Thoughts.com Blogs - Hard Lesson Learnt.

I have a trait that at times can be good and other times can be bad. Not bad in the way of causing harm to anyone, but bad in the sense that ……………Ohhh I don’t know how to describe it but it is bad.

In 2005 I lent some money to a friend, and yes now in hind sight I shouldn’t have considering why she needed the money, but I know how hard it is at times when you are struggling to pay of debts. She needed the money to pay of some bills that were past due, and for a credit card that she had run up t the max. She was too scared to tell her husband about it for reason I still don’t understand and I guess I never will. I guess I am so honest and open with my husband that I can’t hide anything for him.

So after one night her being over and a few drinks later she breaks down, and tells me what her problems are. I did the right thing and I listened. I let her say what she needed, I offered some advice and left it like that, and that was the end of the conversation. A week later I asked her how she was going and had she spoken with her husband about what was worrying her. She hadn’t and that was when she told me about why she couldn’t tell him. Now I have met her husband and from what I see I don’t see why she just couldn’t tell him, but then I don’t live with the guy I only see him on the odd occasion, so who am I to judge. I told she had to think seriously of telling him other wise she was going to make her self sick with worry and stress about her money situation.

Once again I let a few days go by and see her, I could tell she wasn’t doing to good, so when my husband came home from work we talked about her problem, and with his approval we offer her to borrow the money. There were however a few stipulations that I will pay the accounts off directly myself, and that she had to go on a payment plan that was to come directly from her bank into ours on a weekly payment and that she signed an agreement saying she would abide by those conditions, she aggress. I have the agreement written up she hands me the bills she signs the agreement. Now I was able to convince some of the companies to give a bit of a discount due to the fact they were getting paid in full at the time so I saved a little money, but not that much.

So everything is going along fine, payments are being made on a weekly basis, and then she asked if due to Christmas, we could reduce the payments for a few weeks. I am not happy about this, firstly it isn’t like her payments would make that much of a difference, we are only asking for $40 per week, she works a few days a week and her husband works full time and he has a nice hobby of car restorations, that pay when finished, so money shouldn’t be an issue for them. But then if you don’t stop spending it then it will be. I have just reduced her payments from $350 per week to $40; I think I am being far from generous. I told her that I would have to talk with my husband about this and if he agreed to it then it might be a possible. With which she replies why do you have to ask him, why not just do it. To which I reply he is included in this agreement and I don’t keep anything from him. So I ask him if he agrees to the change and against our better judgement we do, we also tell her that she will have to sign an amendment in the agreement, so I make the changes in the agreement and we go on from there. Ohhh and a footnote here one of her conditions for us is that we don’t mention this to her husband. Well I am not getting involved in this if you want to keep secrets from your husband then that is your problem just pay me and I will be happy.

Now lets jump forward about 6 months, her and husband come to us and ask if they could borrow money. Suddenly I feel like I have ATM tattooed on my forehead. They put their proposal forward and I said that we would have to think about it. So after so back and forth with hubby and them we decided that we will (yes I can hear the groans already from you all, all I can say if I knew now what I know now it would have been a big fat no, but hind sight is so in insightful). So a second agreement is made up for the second amount. So now we have two payment plans for them a “his and hers”.

Now we are jumping forward again to the present day, and if they had both kept on the agreement and hadn’t had it modified all payments would have been paid off. After several conversations with my lawyer and realising that they hold us over a barrel we can’t really do anything. Yes we could take them to court and fight for the money; however how much they owe us is less than what it would cost us to take them to court. And if we happen to get a judge who may not be in a happy mood and lets them pay us off at $1 a week we have to take that.

So instead I spend week after week, month after month and year after year waiting for the money, phone calls back and forth, a few letters from my lawyer and still nothing. And when ever we do ask for a payment we are made to feel like the bad ones, we are made to feel so small as if they are doing us a favour, yet originally I thought we were doing the favour for them.

So the lesson I learnt this ATM is closed no longer working. So my trait of being kind and helpful has come and bit me on the bum. And to any of my other friends out their, that were thinking of asking me to lend you money sorry no longer being that generous.

Once Bitten, twice shy.