment. Despite the fact that a loan from them was already given in the most kind and generous way, there is an increased expectation for friendliness and leniency when it comes to leniency around repayment that just doesn't come with an institutionalized lender.
Complicating things is that the penalties for not paying others, like a bank, utility company, landlord, etc. are real and tangible. Whereas hurt feelings are much more readily dismissed than an eviction notice or a debt collector.
I live where I was a born, so naturally, all elders needing a hand for whatever (mostly computing obv.) get my assistance. They always want to pay or they feel really really bad.
Reminds me I need to read graeber's book about non currency debts.. it seems to discuss these relationships.
He tells an interesting story of a relationship between two vikings, where one receives an impressive gift from his friend, and immediately sets out to kill him, because there's no way he's going to spend a week (or however long) writing the kind of epic poetry that such a gift would deserve. I think in the end he misses him, and has to go home and write the poem.
I loaned a close college friend $7000 last year. Due to life circumstances and lack of family resources, he was stuck in a rural area with no developer jobs. He was having trouble landing a remote job and I ignorantly asked why he wasn’t applying to in-person jobs on the west coast.
He told me that he certainly wouldn’t be able to afford to move and I told him “don’t let that stop you”. Fronting him moving expenses was the best decision I ever made, even though it had a chance of not working out. Six months later he’s making 10x the wage he could get in his rural area, and I’ve been paid back with (unrequested) interest.
I guess my message is: sometimes loaning money won’t work out, but when it does, the ROI (emotionally and for society) is extremely high.
That's legit that you helped out your friend like that. I've had people look at me like I'm crazy for doing similar things for friends. A rising tide raises all boats.
The risk of them not being able to pay you back and thus destroying the friendship is so high that I wouldn’t recommend this unless you are ok with losing that person as a friend OR you just give them the money without expectation of it being paid back.
How does this work in practice, though? I don't know how this would be possible at all. I have loaned money to family members in the past, and been paid back when they were back on their feet. But if a friend or family member borrowed money and never paid it back, even after they were over their financial difficulties, and never mentioned it or made any effort to repay the loan, it would certainly affect my opinion of them; at the very least, I'd expect them to offer some explanation as to why they weren't able or willing to pay me back as we agreed.
So do you actually mean this, or are you just signaling how kind you are?
Asking money back did influence my opinion and that would ruin the relationship over time. That's why I've stopped asking for money and went even further and stopped expecting anything back.
I've picked that up from friends I made in Taiwan. It was mostly paying each other's lunch but there's no reason why it shouldn't work in other areas of life.
Why would I expect a friend whom I value to repay me? I have given, both in gifts and loans both implicit and explicit, much of myself, my time, my money, my worldly possessions over the years. If I held non-repayment against them, I think that would say more about me than about my friend.
A non-friend? Sure, that might be different.
Anyone can be forgiven of anything, if you are so inclined. No "signalling" required.
Yeah, I couldn't loan that much. I'd gift a friend at most $ 2K and the expectation that I won't see it will ease my mind more than the expectation that they'd pay back $7K.
It is also possible that the inability to pay back would negative effect the friend's ability to maintain the friendship. Between feeling they let the loaner down, or feeling guilty they couldn't repay it. Even if the loaner set no expectations, it could create enough negativity to sour the friendship. This doesn't have to be logical or rational, it could be an entirely irrational emotional reaction.
If $7k destroys a friendship, it's not really that close of a friendship.
Sure, there should be some consequences for not paying it back, but incessant mockery and refusal to pay for McDonald's is probably a fair exchange.
"Give people lots of leeway, but only once" has worked out well so far. People can't fool you into making a big mistake twice, and once is just the cost of doing business^W^Wfriendship.
On the other hand, finding friends past age 30 is hard enough that paying random devs random sums of money isn't that bad of a deal.
$7k is an absurd amount of money for 99.9% of the US (Recall the statistics on who has at least 3 months of income saved up? This is a similar amount of cash to have available). I've seen good friendships lost over a lot less money than that.
I agree with the parent - don't give it with the expectation of receiving it back. Save everyone the heartache.
I am sure it is very nice of you that you protect your friends from making the stressful and angering mistake of becoming indebted to you, but the OP is expressing an attitude towards money that makes it sound like it is less of a mistake to be indebted to them.
Sure. I didn't mean $7k specifically, but rather <amount you chose to loan>. Why loan someone a truckload of cash you can't afford to lose? It's kind of your fault at that point.
We helped my sister in law afford a down payment on a house. She still hasn't gotten a house after 6 months. Am I a bit miffed? Sure. But breaking off a friendship over a down payment seems absurd.
Life happens, and people tend to take a little while to figure it out. Who cares, it's not like we can take the money with us when we go to the next life anyway.
Even if you're able to afford to lose it, setting the expectation that the loan needs to be repaid will stress the borrower. That can be enough, in my experience, to break a relationship.
Unless they're a sociopath, borrowing significant amounts of money from friends is usually considered to be a last resort, they're already in a bad place. Adding another monthly payment to their budget going to put them in a worse place.
Yes, I believe you want to loan money to friends less than what the friendship is worth. In other words, $7k might break the friendship for some, for others not really.
It also depends on how easily money comes to the lender.
> If $7k destroys a friendship, it's not really that close of a friendship.
This is easy to say if you're a software engineer at a top tier company making a solid six-figure salary, but $7k is an enormous amount of money for the vast majority of people. I think I would significantly hurt my relationships if I failed to pay back $7k to any of my friends.
