Out of Bounds (it aint just for sports)

Recently I have been in the planning process to moving into a new house where I would be going from 1 roommate (what I have now) to multiple roommates. I have learned in my experience of living with people that it is incredibly important to have boundaries in order to respect each other.

I want to go back to that verse Proverbs 22:7 "The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender." that I talked about last week. In that NASB it reads "the borrower becomes the lender's slave." So we talked about how debt establishes a new relationship. It creates a master/slave relationship. This is bad normally however when it now involves friends and family it is even worst.

I have always heard if you want to lose a friend, loan them 100 dollars. You will not hear from them again. It's always funny when the expression changes to "how to lose an in-law, loan them 100 dollars." However, the sad thing is it is true.

Imagine when a son or daughter borrows money from their parents for a business venture. It changes the relationship from mother/son to master/slave. It has tore families apart, and I have even witnessed it happen many times in my life. Thanksgiving dinner tastes a little different when you are eating with your master instead of your mom.

It is incredibly important to have boundaries with your friends and family. One of my rules is that I do not loan money to friends and family. You may be thinking how awful that is and saying, "What if so and so needs something! You are just going to leave them hanging?" My answer to that is: No way will I leave them in a position of need and not give it to them. The difference is that I would GIVE it to them. It gets erased, you don't hold it over someones head. In fact, I would argue that you aren't even blessing them when you do this, it's a curse.

Let me say this before I finish. In my personal life, I asked my sister to loan me a large amount of money for me to be out of debt because I was paying outrageous interest charges to credit cards. She was nice enough to do this and I worked my butt off and paid her back quickly. There were no problems, I kept her up to date with progress and she was first in line who I would pay back.

What I am trying to say is, I was LUCKY. This is the exception, not the rule. I would not dare test the odds again because I am certain that it wouldn't take long to have something go wrong and the master/slave relationship takes its course.