Friends and Loans

[Baroness67]

I need to get this off my chest. The irony of my posting here is that I'd usually be hashing this out with the friend in question.

 

Background: "Lisa" and I have been friends since elementary school and we have kept in touch all this time, seeing each other every few years but in constant email and phone contact. I went away to college, Lisa went to the local college and married and left before she graduated. We now live half a country apart. She is currently divorced with all her kids out of the house, I am married with mine still at home.

 

In our 20s, Lisa was the one doing much better. She and her husband both worked and made a great living, had a home early on, and were riding the internet and day-trading boom pretty nicely. At the same time my boyfriend (later husband) and I were struggling on a ton of loans for grad school. Anyway, it eventually worked out, my husband ended school and went into practice and did very well. We are very comfortable now.

 

As far as I ever knew, Lisa continued to work and lived her own very reasonable lifestyle. I know she goes out a lot with her girlfriends where she lives, posts party pictures on FB, etc. At one point a few years ago after her child support stopped and she was still adjusting she crashed her car which for which the bluebook value insurance reimbursement was really inadequate to help her get a new one, and I gave her $5K as a gift. I have also been really kind to her daughters by sending them graduation gifts for high school and college, and helped with junior college tuition for one last year (another few thousand) when a certain loan didn't come through and she needed to get her degree to start work.

 

These things were all done free and clear as gifts. I have also recognized for a long time now that we are just in different financial places, as a rather permanent thing, so when, for example, we agree to meet up and vacation, such as a cruise we took last summer, I paid for her package including airfare. We had a great time and I didn't mind at all paying for it. At other times when we were together or when it was her birthday, I'd give her gifts of jewelry that I thought she'd like that I couldn't say I wore that often, or I'd like a book on Amazon and gift it to her. Also gave her a Kindle ($79) registered to my account where I have over 600 books archived to read, where (I think) she's been really good not to buy anything on her own unless I tell her please do. But that was just this year.

 

Everything seemed fine and great until a few weeks ago when she called me crying saying that she was being fired from her job (where she handles a lot of cash) because the annual accounting had found several thousand dollars missing that should have been directly under her control. In order for her small company to stay "compliant" they needed to fire her. Although she was crying, she was also saying that she didn't fight the termination because "it really was her fault, she should have known" which I didn't understand, but I was just trying to go with it. So now she has no income. And, just last week, she dropped the bomb that her home, that she won in the divorce, is about to go into foreclosure. She claims she has not paid the mortgage in 8 (!) months, which now includes the times we were on the cruise. Where we were gambling in the casinos (which I paid for - to a certain extent - I gave her $200 and said have fun, end of story, we did slots). Where we were ordering trays of drinks (which I paid for), where she had her nails done (I paid) etc. and so on.

 

Anyway her mortgage payments now amount to in the just over five figures. She has no job. I guess she is not being criminally prosecuted, though she did say something about "if I had the money to pay the company back I could get my job back" and I had in the back of my mind, is she asking me for this money? And why would she want to pay it back if she didn't take it? But I let that subject drop.

 

So bottom line I am incredibly depressed this week. This was my friend who got me through my own marital troubles, she was always there when I needed her to talk and vent and it feels like that all over again this month, suddenly my friend is not there. I know she wants me to say "no problem, I will send the check tomorrow", but in this case, I know I can't. I know it has now somehow turned a corner where money has become a part of the friendship. I can't live with myself giving her this money that she has not asked for - but which after she mentioned it, and poked a few times, I know she is waiting for me to offer. After all, we've been close for a while where I thought she was fine, and she's privy to a lot of our finances. She doesn't know all, but she knows about new vehicles, vacations, she knows.

 

But does our friendship mean that I have become her permanent lifestyle Plan B just because she knows "I can" ? I feel like no matter what happens, I have lost a friendship I treasured, but which I have to finally admit I am not willing to purchase. :(

 

I'll take the lumps if anyone else has anything else to ask if I have omitted anything, or has helpful insights.

Edited February 14, 2012 by Baroness67
grammar

[Baroness67]

Staying with me is something not on the plate, I think ... she lives 2000 miles away and I don't think she'd leave her kids, who are local, one still in college, one getting married.

 

What threw me was that this is a home that she has had since the late 80s. In that I know she isn't "over housed" in terms of real estate, but there must have been a major refinance somewhere where she took out a line of credit. After nearly 25 years in the same home, she appears to have almost no equity. This I learned in the short time I was hearing about all this stuff right before she stopped talking to me.

 

I am not trying to make myself out like I have been some angel to my friend, it did give me pleasure to help her out and I did not hesitate when there was a concrete place to put money towards (car, degree) that would help. But for some reason this one is really bothering me. Coupled with the job issue, there is something going that is telegraphing any one of several possibilities, none of which are good. Is she negligent with money? Is she intentionally bad with money hoping I will bail her out? Do I really know she didn't take money from work? Do I even know it's true? Am I a bad friend for doubting any of this?

 

It's just bad overall. I just feel it's like it's one thing to bail your friend out of an emergency, and another to bail someone out over a lifestyle that maybe, actually, I really don't know that much about.

 

Fortunately I know I do not regret anything that has gone before. I don't think I have been conned. Not in the least.

 

I just think that maybe difference in circumstances has become something integral to the progress of the friendship, and that really saddens me. I guess she would say that the definition of being a true friend is being there for one in need. That bothers me deeply, because to me, she has been a friend. Not financially but she has been there when I have needed to talk. However, when it comes to this, suppose I bail her out today with the past 8 months. Where is next month? And the next?