I've had favorable circumstances (parents that did ok, REALLY cheap rent in an expensive city, a regular job) and I've been able to have the same policy, every time my attitude is I will loan money that I could without being too broken up about it set on fire then and there and never with any explicit expectation of good use. if it's returned (some have, some havent been able to) it's a bonus.
now this is a SMALL amount compared to most people but I have friends who have had a really rough time financially.
The GP is unclear as to whether the loan happened before or after the friend obtained a job offer. Loaning moving expenses money to someone who just got a high-paying job offer and needs the moving money to start the job does not sound that risky.
It is worth wondering about that. My first job out of college offered an interest-free loan (paid back by paycheck deductions over 2 years) for moving expenses.
That's the misunderstanding that sours so many relationships.
You have to go into the "loan" with the mindset that you will work to maintain the friendship if it doesn't work out.
In short, it's a grant, not a loan. You will become this person's benefactor, and you may learn a lot about how their mind/life works. Perhaps more than you want.
When "loaning" money to family and friends as the "lender" assuming it's a gift from the get-go is crucial. Or you just mutually agree it's a gift and move on.
1) If you are going to be financially impacted in any way by not having the loan repaid you should't "loan" (gift) it. Like gambling don't do it if you can't afford to lose it.
2) Assuming #1, the overall psychological stress and potential impact on the relationship just isn't worth it. As the "lender" you should feel good about helping someone while learning something about them in the process.
Personally, in having this outlook with family and friends they essentially get one shot. If all parties agree it's a loan and the debtor doesn't pay back the funds I move on without impact to the friendship but mentally they have a "strike" in my mind that essentially says "they can still be a good person and friend, but money can never enter the relationship again".
A modification I add is to ask them to do it for someone else once they're on their feet again. That's a pretty easy thing to agree to, and the anonymity of it allows the other person to make good on it if they feel that's important without putting any pressure on the friendship.
Have lent to many friends/family members over the years telling them to pay me back whatever/whenever they can, however they want. Some have taken decades. No one has not paid back. Few have needed a nudge, which I only give after they have climbed out of whatever hole. Honest people will always make an effort to repay their debts. The rest make lousy friends anyway.
I “loaned” a college friend a few thousand when they were in a tight spot (getting their life back after being charged with a crime they didn’t commit). I might be paid back someday, but I’m also perfectly happy for it to be a gift.
(I call it a “loan” because they preferred to think of it that way. I made clear at the time that it would be fine if they never paid me back.)
>but it's really difficult to bootstrap when you don't have the means.
You have to aim a couple rungs up, not all the way up.
Starting from literally zero you can probably retire modestly but comfortably the owner of a respectable tax dodging container storage and dumpster rental business assuming a little luck and work in your formative years (maybe the local street gang will install the love of hustling for a buck into you) to set you down the right path.
Going from zero to C-suite manager type, not so tractable.
It's a bit weird for me. I've loaned out money in various amounts (from a few hundred to tens of thousands). The larger amounts are to people I trust deeply for things like mortgage payment etc. I've gotten paid back promptly but I guess because I was expecting them to pay me back it was more or less of a non event.
I've also loaned some amounts of money to people I figured wouldn't pay me back, but in smaller amounts. Often they behaved as expected and didn't pay me back, but because I was expecting it was also more or less of a non event.
> I guess my message is: sometimes loaning money won’t work out, but when it does, the ROI (emotionally and for society) is extremely high.
My personal attitude has always been that you should loan money without the expectation that it be returned. You can't be let down if you had no expectations to begin with.
It wasn't money, specifically, but when I moved to CA back at the start of 2008 it was because I was in a similar situation. I was effectively trapped in a rural place without the funds necessary to relocate and development jobs near me had completely dried up. A friend (someone I served with in the military and who owed me a favor or three) agreed to let me couch surf his place for 3 months. If it worked out, it worked out. If not, I was outta there. I had a software engineering job by the end of first or second week.
My closest and longest friendship is a guy with a very similar background to me.
We both grew up really poor in a small town and it took us a big chunk of our adult lives to achieve some stability.
We both would have up and downs financially speaking, luckily almost never at the same time and over the years it was very common for one of them saving the other when the other was down. We never kept a balance of who owed how much to the other but we always knew we could count on each other.
Fast forward a lot of years we both now live comfortable lives and it has been a good number of years since we last had to help each other.
Sometimes I miss the struggling years though. I think that showing off each other our new German cars is not as good a foundation for a good friendship and love as helping each other and laughing about being saved by the other at the last moment from some dramatic stuff like an eviction or bankruptcy
One area of difference here might be that he didn't ask you for the loan, you suggested it. Also, the fact that the loan was specifically to make significantly more money than he'd ever had before meant that it would be easier to repay if it worked out.
Is this a techie issue? When I got my first relative high paying job I was quick to loan money. I think I felt a bit guilty so I felt I could help others. In time I stopped but looking back I loaned money to people that could not manage their finances and wasted their money rather than people that truly needed it. I never got a penny repaid. I guess it's a live and learn situation. Now it would take a lot for me to lend money. It's not likely to happen.
2. The money has to be used to complete a goal. Moving across country is a goal, paying rent is not.
3. There is no repayment date, but you do have to write me an email stating what you are using the money for and that you agree to the rules.
Those are the simplest rules I could come up with that prevent abuse without being too onerous. They seem to work. About 1/3 of the loans I've given out have been repaid.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 301 ms ] threadSometimes I get paid back. Usually not. It’s because people are aware I have money so various people ask.
The goal isn’t to get paid back. Often these acquaintances cut off all contact. The goal is to never be asked for money again and slowly bled out by frequent sob stories. If they know they are already into me for more than they thought they would get, they won’t come back, and I don’t look like a jerk.
"Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will repay him for his deed." – Proverbs 19:17
And honestly, habitually soliciting money from friends shares a lot of similarities with using venture capital -- the reasoning that it's better to explode with someone else's money than your own.
Well, some most likely are.
Usually they're choosing between a set of bad options.
Seems like a major jerk move to structure the "loan" in a way where you remove these people from your life.
If you want be charitable, there's certainly more efficient ways than giving free money to random people who ask you.
It's not "get" if it's a loan.
The IRS might also be interested if you treat this a taxable gift rather than a loan... (unlikely they'd care for $1000).
The per year limit for 2023 is 17,000. A 11M lifetime limit would mean 647 years of giving.
I think the 11M figure is just totally way off. Not sure where they are getting that from.
Scroll down to ”Basic Exclusion Amount for Year of Death”
The gift giver pays the tax, but only after they give more than the lifetime amount.
But given we're talking about loans and gifts while a person is living, I think the correct tax to invoke is the gift tax that has a limit of $17,000 per year.
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
Neither taxpayer A nor taxpayer B have a federal tax liability for gifting more than the annual exclusion amount.
So I do not see how the gift tax, which would implicitly involve a tax liability for the gift, has a limit of $17k.
Am I incorrect?
If A is alive when that happens then that is wrong. B will be taxed on the amount of $1M - 17k because the gift tax applies not the estate tax.
If A were dead and gifted B in their will, then you would be correct because the estate tax applies in this scenario.
Again, since we're taking about loans and gifts while a person is alive in this thread, the first scenario of the gift tax applies.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f709.pdf
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i709.pdf#page=20
https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employe...
>Who pays the gift tax?
> The donor is generally responsible for paying the gift tax. Under special arrangements the donee may agree to pay the tax instead. Please visit with your tax professional if you are considering this type of arrangement.
https://www.irs.gov/faqs/interest-dividends-other-types-of-i...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_tax_in_the_United_States
> Second, gifts in excess of the annual exclusion may still be tax-free up to the lifetime estate basic exclusion amount ($11.58 million for 2020).[9] For estates over that amount, however, such gifts might result in an increase in estate taxes. Taxpayers that expect to have a taxable estate may sometimes prefer to pay gift taxes as they occur, rather than saving them up as part of the estate.
The paperwork only starts when you gift one person more than $16k (2022 value) in one year, which is quite a large gift and the lifetime estate tax exemption is also very high (currently $12M), so even if you do need to file paperwork because a gift is taxable, the tax rate is likely to be 0% for almost everyone. And as much as people complain about death being taxable, most people don't have that many tears for the tax impact on people who had a $15M estate.
But I understand the rest. I simply did not know that the rules are very reasonable. Myself I am in Canada not the US.
The IRS does require you to report it if it goes over $16k from one individual to another. This is solely to keep track of that $12M lifetime gift limit.
Totally reasonable IMO unless you don't believe in inheritance taxes at all.
so you could do $48k from a couple to their child and child's spouse.
They certainly wouldn't, since you can legally receive a gift of up to $16k per year tax free.
But I also like the IRS limits. It limits how much my family/in laws think I might be able to give them in a year :)
Further, that tax is payed by the donor, not the recipient.
In other words, the IRS won't care if you can't pay rent and somebody gifts you $1000.
With such a friend, whether to loan money is an easy question to answer: yes, as long as I can afford to.
With anyone else I figure I’m not a bank (or a loan shark), so I shouldn’t get into a bank’s business.
Yes, because i don't like to call myself a shitty human.
I think the minority would call you a victim of 'temporarily embarrassed millionaire syndrome'.
Misplaced pride? Or lack of self-awareness and acceptation of their shortcomings? Guilt that builds upon itself (where just talking about it first could ... just clear things up)?
Or they don't know/understand/weren't explained how to repay it (even if that's as simple as just paying back, or only saying "thanks"). Social rituals definitely help here.
Edit: I don’t have fuck you money, so I am actually ignorant of the dynamic you’re describing. I’d rather be known as an asshole with backbone than a rich sap though. One of those looks more like a mark than the other.
And I understand if it's a sick kid or some other kind of an emergency... but people overstretch for luxuries.
> when you see on earth the man who has encountered the shipwreck of poverty, do not judge him, do not seek an account of his life, but free him from his misfortune. Why do you make trouble for yourself? God has excused you from all officiousness and meddlesomeness. How much most of us would complain, if God had bidden us first to examine each person's life exactly, to interfere with his behavior and his deeds, and only then to give alms? But as it is we are freed from all this kind of annoyance. A judge is one thing, an almsgiver is another.
If they scuttle off, then they weren’t real at all, and I got played. I guess this supports OPs point, so I kinda get it.
However this group of people is not very large, most people I know aren’t getting money willy-nilly.
It's normal to forgive a loan to family if circumstances change, or to give money no-strings-attached if they need it, but it's equally normal to loan money to help with cash flow problems and then expect repayment eventually.
Is this common? Such a thing is unthinkable to me, and even friends from more businesslike families than mine have expressed major shame to me that they had to get a couple grand from their dad to cover closing costs (paid back within weeks)
It's unfortunate that some people seem incapable of feeling guilty. They have a victim mentality which only gets worse whenever people don't do anything nice for them.
If they're redeemable there is a point where you give them so much that they finally escape their problems and their attitude improves. Sadly this doesn't always happen and it doesn't always last.
Surely you've spent some amount of money on frivolity.
