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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

> pay off close friends' debts

Honorable, but basically flawed.

Your relationship with your friends will change because of something like that, it is very very nice of you to want to share the wealth, but someone that has a sense of honour themselves will either have to refuse your offer or they will accept and it will hurt their sense about themselves.

Should you ever find such wealth be very careful how you approach your friends with such plans. If someone in my circle of friends would make me an offer like that I'd see that as an intrusion, even if it was meant well. Just that you got into some money does not mean that you have the right to 'fix' others lives, they may get a lot more satisfaction out of fixing it themselves.

Giving money away is a very tricky thing to do if you do not wish to change your relationship with people.

But kudos for looking after others, I really appreciate that that would be one of the first things you'd think of.

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Your relationship with the people you know will change, regardless (been there, done that). Many of my long-time crowd are ecstatic to make $15/hr, and we still hang out on a regular basis.

After a few mistakes, here's the tack I've learned to take.

Treat everything you give as a gift. Don't expect _anything_ in return, and say so very clearly. This keeps you from giving more than you would like to, and prevents the recipient from asking for more.

Any kind of loan leaves the door open to additional requests; after all, they're going to pay it all back, so what's a little more? Which leads to resentment if you decline.

Considering it as gift prevents you from going overboard - if a gift is inappropriate (paying off a friend's debts falls here), then don't do it.

In my experience, the best way to give money to your friends isn't for the necessities, but for the luxuries. When I go to a party, I bring plenty of really good booze and/or beer. If we go out to eat, we go to nice places, and I pick up the tab. On trips, I pay the difference between the Motel 6 and the Sheraton (or whatever).

Part of it is couching it all in the right terms. You aren't doing this for them, you're doing it for yourself. I don't like cheap vodka, I like the good stuff. I don't like Motel 6. Then don't bring it up again.

The tone you want to set is that you don't want to share your money, you want to share your experiences. After all, that's how we all became friends to begin with.

ADDENDUM: it is also important to leave openings for your friends to help you, in whatever way they can. Right now, I'm prepping my house for sale, and I've had a stream of friends come over to help me clean and fix things. I could just pay someone, but this way is much more fun.

> Part of it is couching it all in the right terms. You aren't doing this for them, you're doing it for yourself. I don't like cheap vodka, I like the good stuff. I don't like Motel 6. Then don't bring it up again.

That may be, but it depends on the people. There are people that could resent this and see it as you rubbing your money in their face.

That's why you don't bring it up again. This isn't theory; it works, at least for me.

> it works, at least for me.

It's just easier to say, "it works for me." By saying 'it works, at least for me,' you're claiming that it will always work everywhere 100% of the time... then saying "but I could be wrong." This is just anecdotal evidence. It's possible that none of your friends are the kind of people that would react that way, or that you have a personality that causes people to quickly forgive you for such things.

> it works, at least for me.

Had he suggested that he'd pay off his mother's mortgage, I doubt there would be many objections. For some of us, close friends are closer than family. If I came into a sum of money that enabled me to help the people closest to me, I'd do it in a heartbeat - and I'm quite certain that my friends would, too.

I also can't imagine taking a heartfelt offer from a close friend as an "intrusion," but then I'm sure it depends on the relationship and the personalities involved.

People are funny. If a friend gave me a large sum of money, I'd always feel indebted to them, and probably vice versa.

I'd like to think that this wouldn't change our relationship, but you never know.

I can see paying off my your parent's mortgage [if I could], they did after all give me free board and food for ~18 years etc. I do after all owe them. I'm not sure about friends and other family, they'd probably see it as an insult - I'd probably offer to help them get training/education either as a loan or a gift [again if I could].

I think the distinction isn't between family and friends- it's about the way different relationships work.

It would be okay to loan money to your parents or your children- there's a clear power relationship in both of these, of obligation both ways. It would be less okay to loan money to a sibling, where equal footing is a necessity for a healthy relationship.

That depends very much on the way you bring it. Indeed, if you offer to pay off their debts, of course it will hurt their ego.

But if you bring it like "here's 50 grand, i don't need it, i care about you, do with it what you want", well, most people will have a hard time rejecting it. Since they don't associate it with their debt, but rather as part of sharing in your success.

I'm not sure I'm making my point clearly enough, sharing in the success of someone else is not the same on a satisfaction level as achieving your own is.

By giving that money you are denying someone the chance of achieving that on their own and keeping parity with you. Especially if you say 'here's 50 grand, I don't need it', as though 50 grand should be peanuts to them too.

The asymmetry of the situation is what causes these problems.

The reverse also happens, plenty of people may assume that because you go back a long time they have an automatic right to whatever is yours. This is also not a healthy point of view.

There is nothing more poisonous to a friendship than to have one party suddenly come in to a lot of money. It takes a lot of tact (on both sides!) to get through that without getting peoples feelings hurt.

The best way to avoid this problem is to earn the money together with your friends.

> I'm not sure I'm making my point clearly enough, sharing in the success of someone else is not the same on a satisfaction level as achieving your own is.

> By giving that money you are denying someone the chance of achieving that on their own and keeping parity with you.

I don't refute the fact that it's a tricky situation, but I think you and the OP might be talking about different situations.

There is a big difference between a fairly well payed programmer that needs to pay $20k of student loans and might take a while to do so but still live comfortably, and someone who is unemployed, the bank just repossessed his car and his family is about to be thrown out of their house due to unpaid mortgage.

There were a few years when I was growing up when my parents' business was going under (and bleeding money like nobody's business) and things looked very bad.

They managed to get out of that by their own eventually (at a significant cost, not just financially), but a lot of people don't.

The big trick here is I think if you are in that position to help people to help themselves.

That's the best kind of thing a friend could do.

Honor is preserved on both sides and when it is all done the friendship has only strengthened, not become lopsided.

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