Friendship and money don’t mix *E*

I’m in a funk over something that I probably shouldn’t even let bother me.  But darn it, I’m a little peeved over something.

 

See, I have this friend.  We’ve been friends for almost 20 years now (man, that alone makes me feel old!).  She has the best intentions when it comes to people.  She’d do anything for you.  But she’s got some qualities that aren’t so desirable.  For instance, she’s HORRIBLE with money.  (that tidbit will make sense a little later on when I explain something else).  She’s one of those overly religious snobs.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with religion or people who are religious.  I do, however, have a problem with someone who only uses religion on a "when it suits me" basis and picks and chooses only those things that benefits her argument at the time.  She is so hypocritical at times that it about makes a person’s head spin.  She can be condescending to people that aren’t of her faith, who don’t adhere to "her" view of how religious they should be, that sort of thing. 

 

But anyway.  That was not the point.  This person attached herself to me in Jr. High.  And here we are 20 years later and she is still attached to me.  She boasts to everyone how in all of that time we’ve never had a fight, never really argued over anything, etc.  How quickly she forgets about the almost 2 years she was banned from my life because of some stupid trick she pulled on DH and I shortly after we moved back to WI from GA.  It upset DH and I so badly that when we moved we didn’t provide her with our new address and we purposefully had an unlisted phone number so she couldn’t track us down.  Unfortunately, she bugged the phone companies and scoured the internet long enough that she ran across a different phone number for us than what she had and took the chance it was current and called only to discover she had finally found us after almost 2 years.

 

Over the years I have noticed that anytime I do something different or big in my life she just has to do something to.  Kind of like a ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’ type thing, except for she can’t afford to keep up but it doesn’t stop her.  For example, we got a different car, she had to get one.  I graduated from college, she started college so she could be "jsut like me".  Last year when I was trying to sell M’s house she wanted to know if I could somehow make it work so she could buy it (given her money problems that was a definite no on my part).  When she found out that I was getting an inheritance this year she felt ‘left out’ becuase she didn’t have anything she could do so she went out and BOUGHT A HOUSE!  Having no money to do this, mind you, but doing it anyway.

 

Last November when I had the auction for M’s estate she showed up for the entire day.  And she found things she ‘just couldn’t live without’ and kept bidding and bidding on stuff.  I’m sure that she thought she was doing something good by helping me out or something.  She came armed with a certain dollar amount she was going to spend, but then she went bid crazy and bought  over double what her budget was.  When it came down to paying at the very end of the day THEN she informs me that she didn’t have enough money to pay for it all and asked if she could borrow some money and would pay me back.  I’m not a stupid person, I know that you should never borrow money to friends, but I did anyway.  DH wasn’t thrilled about it, but it was already done. 

 

what irked me after that whole day was that she HAD money with her that day to spend.  Cash in hand.  But when she asked for help she never once offered me the money she had in her hand to defray the cost of her stuff.  But I let it go.  She tried to dodge the topic for alittle while after that day, but I would bring it up on occasion just to remind her that she still owed me money.  Finally she just told me that she knew she owed me money and would work out a payment plan with me.  Remember, this was November 1st, 2007.  It took her over EIGHT months to send me my first check towards repaying her debt to me and then it was only $10 (she owes me $174).  the agreement was that she was to send at lesast $10 every time seh got paid (which I believe is, at the very least every two weeks if not every week). 

 

then in July she had a Pampered Chef party and wanted me to go, but I declined.  When she got her special discount she offered me the opportunity to buy some things using her discount. So I bought a couple of things. I repeatedly asked and checked with her to make sure it was 25% like she orignally told me. Suddenly  she tells me no it was 20%.  So I calculated my totals using that % discount and sent the check into the consultant.  Only to find out that after I made the payment to the consultant that she was mistaken and it really was the 25% so I had overpaid.  It took the two fo them forever to figure it out but finally they came to the conclusion that I overpaid by $15.55.   I told her I just wanted my money back. She suggested that we do something different.  She had got a $20 gift certificate to use and she offered that to me as a way to give my money back.  She wanted me to buy something that was around the $15 and then with the$6 S&H it would "be even" and she would "kick in" the extra $1 over the amount and wnated to call it done.  I said, once again, that I just wanted my money back.  She still kept insisting on me using this GC.  See, her ‘math’ justified for her that it was better if I did it her way because she wanted to SUBTRACT that amount off what she owed me in the first place for the original debt.  She couldn’t (and still doesn’t) get it through her head that she OWES me that money and that I don’t owe her that amount so it gets added to her original debt not subtracted.  Ugggghhhhh.

