A friendship has ended over a financial dispute of $5, sparking a conversation about whether it’s okay to borrow money from a friend.
The scenario was posted to the popular confession forum, “Am I The A**hole,” where Redditors debated who was wrong in the situation.
In a candid story-time message, one woman described the situation, prefacing that this is about a seven-year friendship. The writer started by explaining how her friend wasn’t financially stable when they first met.
“She was struggling financially and lived paycheck to paycheck,” the Reddit user said. “At one point, her car broke down and she had no transportation to work, so I would let her borrow my car and never asked her for gas money or anything in return.”
Though some might not agree with the woman’s decision, she admitted it wasn’t a big deal to help because she was in a good place financially. However, that didn’t last long. As the years passed, the Reddit user found herself in a similar situation to her friend’s, only her friend was now in a better place financially.
The Redditor noted: “By this time, she had started dating a guy she met online who revealed to her a few months into dating that he was a millionaire. They married shortly after and suffice to say she has not had to struggle since.”
Now that her friend was well-off, the Reddit user found it appropriate to ask to borrow money when it was necessary. She always paid her friend back, but she wasn’t the only one looking for loans from her. The Reddit user’s friend has brothers who use her to bail them out in bad financial situations, according to the writer, who said she’s never asked for more than $25 at a time.
“The last couple times I asked to borrow money, she said she didn’t have it which I found odd,” she confessed. “But then I asked to borrow $5 and she said the same thing and I thought it was odd that she told me she didn’t have $5 to spare.”
The Reddit user continued: “I started to think that maybe I had forgotten to pay her back money I owed her at some point, so I reached out to her to ask if that was the case.
“When she told me that wasn’t the case (as in, I had always paid her back), I told her I felt hurt because it felt like if I needed her help with something (I used the example if I ended up in jail) that I couldn’t reach out to her for help,” she added.
Her friend’s response was she didn’t want to be the one to “bail everyone out”. According to the poster, she used the example of when she was struggling and said she “had to work multiple jobs and did what she had to do,” encouraging the Reddit user to do the same.
The Redditor said she didn’t want to be grouped with her friend’s brothers. “I told her I loved her but that I was ending the conversation and she replied that this is why money and friends should never mixed,” the original poster added.
“Since then, she has reached out and said: ‘I didn’t deserve that conversation last night, I hope you know that,’ to which I have not replied to and have no plans to,” she explained.
The Reddit user wrote that she is still upset. She knows she’s “not entitled” to her money, but she’s frustrated with her friend’s treatment of her after everything the Redditor has done for her in the past.
The post sparked a debate in the comments, with readers offering mixed opinions about who was in the wrong.
“I’d leave her be. She’s posh now, and is not of your world anymore. People need you when they don’t have it, but when YOU don’t have it... all the sudden YOU’RE unreasonable and questioned,” one person commented.
Another remarked: “Definitely NTA. I can’t help but wonder if the wealthy spouse plays any part in this. As in, I don’t want you spending our (MY) money on THOSE people.”
“The moral to this story is friendship is really only as good as the friend and time changes us all,” another individual proclaimed.
One person blamed the situation on her friend becoming as wealthy as she did. “I think it’s a rich people thing, they tell you that financial literacy means never lending anyone money,” they said.
However, someone else asked: “How often was she wanting to borrow $5? I sometimes wonder about these types of posts, because people can skew it to their of perceptions.”
“I agree. Who borrows $5 and for what reason? It is just bizarre,” an opposer agreed.
