What to Do When a Friend Owes You Money and Hasn't Paid Up

By Rachel Miller Jan 29 2020

You might decide that getting your cash isn’t worth a big to-do with a close friend… but if it’s an acquaintance who stiffed you, or a lot of money is at stake, that might be an entirely different story.

Conventional wisdom says that you shouldn’t loan money to friends… but anyone who tells you that has clearly never tried to book an AirBnb for eight people who live in different states, or asked a waiter to split a bill five ways. At some point or another, you or your friends will owe each other money.

 Ideally, this will be resolved quickly: you will send a Venmo request, they will accept, life will go on. But of course, that won’t always be the case. In instances where things are more complicated, here’s how to handle it.

Follow up about the money they owe first, assuming good intentions.

If someone has owed you money for two months, it’s easy to get very worked up about what a bad friend they are. But so often, the person has just forgotten about the situation entirely, and would be mortified to know you were stressed about bringing it up to them.

So give them the benefit of the doubt and approach them with an open, neutral tone. If the socially acceptable padding of a few days has gone by when you make this ask, giving them a firm deadline a few days out is a nice thing to do. So you could say, “Hey, I’m not sure if you saw my Venmo request from Monday for the Airbnb, but would you mind accepting that?”

Call out the fact that it’s becoming A Thing.

If you’ve already asked a few times and they’ve definitely not forgotten about it, you don’t need to take them at their word when they swear that they’ll pay you back tomorrow. It’s totally reasonable to ask them what their deal is.

What to say:

“I hate to keep bugging you about this, but I really need to be paid back for the drinks from last month. I’m not sure what’s going on, but can you just Venmo me right now?” (A good option if the conversation is happening in person.)

“Hey, when we talked the other day, you said you’d pay me back on Friday. We’ve been going back and forth about this for weeks now… what’s going on?”

To continue reading, please go to the original article here:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xgqwy7/someone-owes-me-money