Monthly Archives: October 2015

Beware your monied relations

You’ve heard not to mix business and pleasure.

That much is true – the degree that you are amicably entangled with customers or clients, this is the potential for that relation to backfire on you the day a deal goes sour. Likewise, the burn will increase in proportion to the amount of money of yours in limbo.

This includes lending money to friends – which I consider moving into the business sphere. If friends are in need money, and you trust them enough to make sensible use of them, give them as a gift, with no strings attached. On the other hand, if they end up spending them idiotically, or being mostly or entirely unable to pay it back as agreed, your mutual friendship takes a hit, unless you are a very patient or rich man. (But if you are rich, why aren’t you giving them as a gift to him? And if you are rich, how many of your friends are really that friends and not sugarcoated leeches? That aside…)

A case where this is especially true, is in your relation to your bank. Never, never, never stray beyond formally courteous relations with your bank advisers or liaisons. The day that you miss a payment or are late in remedying an unexpected overdraft, that is the day that they will be on the spot, charging you a fee, often wildly out of proportion to the ‘infraction’.

You may be a millionaire one day, the day later your fortune is wiped out by a stock ‘correction’ (as they call a drop), market crash, or a leveraged bid gone bad, and you end up with more liabilities than assets. The month after that, the bank is ready to repossess* your house and your car.

Whatever happens, they will be tough as nails, they will not be negotiated with unless you can sell yourself into a repayment plan at an atrocious interest rate. Whatever feel-good you thought you had with your bank guy will be gone like dewdrops in the sun. Ooohhh, the burn.

*(as they call a merciless grab… do we call it to repossess if I do wire fraud or grab a Slaystation at the high-profile games store?)