Lend a Tenner to friend in financial difficulty?

You must have spent a minimum of £3 for a card if it was posted, possibly that is enough without a present if you explain your predicament.
Could you have asked for a sub at work?
Hope you got through without too much trouble with the bank.

whatever happened to "a friend in need, is a friend indeed"
cant believe she refused you - very mean i think
i dont understand those people - Im not wealthy but would bend over backwards for a friend if i could help out

If you were my friend I would have given you the £10 but I would also tell you that it would be the first and last time. I think maybe you could have approached it differently, maybe tell her what you were struggling with and she if she offered. If you asked me again after the first time it would be the end of the friendship because you would be crossing a boundary.

I would have thought she might help you out but a tenner however small it seems is often the start and I get why she wasnt happy you know her as much as she knows you , that you were stupid to ask.

As for your present maybe she is criticising that if you couldnt afford it you shouldn't have bought it, that way its like shes paying for her present or part of it

I lent a very close friend 10k. I got about 7 back and we are no longer friends.

I would still give a friend a tenner if they were in need.

I am sorry she did not reply, my guess would be that she did not know how to say no so just said nothing.

Yes, I too would be happy to give a friend in need money rather than lend it.
It would be done and dusted and never referred to again.

This.

She told she would never lend money and yet you still asked.

You were rude to ask.
She was rude not to answer but as you shouldn’t have asked in the first place her rudeness is proportionate and reasonable.

I posted earlier about lending money to a colleague and regretting it. However, I also have a friend who's lovely, but shit at managing money, and I have bailed her out a few times. She has always paid me back.

As I said before, I would never lend more than I could afford to give as a gift.

I have had this same experience. I try to avoid lending money at all now for this reason. It starts with a tenner and then is (in my experience) always more and more over time....never again.

' was not eating dinner , going to bed in clothes and had no heating and was greiving '

£10 meant all that to you ? in May 2 days before you were due to get paid

how on earth would you have bought food and paid for gas / electricity for the heating with £10

clearly you cannot afford to be buying birthday presents for friends if it leaves you that short

This may sound harsh but-
what kind of friend ignores a text and criticises a gift?

But equally,
what kind of friend asks to borrow money (no matter how much or little) even though they’re aware of the feelings on this?

You know how she feels, you know she’s had people taking advantage of her. If you’re desperate, ask another friend/family member.

£100 total spare money
No savings?
Silly to spend a quarter of that on a friendxwhen a bunch of flowers would be fine
Lets say Op has 10 family/ friends per year to buy for= 250 on birthday gifts
If she spent £5 on each= £50
Op has a £200 buffer
The minimum buffer recommended to stay out of debt when unexpected things arise is 1K, Im aware that this is not always possible
However if Op is making one unwise money decision like this, its usually the case they make others

Clearly spending £25 was too much then wasnt it?

Or, she could have arranged an overdraft with her bank for emergencies or put the bill on a credit card. There are lots of options apart from asking your friends

How big a buffer is acceptable before you are allowed to buy presents though?

Op said she had £100 left so that’s what she got the £25 gift out of.

Any one of us could get an unexpected bill- which is why you should save a buffer amount.

If one unexpected bill puts you into absolute financial crisis to the point of having to beg your friends for money then no, you should not be spending money on presents for them.

If OP had bought a cheaper present for her friend- like a £10 bunch of flowers for example the OP wouldnt have needed to go begging for ten pounds because she would have had £15 left over and so this would have been completely avoidable. Spending unnecessary money on your friends and then asking for it back is rude and is absolutely poor financial decision making.

The Op spent £25 on a gift for the friend knowing she had zero rainy day fund.
If you have no savings why spend £25 ?
It smacks of poor financial decision making

I think this difficult I have helped people out so many times over the years but I’ve had both good and bad experiences I have loaned a friend £20 and it took years like honestly 4/5 years to get it back (this was before social media and smart phones) but then I’ve loaned a friend over £300 and had it back two days later and strangely the ones I thought would be a nightmare were usually the ones at my door at 8am on their pay day. My sister is actually the worst person and I stopped loaning her money over 20 years ago now as she hardly ever pays you back or she will pay half back she no longer asks me anymore thankfully. There are only handful of people I will actually help out now. I can understand this from both sides your friends and yours but I think you just have to respect your friends decision although I don’t agree with her not actually responding to you and there was no need for her to criticise the gift that’s just cruel and unnecessary.

No I wouldn't lend a friend a tenner, I'd give it them. I'd have transferred it straight over no questions asked.

It seems as though she has held you to a standard in her mind that is almost perfect. When you asked for financial support you turned into "everyone else" does this friend have neurodivergent tendencies? I only ask as I have ADHD and its a trait I struggle with. If a friend gives me all the oh we are like "sisters" and acts as though we are inseparable. I get suspicion in my mind. Because I have had several friends over the years do this to me. I.e. sisters framed picture of us both. Or a charm with sisters for my bracelet. Then ghost me for what I can only understand be my inadequacy at gift buying. Not showing the same love of gift buying/wrapping they have.
I stay away from friend making now as I'm not particularly good at understanding the whole process.
I am sorry your experiencing this though. Its brought me great pain over the years.

Why are you buying birthday presents if you are skint? Better thing to do would have been to tell her you cannot afford a present for her this year. There is your tenner

This is why OP needs to learn to have a buffer or emergency funds account. A budgeting advisor will help put a plan in place.

OP said she had an unexpected bill. Unexpected bills are... unexpected.

I don't get this whole thing. As a one off I'd lend a friend £10, especially if they'd never asked before, which OP seemingly hadn't.

Wow, it’s a bit entitled to claim someone has ‘plenty of money’ and it shouldn’t be a ‘big deal’ to lend you money??

They didn’t lend you money and now you are annoyed, but you’re desperately trying to justify to everyone that it’s not just about the money it’s about no text message, or what they said about a present etc etc. For God’s sake, own your emotions. If she’d given you the £10 you wouldn’t be on here b*tching about what she said about this or that, would you?

You’re an adult that has got to the point of needing to beg £10, that’s really not great on any level. Your own life is clearly a bit of a mess and you put your friend in an awkward position out of desperation. Yet somehow you’re trying to spin it as all her fault, and you want Mumsnet to hate on your friend?

Your friend not lending money I can understand. Too easy for someone with ‘plenty of money’ to be seen as a walking ATM if they casually lend money to financially illiterate friends. But listing all a friend’s faults on a public forum for every to give her a verbal kicking because she refused to lend you a tenner is pretty horrible.

OP you do need budgeting help and it’s not about addressing frivolous spending.

you mentioned you bought the gift prior to finding yourself strapped for cash, and that was only a matter of a few days in between.

surely you knew at the time you were dangerously close to being broke and ultimately shouldn’t have bought the present?

I suspect your friend knows this too and is upset you aren’t using better foresight. As a friend, this is what I would have wanted you to do rather than buy me a gift and hit me up for loan shortly afterwards.

I would have been happy for a message or call…