Friends and money don't mix - part 1

I'm not talking about giving your pal 5 bucks for a train ticket rather than making him go to the ATM. I'm talking about large amounts of money for a project or something along those lines. I have two examples in my own life where a great pal was reduced to someone where our relationship with one another changed forever because of me giving them money and expecting to receive it back in a timely fashion. Well, I actually have three examples.

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1: my old pal Rob

Rob contacted me last November while I was visiting family and friends in USA. He owns a subcontracting construction business (which some would argue makes him a scumbag by default) while i was out of the country that I live in. He was in a real pickle and needed 150,000 Baht because he was cash-poor at the time even though he had a check coming in the following week for a large project that he just completed. I have known Rob for for more than a decade at this point and he was always a good friend. I was there when his kids were born and at one time we were even roommates.

150,000 Baht is around $5,000 by the way.

I told him that I could do it for him, but he absolutely MUST return the money to me by the beginning of December. If he can promise me that, then I would do it (there is much more to this dialogue but this is the summary.) Beginning of December came and went, as did the middle, and then the entire month of December. At this point I had returned to Thailand and while he didn't ghost me or anything, he always had some sob story about how things had gone awry and he didn't have the money... yet... but it's coming....

The thing Rob didn't know is that I am friends with his wife on FB and I could see all the pictures she was posting of their family going on vacation together.. Repaying me was not a priority obviously. I didn't get any of the money back until 4 months later and now here we are in mid June, just a mere half-year later, and he still hasn't finished repaying me. I don't tell him this because I want to get the money back but he has seriously fu**ked me over by this and I am extremely angry with that prick.

I had planned, after a talk with some "in the know" individuals while visiting the states to use that money to buy 2 BTC while I was in the states (BTC was at a real low point in the end of Nov and getting 2 of them for 5,000 dollars was possible then.) Go ahead and look at what it is worth now.... In my mind Rob didn't just make me chase him down for money loaned in good faith, but he also is the reason why I didn't make $12,000 more.

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2018 was definitely a stressful year for BTC holders

Of course I had no idea that this rise in BTC would happen the way that it did so this is largely circumstantial. It doesn't change the fact that i loaned all of my "walkin around money" to a guy that swore to me that I would have it back in 10 days and then proceeded to pay the debt very little mind for nearly half a year while I get to look at pictures of his family going on lavish vacations.

While I really shouldn't allow this one incident to define him as a person in my mind, it's difficult to simply let it slide because I am not rich and $5,000 is a lot of money to me.

I have learned from this, and several other examples that i will detail later, that money and friends just don't mix. Rob still owes me more than $1000 on a loan that was promised to me would have a 2 week turnaround. I later learned from other people that this is not a rare situation and that the dude owes money all over town and also to most of his family members. Some people just don't know when they are conquered. In a way I do feel a little bit bad for the guy but not bad enough to not need my money back. Perhaps that makes me sound like a callous individual but I can't help but feel as though he took advantage of our friendship and my good nature.

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