 

So I added that amount on to the amount she owes me.  She’s not happy.  then last week she IM’s me and said that she had just found out from her aunt that she didn’t want the chair she had bought from the auction after all so she was thinking of selling it so she could get some money to catch up on some of her bills.  This pissed me off beyond belief.  Technically, I still own all fo this stuff since I paid for it and she’s not paid me back for any of it.  So when she informs me that shes’s selling it for her own profit I was livid.  But I didn’t say anything, I needed to cool down first. She sensed something was up and said I sounded angry or dissapointed at the news and I told her to leave it alone for a little bit so I could deal with it.   Finally she went on to explain that since her aunt decided she didn’t want it and she had already paid her the $20 for it that T had paid for it at the auction she wanted her money back.  But T doesn’t have the $20 to give to her because, like always, she is flat broke.  So she says she was tossing aroudn the possibility of selling it on Craigslist or having her Mom check at the retirement apartments she lives at

to see if anyone could use it.  Then she told me to check with my Mom to see if she wanted it or if anyone we know did because then I could just have it back if I just arranged to get it moved out of her house.  So I checked, my Mom is checking with some people and that’s where I thought we were.  T said she would ‘hold off’ on listing it on Craigslist then until she heard from me. 

 

She ‘accidentally’ let it slip over the weekend that she had gotten a call about her ad.  And that got me wondering what was going on.  So I checked on Craigslist and sure enough, there she had it listed already. And the real kicker was that it had been listed since BEFORE she even talked to me and she left it listed even after promising me that she would hold off on putting and ad up for sale.  So she lied ot me about it.  Here she already had it listed and was trying to sell it before she even asked about whether or not she could sell it.  So she was obviously planning on selling it and keeping the money for herself, hoping I wouldn’t find out about it for quite some time. 

 

then last night she calls and said she got another call about the chair and someone is really interested in it and she needed to talk to me ASAP about it.   I was furious.  Because I also have found out that besides the fact she said she wouldn’t list it, she did.  Taht she would take it down, she didn’t.  Now she finally comes up with if she sells it then she would have to take the $20 out she owes her aunt, and then if she ‘had’ to she would just pay me the entire remaining amount. BUT that it would pay off her debt with me so she no longer owed me anything.  Helllooooo!  Again, math has failed her!  She owed me $164, another $15.55 got added to that amount after she was to broke to repay me for her math mistakes before.  So $164 + 15.55 = $179.55.  Am I not correct????  So now she wants to sell the chair for $150 and take out the $20 for her aunt and pay me the rest which is $130.  And somehow she believes that $130 is equal to the $179.55 she owes me enogh to call it paid in full.  NOT HARDLY!   Had she been reasonable and been making an effort to pay me all along I might have been generous and let the rest slide. But she’s continually told me she was going to pay me the $10 a check and then doesn’t.  She told me she had a check all ready for me and was going to leave it with my Mom when she went out there once, but she never left a check and she never mailed it either like she promised.  I have not received money from her since June.  And now she wants me to just look the other way and forget that, even if she did pay me whatever she sells the chair for, there is still money outstanding that she owes me?!?!?  I think not.

 

I was furiuos last night. I had a good long talk with DH about it. He said that he totally understands why I am so upset about all of this.  Especially since I have found someone else who is willing to pay $200 for it, but T won’t sell it for that. Which is stupid because then everyone is a winner. She can totally pay off everything she owes me and still ahve the $20 left over to pay her aunt. She gets nothing out of it but she’s not supposed to profit from something she doesn’t even rightfully own!  So I’m pissed.  I told DH that had she not lied to me not only once but twice now about all of this, continually ridden me about it, and just been overall kind of a sneak about this whole situation I was actually considering taking her offer of whatever she got for the chari and calling off the rest of her debt to me.  But now that she’s pulled her normal tricks again and has lied and tried to cheat me out of money I am not going to be so nice.  I don’t take kindly to being lied to or swindled.  And yes, I know she has money issues. But that is NOT my problem.  Everyone else in the world lets her get off easy. She’s had so many judgments against her, been to court so many times, and is in default of other loans in excess of $50K that I am NOT about to join that long list of losers. 

 

And this morning I wake up to IM’s waitng for me wanting to know my decision. She gives me until 3 p.m. today to decide what I am going to do because she wants to sell this thing ASAP and settle her debt with me.  But I am still so infuriated with the whole situation that I don’t even want to begin speaking with her about it becuase I know she won’t like what she hears come out of me at this point. 

