I owe a friend

[Applebaby]

I am in a bit of a mess. I had some time off work with MH problems and my bills were mounting up. I borrowed money from my friend - £1600. I am back at work now, but only recently. She is asking for her money back and I’m finding it really overwhelming to pay all at once. I keep making promises to pay and breaking them and making excuses. I am due to pay her today after yet another excuse last week and I just don’t have it.

I am embarrassed and really low. I am worried it’s going to affect my MH again with the constant anxiety.

i want to contact her to ask if I can pay it back monthly to clear it and make it a bit more manageable. She has previously messaged me saying I am putting her under stress and making threats to come to my house with another family member.

can anyone advise how I go about fixing this? I really am so low

Thank you

Can you pay her back through your bank that way you've a trail and you're less likely to miss if it's a standing order

Send her some of it immediately, she's probably getting worried you're just not going to pay it at all as you keep fobbing her off. Pay her back £400 now and ask if she can do you a huge favour and accept £400 for the three months following.

It was her choice

You did the right thing. Well done, gosh a lot of these posts aren't very kind. Just keep to your word now and I'm sure you guys will be good friends again

I don’t think we will be friends she was super angry which I totally understand. But I’ll learn from this. Thanks for being kind

You're taking the absolute piss, anxiety or not.

Ring her and set up a payment plan and stick to it or start selling stuff.

It’s a shame there wasn’t a discussion at the outset about when and how the debt would be repaid. If I was the lender, I would have had this conversation before agreeing to lend the money. There are friends I absolutely would lend this amount to because I’d trust them to repay in a timely fashion - but of course they are the same people who would probably never ask me for the loan because they are good at budgeting and living within their means!

My husband has lent a few chunks of money to one of his lovely but unreliable friends. Some of it has been paid back, some hasn’t. My husband accepts that because he is much nicer than me 😂

As the lender, if I could see the friend was really in dire straits financially as opposed to just fobbing me off, then I would put the debt to one side for a period of time and see if I could help them access support and advice for managing their financial situation.

I do feel you’re getting a hard time here OP. Your friend does need to be repaid, but maybe she should have set out her terms before lending you money. I think you should have an open conversation with her about paying back in instalments. It does sound like you’re in a bit of a pickle financially and I feel for you, but you need to be able to live within your means so this doesn’t happen again.

Sorry- I see I’ve missed a load of posts.

I have sympathy with the friend who needs the money back. But I think we can stop kicking the OP now. She's contacted the friend who has agreed to a payment plan. She's asked for advice rather than just ignoring the friend and not paying.

If you have a poor credit rating it's not so easy to just get a loan or overdraft. Probably the only option for OP would be a pay day loan and we all know their terms!

The lesson to learn here OP is to be honest from the start and not dig yourself a deeper hole. Stick to the payment plan so your friend can see you are going to pay her back.

You owe her the money. If you can't pay all at once, you need to offer to pay it swiftly, in instalments over a short period (like four months). If she doesn't accept instalments (because you have reneged on your agreements to pay her) then you need to get a loan or sell something.

Whether she needs it or not is nothing to do with it. This and everything else you have said is just noise around your reluctance to pay. Just pay it, apologise, get her a gift to make up for the trouble you have caused and move on.

She shouldn’t have loaned money and been so pissed off that £1600 hasn’t been paid back within 2 months. She needs to be realistic. She’s lent money to someone who was desperate, so is unlikely to have £1600 to pay back immediately.

Ignore her anger. Well done for coming up with a plan to pay it back.

I had a 'friend' who I leant money too that I couldn't afford to and she messed me around paying me back too and forgetting when she said she would and forgetting to add bits to it when she borrowed so would question the amount.l or say she'd paid back when she hadn't.
Was hell on earth and ended up costing me interest and took over 2 years to get bskc most of it before I drew a line and cut her off for my own sake.

she is the reason I now flat out refuse to lend anything to anyone unless it's my parent or sibling because of the stress and the problems. You really shouldn't have lied about paying her back, no wonder she's fed up of you and had said she's coming to the house. Whilst it's not nice to make those sorts of comments it's also not nice to be used and lied to, she isn't the bad guy in this.

You need to be honest and pay back as much as you can, say 400 a month or so.l and make an effort to clear it as quickly as possible and not ask ever again. It harms friendships, especially when the other side plays the victim as my so called friend did

Glad shes agreed but make sure you dont mess her about now make sure you stick to it for your own sake.

I think it's good that you can see that. You should aim now for recovering at least her respect (and your own self-respect) by being 100 per cent reliable with your payments to her. Onwards and upwards, OP.

This is totally irrelevant!!!!!!!

That’s not your call to make.
what sounds disturbing to me is you have lied to her on multiple occasions. That’s really below the belt. Why can’t you be honest and make a payment plan? This excuse of it’s giving you anxiety, you’re doing it to yourself by lying, which has probably ruined your friendship.
you haven’t been a good friend. All it needed was honesty!

May already have been mentioned but try a credit union for assistance to repay

Quite agree. Pay her whatever you can now and then set up a standing order to go out every payday with whatever you can afford, and tell her what the schedule is. And apologise sincerely for messing her around, but don't pretend you can pay her back any faster than is realistic.

I do wish people would read the full thread. @Applebaby I would really recommend setting up a standing order for the money, coming out the minute you’re paid each month. That way there is proof you have repaid this

If she had to borrow from a friend does it seem likely to you a bank will lend to her? Some people live in a different world.

Why don’t you get her bank details and transfer her the installment?

Is tomorrow pay day for you?

I think she was probably anxious because she didn’t think the money would materialise. If you keep up the instalments, she will thaw.

I’m guessing a bank overdraft isn’t an option?

I’ve been in situations where things start piling on too of each other and the more it piles, the more you freeze. Hope your MH is better now. 💐

It doesn’t matter that she has money.

Stop the attitude of “well she has money so she can afford to be out of pocket for a while”.

You need to concentrate on how you can give her HER money back as soon as possible.

If you pay her cash get a receipt for payment so in the future you know you’ve paid her back everything and she can’t come back and claim you haven’t paid her in full