We've gone over this here on BP, yes? Do NOT lend money unless you are comfortable not getting it back. Period.

I have gone through something similar, although not to the same amount. I'm disabled, unable to work and rely on my benefits. I live in sheltered accommodation and get housing benefits. I don't have much spare money but I managed. I am no longer friends with someone who has done the same thing to me. She borrowed money (±£2000) from my partner (and told him not to tell me), and she got away with not paying it back because he died. During the same time period she owed me pretty much the same amount but because I was so distressed after my partner died I decided to write off the debt. I had met her a few years previously, just before lockdown and she asked me for money within three weeks of meeting me. I was warned about her from somebody who'd known her for 30 years that she used people but I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. So after I wrote off her debt, I received back pay from an assessment. It did not take her long for her to ask for money from me again; I was the fool for wanting to help her pay for vet treatment for her cat. Now I am £480 out of pocket and she's not speaking to me because I had the audacity to ask her when she's going to start paying me back. She had slowly been ghosting herself out of my life because she had a new friend. She seemed to have enough money to buy herself a garden shed to get her nails done and her eyebrows done and all these luxuries while still owning me money. Now I don't know if I'll ever get it back but I certainly hope karma pays her a visit and kicks her a*s.

I came into a lot of money. Had lunch with a lady that did the music for the church I went to when I lived in that city. She bombarded me with sad story so I gave her what she needed to fix her car and cover some rent. She blasted on fb how she'd treated on her and 5 yo granddaughter to spa treatment. Okay, I try to practice if you give $ you can't spend it too. Thing is she needed me for more, and more, and gets nasty about my not giving her more. I was glad to help you help yourself once. Once.

"I'm so sorry, but after the last time stressed me out so much, I realized that I'm not good at lending money." A mooch will move on to easier targets, a friend will apologize and drop the request(s)... Solved.

Invest the money and have it work for you. Even basic savings accounts are paying reasonable interest at the moment. Then, if you still value the friendship, you can honestly say that it is invested and that you can't access it. Personally I'd ditch the "friend".

I had an almost identical experience; I never got the money back, and I know now I never will, given that’s she’s convinced herself that I somehow “owed” it to her…haven’t spoken in 4 or 5 years. Expensive lesson.

Oh, I’ve made this mistake - yesterday again, in fact. Friend of mine tends to come round and start crying about financial woe. I leant her €500 three years ago for medical bills - at some point I managed to bring it up and we awkwardly came to an agreement that she’d pay it back €35 a month. Except I had to remind her repeatedly every single month, and she’d say she forgot, really sorry, etc. Then she needed more. Lent her €700 more over the years, and she still kept ‘forgetting’ the monthly repayment. At some point I lost it (I’m really not well-off, that’s a lot of money to me) and told her if she didn’t just set up an automatic monthly transfer I’d never loan her any more. To her slight credit, she did do that. Except it lapses ‘somehow’ every six months, and the games begin again. I wouldn’t mind so much if she didn’t show off pricey new clothes almost every time I see her, and her insistence that her son should have exclusively designer clothing. I just don’t get the mindset.

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i went thru this. i come from an upper class family and wen i was 10 my parents started giving me a $200 weekly allowance. i never told any of my friends about this. fast forward to high school my friends were at my house and my mom comes in and says how she forgot to give me my allowance. my friends found out that day. a few weeks later a friend asked to borrow $100 so she could take a drivers ed course. she said she pay me back once she saved up $100 with her allowance. she never paid me back. during a track meet i brought it up and she said she didnt have it yet. unfortunately i had no idea her parents were behind me wen i asked and they flipped. apparently she told her parents she saved with her allowance to take the drivers ed course. her parents ended up paying me back right then and there and told her to apologize. her parents had no idea i lent her the money. she even admitted to the fact she wasnt gonna pay me back bc she thought i didnt need it. the thing is i didnt need it and if she had asked without saying shed pay me back i still wouldve given it to her. the part that stressed me out is that she not only lied to me but her parents as well. only reason i brought it up was bc she said she would. another thing i should mention is i never acted like i was upper class nor was i materialistic. wen i went shopping with my friends id bring $50 max. id do my own christmas shopping and i would pay for stuff my dog needed. everything else i saved. i had basically been saving most of it since i was 10. my parents would already buy me things i wanted so i didnt see the point in buying things i didnt need. i also never asked for much. anything expensive id wait until my bday or christmas. once college came around i put all the saved up allowance in a bank account i had at least $15k in the bank. having my own money in college was a very good feeling. i never did lend money to anyone after that unless it was someone i could trust or family. my allowance stopped once i reached college. i think my dad who is a banker mustve been testing me in a way and i guess i passed cuz he was always proud of my money saving skills.

She is not a true friend. Please don't loan her any more money. It's called tough love.

Don't loan her anything. She repeatedly prioritises overspending over her mortgage, that's a her problem, and a big one. She prioritised overspending over repaying you last time, making it a you problem too. Loaning money again isn't going to fix her problem, it's just going to create problems for you as well. If you truly wish to help her, do a bit of research and find if there are any shopping addiction/financial counselling/debt advisory support services she can access, and strongly encourage her to use them. You need to either cut her out of your life or have financial boundries. It's clear that she needs help, but it's also clear that handing her money - whether as a loan or a gift - is enabling her, not actually helping her.

I think OP's issue is that she is not accustomed to having an emergency fund. Money sitting in an account is not necessarily available for spending or gifting (also, never lend money). She may benefit from opening a savings account at a separate bank for her emergency fund. So it's not sitting there in (or next to) her checking account. And if she has more than 3-6 months of expenses, fund (or start) a Roth IRA. If that's funded for the year and she still has money, open a brokerage account. Fidelity would be a good place to start for either an IRA or brokerage account because they have no-fee, no-minimum index funds. Anyone interested to learn more should read the Little Book of Common Sense Investing.

If it was a bank they wouldn’t lend to her again without demanding a co-signer or a higher interest rate. She’s a risk borrower so I’d take a risk and not lend!

Any reasoning that goes ‘I know…. but I honestly thought…’ is usually not correct.