"Fuck you money" is "I could afford to burn every professional and personal bridge that exists in my life and still be fine"
As in, you can afford to say "Fuck you" to the entire world if you wanted to.
This may be your particular disposition, but it is by no means universal. Given these two choices, I would much rather be known as a rich sap.
I think it’s important to note that a person can knowingly run the risk of being ripped off, not because they’re too stupid to know better, but because of their philosophical attitude toward money and how they relate with their fellow humans.
If one came from a different environment, material concerns might not be as pressing, and it might be a better strategy to placate said crabs in order to not lose one’s social standing.
I've also asked friends for money and I've been incredibly grateful to have people who have had my back in that way. There's a sense of security there that's invaluable.
Some people are just perpetually bad with money and always come back for more, and that's okay too. As long as I can afford it, I don't mind helping somebody out of a tough spot, even if it's semi-regularly.
I wonder if Carmack ever regrets lending money to somebody.
1. Assume it's never getting paid back and only lend out money you're willing to lose.
2. Tell them if you get paid back in full, then later, they can ask for another loan.
3. If you don't get paid back, then consider it a gift, but no more loans to that person.
This way, you can continue helping people who are down on their luck but responsible about paying back, and you avoid being drained by deadbeats.
- "I'm sorry but I've lost my job. I cannot afford this."
- "I'm sorry but no means no."
- If they insist: "Which part of the two letters in 'No' do you not understand?"
You aren't the jerk. Someone who doesn't accept "no" is the jerk.
There's places to go to to lend money, they're called banks. If you're not a bank it's not your job.
You might be right on the specifics in this case, I'll abstain from making judgement. But as a guideline, as a framework, "it's not your job" is monstrously insufficient.
There's no loss to my life if these people remove themselves from it.
They're thieves in disguise, nothing more. No value is lost if they leave.
And in fact, because money is stored time, my life becomes MORE if they leave, because I lose less of the time of my life to them.
And they left behind truckloads of trash.
How much have you lost to those?
I would speculate once you get to a sum this significant your perspective would change ;)
If you grew up rich, you didn't have friends or uncles or aunt's constantly asking for money and never paying it back so parent poster's mindset seems dramatic/extreme. It is not.
I'd like to point out my experience of taking the loan and never repaying it. I felt guilty for decades and more distant from the loaner. They never brought it up but my guilty mind did.
So I'm not 100% sure it was a net positive for our relationship.
If I was to do loan money and they didn't pay back in some reasonable amount of time I think I'd tell them explicitly it was a gift. Though I'm not sure that would fix things in the guilty person's mind (yea, I get I'm projecting my feeling on guilt on them. They might not feel any guilt at all)
This is an obvious fabrication by someone with little to no actual life experience.
I was surprised by some of this, especially this last part.
Firstly, $40 is not a lot of money. Hardly a "big con".
Second, I think the "money well spent" part is that you helped her in some small amount, when it was obvious she was suffering, and you didn't expect anything in return.
I think if she had come back expecting continued/sustained support, then you'd be right to pull away. But that sounds like the story of somebody who struggled in that moment and you gave some small gesture of support. I think it's good. Hardly an "investment to get her to leave you alone". That sounds too cynical and harsh.
It seems you have been lucky enough to be living a sheltered life, without any acquaintance having tried to chat you up to their advantage.
Unfortunately there are plenty of people in the real world who are either takers or outright set to exploit you. Not many, but enough to have people learn the wisdom of saying "no" to sob stories.
I once came across a guy who apparently lived close to me who was asking for money for a taxi ride because he was out of gas and had to go to the hospital to check up on his kid who had an emergency and blablabla. I gave the guy 10€ and wished him well. Fast forward a couple of weeks and I stumble upon the same guy right on the same spot. He clearly didn't recognize me as he asked me again for money for a taxi ride because he ran out of gas and his kid was just admitted to the hospital and blablabla. I asked him if he didn't asked for that same request a few weeks ago, to which he just stood there looking at me without saying a word, and after a couple of seconds he turned back and proceeded to walk away and never be seen again.
In the pre mass online shopping days I also had a close friend who just moved to another city. Our friend group had thrown him a big farewell party and everyone promised to keep in touch and visit all the time and all those things. After a few days that friend reached out to us saying he now lived right next to a consumer electronics megashop, and if any of us wanted anything shipped then we could simply send him the cash and he would buy the stuff we needed. A couple of guys from the friend group took him on his offer and sent him cash transfers, and that friend proceeded to ghost everyone.
Sadly I have other personal anecdotes, some of which real sob stories.
It really depends on what you mean by helping people with a small amount. Those who profit from your actions do benefit from the money they get from you even if it's under false pretenses. Robbers who steal stuff from people around them are also helped by getting their hands on il gotten gains.
I'm sorry good sir or madam, I stopped reading here.
In my personal life experience with abusive people, I find it makes me want to be more in favor of unconditional help for others, not less. Though I have experienced the urge to want to help people less, which you seem stuck in, and I was formerly stuck. I think it's a stress response. It creates a lot of anxiety to keep sizing people up for how they're going to screw you, instead of just accepting them and treating them well. (Yes, there is a difference between treating them well and letting them abuse you.)
This has nothing to do with conditional or conditional help, or help at all. You feel compelled to fool yourself into believing you're not being exploited, but you're the only one believing that nonsense. You're dealt with like the mark in a con, and not exercising any common sense does not make you more pious, just an easy mark without self esteem.
The people that leech off of you are not the ones who need it the most. They are just the ones that don't mind profiting from less than ethical and moral means.
