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I went through a period where I loaned money to anyone that asked me

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Re: I went through a period where I loaned money to anyone that asked me

#291

Post by latchkey »

poisonarena wrote: post #190
latchkey wrote: post #167

Years ago, I had the crazy/stupid opportunity to start a night club in San Francisco. My dad said it would be a terrible idea, the business was hard, etc... but he also said he would help me out. Go dad, I'm lucky to have him. He had a piece of property that we could get a loan against, so we found a mortgage company that would give us the loan and went ahead. Well, he was totally right, after years of trying, the bu…

may I ask what was the name of the club?

I'd love to know how that relates to the story first.

Re: I went through a period where I loaned money to anyone that asked me

#292

Post by neogodless »

selimthegrim wrote: post #283
neogodless wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you would say "I will borrow money for you "

"If you go to the library could you borrow me a book please?" is really right out and has to be “…borrow a book for me please?”

Any time the object of a verb is replaced with a different noun that is not really the object, it's awkward at best, and wrong at worst.

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!

Re: I went through a period where I loaned money to anyone that asked me

#293

Post by wheels »

kkielhofner wrote: post #244
luxuryballs wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 relati…

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.

Re: I went through a period where I loaned money to anyone that asked me

#295

Post by fragmede »

gowld wrote: post #227
maccard wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Re: I went through a period where I loaned money to anyone that asked me

#296

Post by worldsavior »

alach11 wrote: post #93

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 w…

> 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.

But what if 90% of the time it doesn't work out?

Re: I went through a period where I loaned money to anyone that asked me

#298

Post by scruple »

alach11 wrote: post #93

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 w…

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.

Re: I went through a period where I loaned money to anyone that asked me

#299

Post by elzbardico »

alach11 wrote: post #93

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 w…

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

Re: I went through a period where I loaned money to anyone that asked me

#300

Post by WalterBright »

dimitar wrote: post #229

I was a technically a loan shark at school, in my early teens. So I had a fairly small allowance which I mostly saved. Other kids were spending their afternoons at the malls shopping, buying cigarettes and eating fast food. So the richer kids eventually had their allowances lowered by their parents because of some sort of misbehavior, and it turned out this wasn't very effective as they started asking around to borro…

> and I'm not planning to

If you run a business, it becomes a necessity. The problem is that expenses like payroll have to be paid immediately, while accounts receivable are erratic. The choice is to keep a large amount of cash in a checking account earning 0 interest, or have a revolving line of credit at the bank.

Having the credit is cheaper than having large amounts of cash sitting idle as a buffer.

In fact, buffer is the right word. If you're a programmer, you use buffers to compensate for the mismatch between input and output.

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