Little debts

Pinkie Pie was put in a difficult situation the other day.  She went out to find bits for a Hallowe'en costume for herself with a friend.  We gave her $40 to buy the bits, and told her this was half of her birthday present.  She was happy with this.  When she arrived at the costume place, they didn't have what she wanted.  They had something her friend wanted though, and her friend had no money.  Pinkie Pie wasn't too sure what to do about this, but eventually agreed to buy the thing for her friend.  This got extra complicated when they arrived at the register and the stuff ended up costing a lot more than she had thought, and used up almost all of her money.

These sorts of situations aren't easy to navigate.  How much do you loan to friends?  How hard do you lean on them to get the money back?  What do you do when you have the money... but it kind of isn't your money?  Are you able to say "Never mind, I am not buying that" once you get to the register in a store?"

Lessons like this aren't ones they teach in school.

Pinkie Pie ended up paying for the stuff.  She came home and talked to Wendy, and Wendy decided that this counted as Pinkie Pie's birthday present still, but if Pinkie Pie could manage to get the money from the other kid to repay us all that money that was loaned, we would buy her another birthday present.

This didn't sit well with me.  I didn't do anything for a while, but eventually decided I needed to speak up.  The other kid had paid back $8 by then, and we were recording the money owing on the fridge.  I did not like looking at that recording of the debt, and it made me uncomfortable.  Pinkie Pie has to learn how to deal with debt with her friends, especially friends who have different ideas about how to manage money than she does.  I can't fix that.  But Pinkie Pie's friends owing *me* money... that doesn't sit right.  The extreme imbalance in our power levels in the situation combined with me not actually signing on to this whole debt situation is a mess.

I don't want to put Pinkie Pie in the position of enforcing a debt between me and a kid.  That isn't fair to her, and I know how much being caught in other people's debts upsets me when I have no control over the situation.  I think if you are the one enforcing a debt you need to be the one who can forgive the debt if you choose to.

We talked about it and decided that we should give $8 back to Pinkie Pie and tell her that she doesn't have to pay us back.  She lent the money to the other kid, and she is welcome to collect it or not as she sees fit.  We are removing ourselves from the situation and that $40 is entirely Pinkie Pie's problem, not ours.  That doesn't make it easy for her necessarily, but at least she isn't caught between her friends and her parents now.  She can write it off, or try to get it back, or whatever, but it is only her that is involved in the situation.

Lending money to friends is messy.  We all have to learn that, one way or another.  If she ends up learning how to cope with this and it only costs her $32, then it was money well spent.