It's ok to be yourself around those people, to let down your proverbial guard, while having appropriate boundaries and not being exploited ... But over focus on who exploits and who is exploited blah blah blah ... All of that is quite toxic. It can make you just as miserable as the people you're accusing, if not more. And if you see every interaction this way, it's only a matter of time before you start seeing potential exploitation where it doesn't exist.
Let's be clear here: the "out of gas" story was almost certainly a lie and OP knew it. He helped her buy a small amount of drugs.
I have a sibling struggling with drug addiction for the past 6+ years, constantly "borrowing" money from others and never quite hitting a serious enough "rock bottom" to decide to get help/rehab. My brother "borrows" $10+k/year from my dad and it's poisoning their relationship and draining my dad's finances. (my dad recently took out a 401k loan because he's so cashflow-negative and that money's gone already) My dad enables him every day while dreaming about moving to another state and cutting off all contact.
$40 for OP to cut ties with someone like that is indeed money well spent, IMO.
I offered my seat on the subway to a young woman about my age who looked very tired. She didn't say anything, or even look in my direction: she just seemed like she was having a difficult time. She said "yes, thank you" and I got up.
When I got up, the dude I was standing next to whispered in my ear "can't believe you let yourself get conned out of your seat like that."
Some people just don't want others to be helped I guess.
We had a guy at the racquetball club move away, and then about 10 people all mentioned how he owed them $20...
If you're going to be a loan shark you can't have people thinking they won't have to pay you back. You have to break their kneecaps.
I would just cut off contact with those people. I don't really get this much because I'm not rich, but if people ask me for loans just to get money out of me I will be the one breaking off contact.
On the other hand I have a friend of mine who has loaned money and never paid me back, but she is always in a financial hard spot and she is extremely generous to the community she drives. I never really expected to be paid back for that either but in this case I just wanted to help someone who cares more about others than herself.
The inequalities of capitalism are gross, but while we're here, that's the way the world works.
Sure, money or anything can be used as a test to determine someone's character. But you can do so without putting money on the line and save yourself some headache.
One way to determine someone's character is to spend time with them, listen to what they say about themselves and others, and whether or not their claims about themselves line up with their actions across time.
Maybe money is "cheaper" and "faster" than this route, but... Guess that's just been my go-to method to determine whether or not someone has integrity, is trustworthy, and has a sense of responsibility, parity, and respect for self and others.
Giving money without expecting it in return, or even being clear about expecting to be paid back, is more about having gauged people's characters & motivations, even when I get it wrong or things don't pan out as agreed-upon.
I used to do the same thing as you on a smaller scale (in the hundreds, never the thousands). I noticed that while loaning more money made more sense to me, whenever I did that it was a struggle to get the money back. Meanwhile when I loaned the exact amount, it more often came back.
I lost several friendships this way for a short while, with the only way to get the person out of the guilt cycle to surprise them at some random Christmas or birthday with "my gift to you this year is to give you the money you owe me". With them later telling me that they were feeling so guilty about the money they avoided talking to me because every conversation would make them feel miserable.
Now when I loan money, I enter the amount in an app we have in common and then actually put in place a (vague) payment plan. I find it helps people structure the entire situation and since they get to pay some money back the guilt is less present. It seem to remove the expectation that they need to gather the full amount before paying back.
Keep in mind I was unable to afford groceries many of these months.
In the end, they cleared out on that date and I never heard from them again. Even though we were quite close at one time.
Money well spent really.
Sometimes if you "loan" people money they will cut contact and disappear from your life.
The much more likely scenario is that you will get the reputation of someone who has money and is generous with it, and these requests and sob stories will increase 100x.
-Shakespear
I've just followed this my entire life and it has served me very well. Other than a mortgage, I never borrow, and other than family emergencies, I never lend.
> He is chief counsellor of the play's ultimate villain, Claudius, and the father of Laertes and Ophelia. Generally regarded as wrong in every judgment he makes over the course of the play, Polonius is described by William Hazlitt as a "sincere" father, but also "a busy-body, [who] is accordingly officious, garrulous, and impertinent".
Sometimes people ask for a loan and insist they will repay me. Fine, I will call it a loan because that's what helps them frame things in their own heads. If they repay me, also fine, why would I turn down free money?
But for my own peace of mind, I think of these things as gifts to help a good person out. If I don't think of them as loans, I don't find myself chasing former friends for repayment.
I am not a bank. I am not a debt collector. I do not wish to become a bank or debt collector as a side hustle. If you ask me for more money than I can afford to gve you without repayment, it is far less stressful to say "no" and get the conflict over with on the spot.
This only works if the people have fucking shame.
I have a relative who has no shame and will keep taking as much money as you'll let him take.
So I limit what i give.
He keeps saying to me it's ok if I borrow and charge him points ... but in the Christian tradition usury is a sin so I don't and though I'm not a religious person, I was raised with mainly Christians principles that I adhere to because they just seem like good principles in general to live by.
Plus I'm pretty sure if I did charge interest I'd just be disappointed when he doesn't follow through with interest payments knowing how flaky he is with his money.
I'd rather just give money and give what's comfortable.
Kept asking me for money for some new reason every time I popped onto Facebook via Messenger until I stopped updating my active status. A bit later they deleted that profile and created a new one, and I decided not to become friends with him again.
Looking the guy up, and he was always posting GoFundMe's for some cause or family illness or another, and you'd see links to people in the industry asking for things on his behalf periodically across various websites, going back more than a decade.
I do believe he dug himself into a deep hole and he was in a hard place, but I also believe he's willing to take advantage of anyone as much and as often as possible until he can't get anything more from them, then moves on to the next person (well, probably multiple people at the same time).