 

I know there are some out there that might say that maybe the whole reason this is such a hot button issue for me is becuase the stuff was M’s.  maybe, I wouldn’t discount aht assumption one bit.  But I think what it boils down to is that she was supposed to be my friend, she was supposed to live up to her obligations to me for helping her out and all she’s done is complained about this, that and the other thing since I helped her out almost a year ago.  She’s been delinquent in paying me back and overall jsut trying to avoid it at all costs hoping that I would take pity on her and let it all just slide. But I’m not going to.  I can’t.  I won’t be made to be a fool by her for being a good, generous friend.  Have I learned my lesson about loaning out money to people I know?  You bet.  I knew that before doing it but I did it anyway. But I can tell you this, I will never do that again no matter who it is.   And she has the balls to sit there running others down for what they do in thier lives, how they don’t take care of their responsibilites and depend on the aid of others and she’s no different!  She gets on her holier-than-though soap box about how God takes care of those who do bad onto others but then on the other hand doesn’t believe that how she has cheated people (including the govt) out of money by taking out loans she had no intentions of paying, etc. is included in that.  See what I meant about how her religious beliefs are only strong when they pertain to others but not to herself?? 

 

I’m just over it all.  I’m angry, I’m upset, I’m hurt.  I’m all sorts of things.  And it ticks me off even more becuase she always says that I don’t need the money and she does.  Maybe what she owes me doesn’t dictate the future of my family and their well being.  Maybe it’s not detrimental to us eating or anything like that.  But it’s still mine, it’s still something that I took away from my family to help out another human being and it’s still something that I am owed, my family is owed, back.  And the only reason taht amoutn is not detrimental to the survival of my family is because we know how to handle the money we have so that we aren’t in debt over our heads and can’t dig ourselves out.  We don’t take on things that we can’t afford or have no intentions of paying for.  We don’t depend on the generosity of others to get through life like she does (she usually whimpers about this that and the other and someone gives it to her for free i.e. cars, appliances, furniture, help moving the 20+ times she’s moved in 10 yrs, etc) 

 

when she moved I spent one entire day

at her place packing up all her crap for her because she ‘couldn’t’ do it herself because it was hurting her knees and back to much (she’s a very obsese person).  And all she did to show her thanks for that was give me a small glass of Kool-Aid when I was all done working for her.  When she needed to move all that stuff to her new house she called my Mom and asked if they would bring the truck and enclosed trailer up and help move her.  My Mom went and they got everything moved for her with the help of two guys she knows from church and one from work.  And while they were all doing the manual labor she was sitting in a chair in the house waiitn gfor them to bring her stuff in so she could direct them EXACTLY where to put it. She would not stand for it just being put in the general room it was to be in, it had to be exactly in the space it was to be for good or she was ticked at them for it.  She was ticked they wouldnt’ take their shoes off each and every time they came into the house carrying something.  Overall, she was pretty ungreatful for the help while they were there.  She offered to take them all out for dinner that night but they all declinced when she informed them they were only going to the one place she wanted to go and they could only have what she said they could have or they couldn’t go.  So everyone bailed on her.  When my Mom got ready to leave she approached her and held out some cash and told her it was for gas and stuff for helping.  MY Mom told her flat out to keep it and send it to me since she owed me so much and hadn’t paid me for any of it yet.  T did tell me she offered my Mom money but she declined it saying she needed to pay it to me instaed.  But she never did send that money.  Instead she went to Target and blew it on useless crap she didn’t need because she already had at least one of everything she bought!    And now recently she went out and bought a $400 yard shed for which she can’t pay for either.  It’s insane.  She just keeps digging deeper and deeper into debt and then thinks that since we are friends I should be the easiest one to get away from.  Think again!  And she almost daily tells me about this thing or that thing she’s going to buy, including a $120+ leather jacket that is at least two sizes to small for her and a $75 hoodie she wants.  And sends me emails a few times a week with Wish Lists from various places of things she wants for Christmas gifts or whatever.  It’s just mind boggling to me.

 

I just need advice.  I need suggestions.  Do I tell her to sell the chair for $150 or do I tell her she needs to get more money out of it if she’s planning on wiping out her entire debt with me?  I just can’t get her to understand that she can’t always be subtracting money from her debt to me when what she needs to be doing is adding to it becuase she’s owing me money not being owed herself.  (scary thing is she was 3 credits shy of graduating with a degree in accounting!)  I can’t get it through her head.  She keeps arguing that becuase she owes me some money that it needs to be subtracted from the total not added.  DH is exasperated with her math abilities.  We just can’t get through ot her on this.  And it’s only making me more angry with each passing day and her stupidity on all this. 

