DailyJim: Give money to people, don’t loan it to them

Hello everyone welcome to another daily gym today is monday june 30th 2025 and i want to talk about, give money to people don't loan it to them this is advice for you as just as much as it is for me, um i made a rule back in the day where i would not loan money to people i would give it to them if I wanted to give it and expected them to not return it at all.

Lately, I think I've slipped in some friends being in some dangerous, you know, not dangerous, but like really intense, urgent situations. And I've loaned a little bit of money. The problem with this is if I expect it in return, they say they're going to give it a specific time. They don't. It can bring huge rifts, huge problems in the relationship. I'm feeling that quite severely these days.

When we give with expectation of return and the person does not return it, we can feel very disappointed and very frustrated. When we give with no expectation of return, we can feel grateful for giving. We can actually, the giving process ends at that moment, or at least the direct exchange ends. We might expect that sometime in the future they'll get us back in some way, but there isn't that pressure, and if people can't fulfill that expectation, then there isn't that divide, that distance that starts to create in the relationship because one person is not feeling pressured to return and the other person is not pressuring them to return.

And I don't know. I don't know what the answer is because you could say, oh, society runs on loans and interest, and you could also say, well, most religions tell you not to give loans at interest, especially to friends.

But I was just reading quickly through the history of usury, which was charging significant interest, but also maybe just interest in general when giving a loan to somebody. And there was a quote from the New Testament that said, basically, just give, don't loan, just give. Don't actually expect anything in return, and you will feel a lot happier for life. Now, that's obviously a paraphrase. I don't know too much about some of these scriptures, but there is something that frees the soul, I believe, when we give without expectation of direct return, without expectation of a specific return at a specific time.

Almost going against what a lot of business management books talk about with these whole smart goals, specific, measurable, actionable, R. I don't know what R means. And T is timely, I believe. Time-bounded or something.

And, yeah, I just, what I want more in life is the generosity. I want to give when I can give. And it's a really tricky position to be in, especially when I think about money and giving money to others.

Sometimes people need a larger amount of money than I can just give. And so those are the times when I think I might go, okay, well, I'll give them a loan because they need it right now, but they'll give it back. But sometimes that's where it gets even more complicated or more divisive and more antagonistic when when we give something that we can't really afford to just give them because we're not giving it we're we're saying hey i need this you can have it right now but i need it soon i need it, and then they go yeah yeah of course yeah and but then they they don't for you know whatever their situation is. And one of the main reasons I don't like to give out loans like that or loan money is because often people who are asking for loans don't have the certainty that they're going to get the money.

And so it's kind of, there's the risk. You can say there's a whole industry based on this, right? Giving out loans and understanding people's credit and whether they're able to pay back or, and, um, maybe we should leave it to those people, but also to exist in that industry, to take loans, um, can be a really risky endeavor. There's a lot you can lose. Um, and to give loans can be a really risky endeavor. There's a lot you can lose.

And I don't know. I don't know if this is just risk aversion or if it's just recognizing how So...

How bitter sometimes people can get on both sides and how ashamed and how more than anything, it just can create distance in relationships. Whereas giving and generosity, giving without attachment can create closeness in relationships. And I actually want closeness more than I want distance. And if you give a loan and the person returns it at the same or even at the same amount or even slightly better, you haven't really increased the closeness in the relationship.

Not that much. What increases it the most, I would say, is just the giving with no strings attached. And so as I'm reflecting on this today, I'm probably going to end because I need to go focus, frankly, on trying to show people why they should give unconditionally to me for the work that I'm doing because I care so much about giving unconditionally to them and to others.

I'm just reflecting on this a lot because I'm in a situation right now where I don't have money to give, to take the risk to give a loan to somebody else.

But I also have a really big heart and know that people are going through stuff. Sometimes it's bigger stuff than I can imagine. But, yeah, man, I just, I hate, I don't like giving conditionally, whether that's money, whether that's gifts, whether that's, you know, like a birthday gift or whether that's my time, whether that's, I don't like doing it conditionally because the more, not, you know, I mean, the more conditionally I do it, obviously there's always some type of condition involved. But like the more conditions I attach to it, the more expectations I attach to how somebody will return something to me, the more miserable I tend to be and the more distant I feel from the person.

And I don't want more distance in life. I want more closeness.

I want to feel more connected to myself and to other people. I feel even more distant from myself when I, because then I go, ah, how could you be so stupid? Why would you do this? But if I give, I'm like, but you gave and you wanted to give and it happened, it happened, moves on. But there's this lingering effect when we give alone. It's like, well, when we give something, we're expecting something in return, then we are waiting for the thing to return because it's not over. The interaction didn't end. The interaction is conditional on the response. And if the response doesn't come, then we're just waiting. We're just waiting to hear. We're waiting to find out.

Why do that to ourselves unless it's absolutely necessary? But even then, is it worth the impact that it has on us? So I hope my friend will give the money back. And then I hope I have the strength to not give out loans going forward unless it's an absolute absolute emergency and there's almost 100% certainty the person will give it back, otherwise I'm just going to give unconditionally because I want to give and I hope that inspires more people to just give unconditionally to increase generosity as we go forward, because I think, yeah, I think that's what the world needs more of. We need more generosity, not more exchange-oriented loan mindset.

So I'm just rambling a bit because I'm still feeling the pain right now and really reflecting to myself, why would I give out loans, even if it's a small amount? But if it's something that yeah it just creates dynamics that I don't appreciate, yeah alright talk to you all tomorrow bye.