FRIENDS AND MONEY

ON THE FRIENDSHIP CAFÉ 

Friendship Advice — Separate Money and Friends

Today, the chase for money and all that is connected to it are stumbling blocks and impediments to enduring friendships.

Avoid going into business with friends if you can. If you must, ensure that their most important collateral is their reputation and their honesty.

Our friends have a profound effect on our personal finance habits. Some friends can lead us to spending and to debt.

Money separates more friends than it unites.
— Author Unknown

Do the right thing rather than the instinctive thing when a friend asks you for money. If the friend doesn't pay you back in time, you may end up losing both. By saying no, you can only lose one.

If the person is intelligent and rational, you will lose neither. She will realize that you have many important qualities that she admires and respects and that not loaning her money is irrelevant to the quality of the friendship.

She will also see that you did the right thing to ensure that your friendship is preseved. Still more, she will also realize that loaning money is not a duty of great friends; that's what bankers are for.

In the same vein, you should not be upset if a good friend refuses to loan you money. She is just doing the best thing possible that will keep your friendship
together.

Friendship and money: oil and water.
— Mario Puzo

If a person tries to intimidate you into loaning money to him or her by suggesting that as her true friend you should, there is a pretty good sign that she is not your true friend. True friends don't try and intimidate their own friends into loaning them money.

If the loaning of money is required to keep a friendship together, it has to be a shallow friendship indeed. In fact, a true friend will not loan money to another for the simple reason that this will just further complicate the other person's money problems in the long term.

Truth be known, lending money to friends has severed more friendships than it has strengthened. Researchers found that 50 percent of loans to family members and 75 percent of loans to friends aren't ever paid back.

Of course some of the loans that are paid back are paid back late, which still puts a strain on — or an end to — the friendship.

Quotes and Sayings about Friendship and Money

Acquaintance. A person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
— Ambrose Bierce

Good friends settle their accounts speedily.
— Chinese Proverb

Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
— Oprah Winfrey

Before borrowing money from a friend, decide which you need more.
— Author Unknown

Money can't buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy.
— Spike Milligan

With money and wine, you will have many friends, but when you are in trouble, will you see even one?
— Chinese proverb

The richer your friends, the more they will cost you.
— Elizabeth Marbury

It is better in times of need to have a friend rather than money.
— Greek proverb

Friendship is friendship, but accounts must be kept.
— Chinese proverb

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.
— Thomas Edison

Treat your friends like a bank account — refrain from drawing too heavily on either.
— Author Unknown

If you want an accounting of your worth, count your friends.
— Merry Browne

Friends that you can buy [with money] are a dime a dozen, and will shortchange you if given a chance.
— Author Unknown

The holy passion of friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.
— Mark Twain

Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.
— Samuel Butler

The richest man in the world is not the one who still has the first dollar he ever earned. It's the man who still has his best friend.
— Martha Mason

When you are young and without success, you have only a few friends. Then, later on, when you are rich and famous, you still have a few . . . if you are lucky.
— Pablo Picasso

You never really know how many friends you have until you buy a house with a swimming pool and a tennis court.
— Author Unknown

This is no time to lend money, especially upon bare friendship without security.
— William Shakespeare

A home-made friend wears longer than one you buy in the market.
— Austin O'Malley

It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.
— Douglas Hurd 

 

For more information and opinions on friendship and money see:

1.  Your Friends Need Money. Do They Have References?

2. Friends with Money: What happens when one friend has more cash than the other? How to handle a cash imbalance....

3. Advice: What are Friends For? Hara Estroff Marano gives advice on dealing with money-management differences between friends....

 

COPYRIGHT © 2010 by Ernie J. Zelinski

 All Rights Reserved