So anyway, that's too fresh in my head, and I'm hesitant to give anyone money for anything right now. I've got plenty of crap going on for the forseeable future that needs a bunch of money anyway (implants, roof replacement, flooded basement, etc).
If you give money, the other side will always resent you when you try to get it back. They'll think "I'm struggling to pay this, and this person had it" however irrational that may seem.
If you care enough to give, just give. If you don't, don't.
The only way this makes sense to me, especially at that kind of money you're talking about, is if you are fairly wealthy.
And, man, to me what this says is that it's impossible to have real solid relationships with people if you are rich and they aren't. It makes me think of all these people who only are interested in you for your money, and your fear that people will think you're a jerk if you don't give them money (over and over again!) anyway because you have so much money, all these people approaching you with "sob stories." It seems like it makes it almost impossible to be real friends with people, if they aren't as wealthy as you.
I guess it's a reason to be glad I'm not that rich, after all.
I'm sure most people don't care about it as much as I do, but I have this deep-seated need to make sure I'm as square with as many people as I can be and I expect the same from everyone else. It's not just about being owed, it's about owing, too. I wish I knew where it came from. I wish I was better about just letting it go.
I am, or rather used to be, quite similar. Now I am much more relaxed, as I think I understand better what a gift is. It is free and comes ideally with no strings attached. Otherwise it is an transaction. And it is a bad idea, to mix them up. My default is to consider a gift as a gift and nothing more.
I just give and take freely.
If you think too much about it, it can destroy a lot.
Also, there is more than money. Maybe the one guy bought more rounds, but then he unloaded his problems on the others. Or not. So what? Life is not a balance sheet, that needs to sum up. But if you try to make it one, you might find the joy is getting lost somewhere in those numbers.
Some therapists like specific goals like this, for fixed periods of time. Doesn't have to be open ended. Spend X weeks working through the challenges of letting this go.
Same. I sometimes ask my friends to tell me if they think I owe them anything. I try to keep things in mind, but I much prefer to hear if I forgot something than let the relationship detoriate.
I'd rather just give money or buy meals now and then rather than have complicated obligations.
First game I bought for my own pocket money, which at time, in Poland, was a lot for a kid as it was full price title, Baldur's Gate 1 in nice box with manual and a map, and dubbed gloriously with then-radio/TV stars, hell, the narrator voice was better than original. Needless to say I was pretty salty.
"Kuba pożyczył moj długopis" - Jakub borrowed my pen
"Kuba pożyczył mi jego długopos" - Jakub lent me his pen
I'm learning Polish slowly, living in Warsaw...
Surely a true Pole would say "kurwa Kuba pożyczył moj pierdolic długopis" ? ;-)
(Point taken, capital inserted on original post)
Yes, that's kind of the point.
Sort of a Polish in-joke I guess.
For an English language background on the power of "kurwa" and "pierdolic", I recommend these YouTube videos:
Kurwa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdWlspF3B2M
Pierdolic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTgT-IU--zM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdEkm__55ik
Do any linguistics geeks reading have a word I can google for this phenomenon? That is, a word that means something like "a word or phrase that is bidirectional in one language but part of a unidirectional pair in another"
You can use lent and borrowed in both directions (I lent X to him; he lent X to me -- I borrowed X from him; he borrowed X from me) so the main difference is not in whether the verbs can be used bidirectionally, but in how you indicate the direction.
I suspect Spanish (and maybe Polish) disambiguate in different ways, but disambiguate I'm sure they do!
Those are both unidirectional: lent is always “the (possibly implicit) direct object moves from the subject to the indirect object prefaced with ‘to’” while borrowed is always “the (possibly implicit) direct object moves to the subject from the indirect object prefaced with ‘from’”.
Birectional would be where the subject could be the source or recipient depending on, e.g., the preposition used to relate the other party as the indirect object.
idk if there are regional exceptions, but in general borrow and lend seem more akin to learn and teach, respectively. The have an implicit direction: (from, in the case of borrow; to in the case of lend).
I teached something from you today or I will learn you calculus in extracurricular classes don't work.
In Spanish it is disambiguated in a similar way as you were mentioning (to me, to you)
"Alquilo" translates literally to rent, so not really the same:
- Me alquilas un piso. (you rent me a flat)
- Te alquilo un piso. (I rent you a flat)
I think a better translation to borrow/lend is "prestar/dejar:
- Me prestas/dejas un lápiz. (you lend me a pencil/I borrow a pencil from you)
- Te presto/dejo un lápiz. (I lend you a pencil/You borrow a pencil from me)
Language is interesting!
I actually don't think I've ever heard a native English (as a first language) speaker do it the way you recall - using lend when they mean borrow - I wonder if that's just coincidence, or if one way is more common up north and the other down south?
"I will lend you money" or "I will loan you money."
"I need to borrow money until I get back on my feet."
It is not grammatically correct to say "I will borrow you money."
Throw me down the hole a bale of hay!
It does seem common to say something along the lines of "grab me a book from the library" , even if it's "grammatically incorrect."
It seems much less common to say "borrow me something" but perhaps it's regional!
One: you "bring" things toward the speaker, and "take" them elsewhere. So "don't forget to bring your umbrella!" is incorrect.
Two: "like" compares, and "as" joins independent clauses. So "I wish I could communicate like tptacek does" should be "I wish I could communicate as tptacek does." A correct use of like might be "You, like tptacek, comment insightfully." A famous example of a controversial misuse of "like" was the 1970s slogan "Nobody can do it like McDonald's can." It should be "... as McDonald's can." When that came out, grammar aficionados lost their minds.