I’m tired of being lied to, cheated and swindled.  That’s not what friendship is to me.  And in 3 hours she will be hounding me for an answer.  And if I don’t provide her with an answer it’s guaranteed she will be calling my hosue tonight, IM’ing me every chance she gets and continiuing to call me every night until she gets an answer.  And right now, I just don’t feel like talking to her.  I have nothing I want to say to her.  There is nothing I want to hear come out of her that I care about at this point.  I’m tired of hearing about this person and that one from ehr church.  Or who gave her what because they know she can’t afford to get the things she needs, or how people take pity on her and feed her all the time.  How she refuses to pay her electric bill because it was ‘their’ fault they didn’t send the bills to the right place at the right time and now she owed almost $700 before they will turn her gas and stuff back on. She told them to screw off and is just waiting another month when they have no choice to turn it all back on because of it being winter in WI.  She stopped making payments on her van and ended up having to give it back to the dealership so they could try and sell it and get th emoney out of it she owes them.  She’s defaulted on more cars than I can even count!  She has over $30K in student loans she has no intentions of ever paying back.  She has a ton of medical bills she owes but says she’s never going to pay.  she owes a bunch to her own Mother who is on a fixed income due to a disability and truly needs the money for her own medical care and she will never pay her back either.  All she complains about is that how ‘some people’ (meanign me I gleaned) stand to inherit alot of money when their parents pass away but all she’ll get is her Mother’s debt to add to her own.    her suggestion to me when I got my inheritance a few weeks ago was to go on a shopping spree and have a good time.  Just another insight into how she doesn’t know the value of money or the hard work people put inot earning it. 

I’m just so angry right now that I don’t even feel like I’m coherent.  I feel jumbled and like I can’t process a complete thought about anything.  I want to yell at her, scream, throw fits until she understands. But I know that will accomplish nothing.  I know I can’t reason with her because she’s been proving lately she’s just entirely to dense to do that with.  And every time I try to explain things to her she gets defensive because she thinks I’m trying to screw her.  Ha!    If I were anyone else I would have probably taken her to small claims over this already.  But I’m not that kind of a person.  Maybe I should be……..

 

******EDIT********

 

As this day progresses I am getting more and more upset instead of getting calmer.  Grrrr……  Like I predicted she started dogging me at 3 p.m this afternoon.  Thankfully I was not at home so I dind’t have to deal with her. 

Then after all the bugging she did today she finally breaks down at 5:15 and says she has someone coming for the chair tonight at 6 so she needs to talk to me ASAP.  WTF????  Why would you NOT say something before this?  She’s not going to be home until around that time so what good does it do to tell me to call ASAP??  It’s useless what she’s doing.  She’s going to do just what she wants and that’s going to be it.  She keeps telling me she’s "sensitive" to this issue and won’t do anything without my consent. But I’ve not consented to any of this and she continues anyway. So she is just an all around liar at this point and isn’t so "sensitive" to this as she claims to be. 

I have so many choice things I want to say to her right now but I know better.  I know better than to say

anything to anyone when I’m angry because it simply doesn’t go well.  And my fear is that if I chew her out over all of this that she is going to go behind my back and sell it anyway and then pocket all of the money and never pay me back.  And right now I’m so pissed that I just want my money back from her.  I don’t want her owing me anything anymore so I don’t have to deal with her anymore.  I’m soooo over this whole ordeal.

 

And to make this whole situation worse, and why it’s probably affecting me more than it should, is the fact that it is something of M’s.  And tomorrow is his birthday.   And it’s just tearing at my emotions right now for her to be hounding me about this so relentlessly.  She doesn’t care.  I know I’m being passive-aggressive towards her right now because of that. I just want to get past tomorrow before I have to think about dealing with anything that pertains to M.  I just don’t want to deal with this right now.

I’ll have to just wait and see what tonight brings I guess.  I know she’s going through with having this person come over at 6 for it.  I’ll just have to wait and see if they pay her for it or not.  and then maybe find out if she plans to continue screwing me over or really does intend to just hand over all the money she gets from it to pay down her debt.  And yes, some money is better than none. But with the way I’ve been treated as of late by her I want it ALL.  And no I’m not a greedy bitch.  Just tired of being walked all over for being nice.