I know there are people out there who have loaned friends money before. My main question is do you regret it or not and if so why?

Long story short; I am doing fairly well for myself, 22 have a large savings and am paying off my own stuff.

That being said I have loaned friends money to stay out of debt many times, as I already went down the road and it is hard to rebound. 90% of the time they make it up but there always are cases where they just can’t.

• Most recent situations:

• My best friends kitten had broken its leg and I covered the medical bill as my friend had no way to pay it.
• I noticed my friend struggling to pay his car instalments this month so I decided to halve his payment and asked him to set a budget for his pot use.
• An old friend will generally come to me if she ever needs help and 9 times out of 10 she repays any loan. However her uni classes interfered with her work schedule and she is in the process of looking for a new job, so I won’t see the money anytime soon. I told her to just focus on school as the loan I gave her was for her books.

Just want to clarify, in my situation I always can part with the money I loan out. I don’t give my friends a timeline or anything to pay me back, I just say here is the $$ pay me back whenever you can if you don’t I won’t be helping you next time.

The thing I’m trying to find out is if people have good/bad stories about loaning money to a friend.

Just a bit of a rant I guess.. My dad is based in Europe but travels around a lot, mainly to the Middle East and Asia.

That usually means travelling the ‘right way’ round the globe, even flying to Sydney from EU usually means via Singapore, Istanbul or Hong Kong. Point is, he flies a lot, transits a lot, no problems anywhere.

Today he flew to New Zealand via LA and says it was the biggest nightmare and/or joke ever. It’s just a technical stop in LA to refuel the plane, you get off, sit at the gate for half an hour and get on again. Technically nothing to do with the USA at all. But what does Homeland Security do? Transit visas, fingerprinting, passport stamping, long queues. If you’re flying economy, you actually have to exit the air-side, get your bags, and go check-in again. Don’t know how many of you travel a lot, but that’s just ridiculous.

It is pointless, creates massive hassle and annoyance, and probably costs tax-payers a fair bit of change.

Here are what netizens think:

• The TSA is a complete joke and a complete waste of taxpayers dollars. I was on a military charted airline with nothing but military on it but we still had to go through the TSA security dance routine. The TSA’s job is to stop terrorists. I doubt they will find one terrorist on a charted plane full of military people. After a year of fighting real terrorists, I doubt these TSA clowns would know what to do with a real terrorist other than shit in their pants.

• For the record, the TSA has stopped or arrested exactly ZERO terrorists yet cost the taxpayers hundred of billions.

• Bobian, it’s a third world country pretending to be a first world country.

I am a boss, and I try really hard not to be an a-hole. In fact, I probably try too hard.

In 8 years, I’ve denied time off exactly one time, and that was because every other person on the team was already going to be off that day (around a holiday) and the person didn’t ask until the last minute.

The thing I have learned is that it’s not always your boss that’s the a-hole, it’s your boss’s boss, or someone higher up the chain.

My boss is a relatively okay guy, but when he’s boss gets pissed, I get it from my boss. I try to shield my people from it as much as I can because I think putting additional stress and pressure on people is counter-productive to them doing their job.

My personal philosophy is that I work to live, I don’t live to work. I take it very personally when my people need to put in extra time, and often find myself putting in as much or more than them to compensate.

Since this goes against my personal philosophy I end up very conflicted and start daydreaming of a job with no responsibilities. Then things get better and I forget about it.

It’s not that my job sucks every day, but there are stretches where it really does. Striking the balance between caring enough and caring too much is very difficult.

These inner conflicts manifest themselves as me being very protective of my people. If it’s something I don’t want to do, I feel horrible asking them to do it. The main priority in my life is not to make a public corporation richer.

Here I am complaining about a well paying job where I’m (too) busy and a key piece on a key team in a company that is doing pretty well.

I hear from people that got laid off and can’t find a job for months, so I should consider myself lucky. Can anyone else relate, or am I just being a huge wuss?

Im sick to death of hearing about how “we need to sell more” and “you need to learn how to sell better”

F off man, im an effing hourly cashier. I don’t get a commission. I don’t even get decent hours. All I get is “do more”.

My boss has been howling at me day at night to get the customer to buy from. I work on the retail floor, I work as a cashier and I also walk as a stallman.

What else does my boss wants? Every single day he is pressuring me to out to the retail floor to sell more when my official job role is the cashier.

The retail floor staff do get a commission but I do not.

Typical old man mind set, trying to force workers out of every single dollar he spend on the salary.

Before those who judged me, I did asked for the commission scheme but he rejected and he want me to hold all job roles.

He always promise of making me a manager in the future, but I heard from my seniors this is what he tells every single person and he has not made any one single since the shop opened as he is very stingy.

I am just a student trying to make some spare cash but I am getting unnecessary stress from a pushy boss.

Here are what netizens think:

• Its not even sales at this point, its drive by solicitation. Might get a job at a petrol station to be less stressed.

• Of course they breath down your neck and watch you to make sure your actually trying to sell because for some odd unexplainable reason. cause everyone loves money.

• but anything that they try to get you to sell w/o any incentive, I’m even talking donations. And esp if the basically force you to, or consequences.

I don’t know if I need advice or if I’m giving advice. I guess we’ll see.

Hi, I’ve a friend who keeps sending money to his ‘girlfriend’ despite us mentioning all the red flags. His girlfriend is not local. He sends about 1.5k per month and he barely have enough for himself.

Here are some red flags: -They have been together for 2 years, and we always asked him to bring her out but she’s always working. -Even during eve of CNY when we want to have late night drinks, he said his gf’s boss wants to have reunion dinner tgt instead.

• his gf is 11 years younger than him
• he said his gf needs money for her house monthly instalment.
• when he doesn’t have money to give his gf, he said his gf is understanding and would loan from others.
• his gf works in a massage parlour (not judging here but even when his gf is ALWAYS working, even morning?! Is massage parlous working hours so long?) -his gf asked him to go back with her to China and would apply PR for him

Recently, he fell ill and don’t even have money for himself to see a doctor which is very worrying.

He still loves his “girlfriend” a lot and wouldn’t even ask her for money to see a doctor.

Anyone with similar experience? How do I get him to open his eyes to reevaluate his relationship??

How do people perceive those who choose to work for their family businesses? Shameful?

My dad is offering me $10K a month to work for his distribution company and my best job offer is $4.5K at a bank. I’m a mathematics grad FCH.

I’ll be learning how to manage a company straightaway if I worked for my dad while if I got a job, I wouldn’t know what I will learn if I will learn anything at all. In addition, I will probably inherit the company in the future anyway. My dad is 68 and I am 25.

All my friends are getting jobs and they have the dignity of being able to tell people that they are out there trying to make it on their own without any help from their parents, and I will have none of that dignity, and I’ll probably be perceived as piggybacking on my family’s wealth.

I don’t know the right thing to do here. Please halp.

Netizens’ comments

• No right or wrong answer. I think it’s great you’re considering learning from your dad to take over his business. Many don’t get this opportunity. I’d take it if I’m interested in running it in the future
• it’s a blessing actually. now u still young, so is ur friends. later, they all admire u. Your direction is clearer than them. Key is you must enjoy. if not sure, tell ur dad. u wan to work outside for 2 yrs first. Just waste time only.
• Decent job experience will give u bit confidence in managing ur family biz, especially with those “office politics” surrounding mgmt.