Should I lend money to a friend?

Before considering the request, notice what saying yes or no would mean to you. You may want to help. You may also fear that a refusal would reveal you as ungenerous, or hope that lending would secure a closeness that has felt uncertain. Mixed motives do not make kindness false, but they can create expectations nobody has discussed.

Imagine repayment being delayed. Could you speak about it directly? Would every social meeting become an occasion for silently counting what your friend spends? If so, that belongs in the decision now rather than becoming a grievance later.

Jang will probably ask for clarity, and I agree. Clarity also includes permission to decline without inventing a story about having nothing. Your resources can have other commitments. If you choose to help, make the nature and limits of the help explicit. Friendship is poorly served by calling something a loan while privately requiring gratitude, loyalty or affection as additional repayment.

A friendship does not make the terms of a loan obvious. Sometimes it makes people less willing to discuss them, because precision feels like mistrust. Yet ambiguity can ask the relationship to carry a burden neither person intended.

Talk about what the money is: a gift, a loan, or another form of help. If repayment is expected, discuss the arrangement and what would happen if circumstances change. Important commitments may warrant appropriate written terms or independent advice, depending on the situation. There is no single informal solution that makes every loan safe.

I would qualify Jing's imagined delayed repayment. You cannot test every possible feeling in advance. You can, however, know whether the help would endanger needs you already have responsibility for meeting. A caring refusal can be more honest than an anxious agreement that quietly turns you into a supervisor of your friend's life. Offer only the help you can actually choose.

Friendship Lending Incorporated offers an innovative product: a small loan that transforms every restaurant bill into a dramatic monologue performed entirely inside the lender's head.

Our premium package includes silently examining the borrower's new shoes. The deluxe version adds interpreting a photograph of lunch. For a modest extra fee, all ordinary conversations begin with the phrase, 'It is interesting that you can afford that.'

I am closing this company before anyone invests. The customer service department is already two friends who are no longer speaking.

Jang asks whether it is a gift or a loan. An excellent question, and considerably easier to answer before the money leaves than three months afterwards over coffee. Please also specify whether the agreement includes control of the borrower's footwear. If it does, we are opening an entirely different business and will need a much larger sign on the door.