Of course, it's often said by someone who's with you, and on their way out, so your assertion makes sense and is often correct!
After a while he asked me for some more money, about $5 and swore he'd pay back really soon. I was so shocked that I broke all contact with that guy and never saw him again.
Carmack, it seems, was comfortable with not being paid back.
That's not how I read the tweet, at all.
> It was a learning experience for me, calibrating some general people behavior. I don’t think anyone intended to not pay me back, but things often just don’t work out the way you plan
Nah, he's not like that.
Decades of practice and I feel like my reading comprehension just gets worse :(
Probably due to him putting his name in front of the game's title.
Regardless of whether or not McGee feels like he deserved to have been better compensated by id software for his contributions, he feels personally indebted to John Carmack for the money he borrowed.
And in the case of feeling slighted, while he could justify never paying Carmack back by saying that since Carmack was one of the founder/owners of the company that slighted him, this was just money Carmack owed him, he has not taken that tack.
It is possible to compartmentalize.
There’s usually a fairly small circle of close people that get the biggest share of the financial pie, and others don’t get very much.
I’ve seen a few situations where some friends ended up earning a regular salary at startups when the closed circle made millions. So yeah you can brag about working at $trendy_company but that doesn’t financially translate into anything special.
And it is totally possible that his work wasn't sufficient to remain employed. It's possible he produced too slowly or not enough or his work needed help, etc.
Are those games still "all time great games" without McGee's contributions? Very likely. Without Carmack and Romero, that's a different story. And even though Romero had no input on Quake 2, it's built off of Quake, so it carries a lot of that with it.
And the whole question is complex. These games sold well. McGee did work for these games as an employee. Does he deserve a percentage of sales? If so, how much, etc? Or is it much the case with the people who worked on Microsoft Word. It was a job and they did their part and were paid for that part. I don't see anyone trying to get the Office team a percentage of Office sales, even though that would make some people fantastically wealthy.
That's a pretty prejudicial way to put it - he was a junior dev who got fired, how much of "Id's success" do you think he was entitled to?
I wonder if most often the smart move is to make sure that one's sudden acquisition of wealth (say the sale of a startup-now-a-successful-scaleup) is hidden from one's even closest circles to avoid the curse of the lottery winner as well described in the famous reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vo34/comment/c...
But I also wonder if trying to hide one's wealth that much comes at the price of social isolation, where you have to reduce your contacts with the outside world to avoid flashing the new possibilities that your wealth opened to you. Or you make sure your lifestyle doesn't change at all, but then you cannot take advantage of your wealth either.
> you might consider picking another G7 or otherwise mainstream country other than the U.S. according to where you want to live if the United States dissolves into anarchy or Britney Spears is elected to the United States Senate.
Things can (and did) get much worse with our national politics than Britney being elected to the Senate.
> You know you will be getting $638,400 per year unless the capital building is burning
Or even IF the capital building is burning.
I do have one weird (?) friend that is not a friend any more because she felt she still owed me and kept feeling bad about it.
On a side note, everytime I see the name of John Carmack popping up my heart goes to game programming and I have the impulse to create a game. Masters of Doom really is magical.
I have only had to ask to borrow money a few times, and man it hits so hard. I loath the experience. I sent $50 to someone who needed some cash to buy groceries and they said they would send it back when they could but didn't and I'm ok with it.
It hurts knowing how little (depending on wealth) it would take to change someones life. I'm still paying back a loan from someone so I could afford to buy my first house and damn does it still sting. I had to save every single cent just to afford the down payment, and it wasn't enough.
I’ve never loaned money to folks who I don’t have a strong relationship with. Extended Family has found this out the hard way. On the other hand - I’ve never thought twice about money transactions with closer friends. Obviously they value the relationship the same as I do. I’ve had friends loan me 5 digits for a couple of days because my Schwab didn’t settle in time and I wanted to close a property. We’ve have done so many vacations with friends where thousands are transacted and settled. It seems weird that you’d special case money alone.
Sometimes in the 90s I had a software product. It so happened that there were competitors for the same very niche market right here in Toronto - tiny company of 3 people. So they came to me with the offer to sell them a product and start working for them. The money offered was absolute peanuts, so was the salary proposed. Obviously I refused. 2 years after they called me back again and asked for a meeting. I assumed that they've probably come to their senses and had agreed to meet even though I was already employed with 6 figures.
Now the depressing part. They came and tried to pitch to me some bullshit (snake oil type) products to sell. Basically they went to multilevel marketing. I did not like it at all.
Initially it seemed logical to say OK you need 100 bucks for this or that and you'll get me back. But then a month later I'd mention it and was met with this sort of "why are you being a jerk about it" response. Now I'm in a position that its not a big deal, but back then even that relatively small amount of money was a big deal. It was a tough lesson to learn that some people just use the term 'loan' to make themselves feel less guilty for asking, or maybe intend to ghost you regardless.
I think this also gets into Americans (or maybe just Southerners?) being weird about money and personal finance. Talking about money is taboo.
Complicating things is that the penalties for not paying others, like a bank, utility company, landlord, etc. are real and tangible. Whereas hurt feelings are much more readily dismissed than an eviction notice or a debt collector.
I live where I was a born, so naturally, all elders needing a hand for whatever (mostly computing obv.) get my assistance. They always want to pay or they feel really really bad.
Reminds me I need to read graeber's book about non currency debts.. it seems to discuss these relationships.
