It’s going to happen at one point or another in your life, a family member is going to need some sort of help financially. They won’t have the money, and will ask you for some help. It could be for any number of reasons, such as a job layoff, a medical problem, an automobile that needs repairing, they want to start a small business, and it could be dozens of different things. You like this person well enough, and don’t doubt their intention to pay the bill back, but you have a bad feeling about it. What do you do?
Your bad feeling is certainly not without warrant. When you loan money to someone, your relationship will change with them. This is nothing that neither of you intentionally do, but somehow it turns into a master-slave relationship in almost every case. The person borrowing money will feel as if they are inferior to the person lending the money. And what happens if the person who borrowed the money can’t pay it back? There will be all sorts of shame and guilt, and often times the person lending that money will think of the other person as a dead beat. This is not a good situation to put your self in, if a family member is asking you for money, chances are they already went to a bank and were turned down.
Let’s say that you genuinely want to help this person. The cause is worthy and they honestly do not have the money. If you can spare the money without being crunched financially, then go ahead and just give them the money. If you do give them the money, make sure you are serious and tell them that they haven’t found the gravy train, and that this is a one time deal. Let them know that they need to build up an emergency fund to take care of these things in the future, and that they should not coming running to you because they did something stupid again. You might feel like you are a bad person when telling them that, but it is the best thing for them.
If you would feel a financial crunch by, let’s face it, you just don’t have the money. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that the money isn’t there and you cannot be a blessing to them. You’d like to help them, but you can’t, and that’s that. You don’t’ have to feel bad or immoral about it at all.
Here’s the moral of the story. Loaning money to family members is just a bad idea. Your relationship will change even if you think it will not. There’s a very good chance they will end up not paying, and the relationship will be in serious jeopardy. Help them if you can, but don’t loan them money.