This is a guest post by Tessa over at Can't Find Cash, where we are swapping posts for the day relating to our Biggest Financial Mistake we have ever made! Be sure to visit Tessa as she is a wonderful blogger and is a joy to read!
Written by Tessa:
Written by Tessa:
When I was a sophomore in college, I was young and stupid. Actually, I'm still a bit young and stupid, but I'm learning from my mistakes as I go.
Anyway, there I was in college and I had a friend who was having money issues. I didn't actually know her very well, but I thought she was a great person. Honest, trustworthy, and all in all pretty awesome. So when she told me about how she wasn't going to be getting any money until the next month and she'd already been turned down for payday loans, I asked what she needed money for. She was a freshman at the time and was in her first semester in a sorority. She needed money for dues because if she didn't pay them immediately, she would be kicked out.
Being the nice, albeit stupid person I was at the time, I told her "well you could use my credit card to pay it and then next month when you get money, you can pay me back." (Like I said, stupid.) So she sits at my laptop in my dorm room and uses my credit card to pay her $250 in sorority dues. At the time, I just thought "hey, I'll get it back! I can count on her!"
Of course, six months later I had a falling out with my then roommates and moved to a different dorm building, all the while calling the gal that owed me money. She ignored calls and text messages and all in all pretended like I didn't exist. I got ahold of her mom's phone number though and explained the situation to her. Then my friend called me back, crying, because she was now in trouble with her mother. She said that she slid an envelope with my name on it and half the money she owed me in cash under my old dorm room door. (My old roommates still lived there, and this girl was friends with them still.) I told her that I didn't live there anymore and she would have to call them to get the money back or come up with the money again.
About a week later (after hounding her even more about this money) she showed up with $67 and some change. She said it was all the money she had at the moment and she would get the rest to me whenever she could.
It was that moment that I accepted that that was all the money I would be getting from her and that I was an idiot. We all make mistakes, and the most important thing to do is to learn from them. I know now to never ever lend money to people. I have since given money to people, but only small amounts and with keeping in mind that I'm not going to get it back.
I just read this story aloud to my two college-age (well, one of them is not yet) kids. They scoffed at the idea of the ill-fated loan - yet, I could easily see myself being that trusting at that age (I have to fight being that trusting even now - because in my world, people keep their word and pay people back, yet most of the world does not adhere to that principle.)
ReplyDeleteFraternities and sororities are for people who can afford the steep dues. That girl should not have been in the sorority, obviously. And her mother should have said, "I'm so sorry about my daughter's behavior - here is the $250" immediately, paying back the loan on her daughter's behalf. She should have been embarrassed that 1. her daughter didn't keep her word and didn't repay her loan, and 2. she left her daughter's sorority dues unpaid (I don't think college financial aid covers that sort of thing, LOL, and I doubt most students earn wages that cover it, either, LOLOL.)