He told me that he certainly wouldn’t be able to afford to move and I told him “don’t let that stop you”. Fronting him moving expenses was the best decision I ever made, even though it had a chance of not working out. Six months later he’s making 10x the wage he could get in his rural area, and I’ve been paid back with (unrequested) interest.
I guess my message is: sometimes loaning money won’t work out, but when it does, the ROI (emotionally and for society) is extremely high.
It's on the borrower to worry about paying me back. Me, I don't care.
So do you actually mean this, or are you just signaling how kind you are?
I've picked that up from friends I made in Taiwan. It was mostly paying each other's lunch but there's no reason why it shouldn't work in other areas of life.
A non-friend? Sure, that might be different.
Anyone can be forgiven of anything, if you are so inclined. No "signalling" required.
But knowing yourself enough to know you can trust yourself to do this is not easy.
If it does it says more about you than the friend
Sure, there should be some consequences for not paying it back, but incessant mockery and refusal to pay for McDonald's is probably a fair exchange.
"Give people lots of leeway, but only once" has worked out well so far. People can't fool you into making a big mistake twice, and once is just the cost of doing business^W^Wfriendship.
On the other hand, finding friends past age 30 is hard enough that paying random devs random sums of money isn't that bad of a deal.
I agree with the parent - don't give it with the expectation of receiving it back. Save everyone the heartache.
Which is bogus in my opinion - this is all discussion on why it's bogus. It's not a comment on the original post by alach11.
We helped my sister in law afford a down payment on a house. She still hasn't gotten a house after 6 months. Am I a bit miffed? Sure. But breaking off a friendship over a down payment seems absurd.
Life happens, and people tend to take a little while to figure it out. Who cares, it's not like we can take the money with us when we go to the next life anyway.
Unless they're a sociopath, borrowing significant amounts of money from friends is usually considered to be a last resort, they're already in a bad place. Adding another monthly payment to their budget going to put them in a worse place.
It also depends on how easily money comes to the lender.
This is easy to say if you're a software engineer at a top tier company making a solid six-figure salary, but $7k is an enormous amount of money for the vast majority of people. I think I would significantly hurt my relationships if I failed to pay back $7k to any of my friends.
If you promised to payback $1 that I lent you, and you don’t despite having it, I’ll equally judge you as if it were $1 million dollars.
Is a big lie to exploit a friendship enough to in the friendship?
now this is a SMALL amount compared to most people but I have friends who have had a really rough time financially.
You have to go into the "loan" with the mindset that you will work to maintain the friendship if it doesn't work out.
In short, it's a grant, not a loan. You will become this person's benefactor, and you may learn a lot about how their mind/life works. Perhaps more than you want.
1) If you are going to be financially impacted in any way by not having the loan repaid you should't "loan" (gift) it. Like gambling don't do it if you can't afford to lose it.
2) Assuming #1, the overall psychological stress and potential impact on the relationship just isn't worth it. As the "lender" you should feel good about helping someone while learning something about them in the process.
Personally, in having this outlook with family and friends they essentially get one shot. If all parties agree it's a loan and the debtor doesn't pay back the funds I move on without impact to the friendship but mentally they have a "strike" in my mind that essentially says "they can still be a good person and friend, but money can never enter the relationship again".
I feel like it's a decent balance.
An additional mechanic is that you tell them that you are not going to remind them to pay you back, that it is not your job to nag them.
Have lent to many friends/family members over the years telling them to pay me back whatever/whenever they can, however they want. Some have taken decades. No one has not paid back. Few have needed a nudge, which I only give after they have climbed out of whatever hole. Honest people will always make an effort to repay their debts. The rest make lousy friends anyway.
His thing was if a friend needs help and you can afford it then do it - and it’s not a loan. Making it a loan makes it a bad business transaction.
I took that to heart with that friend and later my daughter’s nanny needed help and asked for an advance and we gave her the money she needed.
Both amounts were significant but we could afford it and I’ve never regretted either.
(I call it a “loan” because they preferred to think of it that way. I made clear at the time that it would be fine if they never paid me back.)
1. Why poor stay poor (you need money to make money)
2. Why successful startup founders skew being from well-to-do families (they can afford to take the risk).
Really applaud you for helping your friend. You truly change their life.
America is definitely the "land of opportunity", more so than most countries, but it's really difficult to bootstrap when you don't have the means.
You have to aim a couple rungs up, not all the way up.
Starting from literally zero you can probably retire modestly but comfortably the owner of a respectable tax dodging container storage and dumpster rental business assuming a little luck and work in your formative years (maybe the local street gang will install the love of hustling for a buck into you) to set you down the right path.
Going from zero to C-suite manager type, not so tractable.
I've also loaned some amounts of money to people I figured wouldn't pay me back, but in smaller amounts. Often they behaved as expected and didn't pay me back, but because I was expecting it was also more or less of a non event.
My personal attitude has always been that you should loan money without the expectation that it be returned. You can't be let down if you had no expectations to begin with.
But what if 90% of the time it doesn't work out?
Fast forward a lot of years we both now live comfortable lives and it has been a good number of years since we last had to help each other.
Sometimes I miss the struggling years though. I think that showing off each other our new German cars is not as good a foundation for a good friendship and love as helping each other and laughing about being saved by the other at the last moment from some dramatic stuff like an eviction or bankruptcy
1. You can only have one loan at a time.
2. The money has to be used to complete a goal. Moving across country is a goal, paying rent is not.
3. There is no repayment date, but you do have to write me an email stating what you are using the money for and that you agree to the rules.
Those are the simplest rules I could come up with that prevent abuse without being too onerous. They seem to work. About 1/3 of the loans I've given out have been repaid.