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What would you do if your friend asked you to loan her money? If you knew her husband made good money, would you trust her to pay you back right away, or would you refuse to loan her money?

In this story, one woman is in this situation, and she loans her friend money. She assumes her friend really will pay her back right away, so when she doesn’t, she gets more and more frustrated and determined to get every cent back.

This story proves that it’s never a good idea to loan a friend money unless you don’t actually care if you get the money back.

Keep reading to see how the story plays out.

AITAH for using a thinly veiled threats to get money back from someone to support my son?

I have a female friend of over 25 years. Towards the end of August 2025 I get a desperate call from her. She is due to go away the next day with her family and her brother and his disabled wife.

For background – her brother earns a healthy 6-figure salary. (UK)

She has noticed that the 5-star villa she has booked has an open-style stair case and her disabled SIL cannot use it.

She cancelled this villa but tells me she won’t get the refund for another 2 weeks. She doesn’t want to admit this to her husband or her brother so rings me, frantic, asking for a short-term loan to pay for a second villa with a promise of me being repaid in 2 weeks.

She helped her friend out.

I dutifully give her access to £2,500.00 of my cash, she secures a second villa and happily flies to Rhodes and has a fabulous holiday with her husband, her children, her SIL and her brother (remember, he has a 6-figure salary here in the UK)

She returns a week later.

By Mid Sept I have had £600 back and a few excuses.

By end of October, I get an extra £900 back and some more excuses about cars being crashed into and dodgy repair companies withholding £1,000 of (my) money from her bank.

This is taking way too long.

At the end of January 2026 and after some terse texting I get another £450 back and a few more excuses of ‘not being paid over time’ etc etc

Bear in mind, her brother (and his 6-figure UK salary) also had a lovely time in this 5-star villa on my money.

By this time, I am getting cranky and start feeling pretty annoyed and helpless as I have nobody else to raise this with and she is ignoring my texts on Whatsapp.

(She archived our chat as she didn’t want her husband seeing my messages as she didn’t want him to know about the money and her mess up with the holiday)

Her friend is awful!

I text her hubby and asked him to get his wife to read my messages.

I get more excuses and still no more money.

Fast forward to end of May 2026…

Still no more cash, and last contact was 22nd April.

She really needs her money back.

We are now end of June. I message her as I needed the outstanding £400+ back to bail my (errant) son out of the recent mire he has got himself into.

She reads it, and doesn’t reply.

By this time I am pretty angry….

So when I see her hubby has posted on social media of them out for drinks in a nice riverside pub, I simply say how lovely it looks and ask if he is going away anywhere nice this summer? This is my ‘shot across the bow’

Persistence eventually paid off.

My comment is deleted.

I ask again

Deleted again

I wake this morning and the remaining £400+ is in my bank account – it has taken 44 weeks, several threats and likely the loss of a long-term friendship to get my cash back.

So, AITAH here for doing what I did to get my money back to support my son?

No, she is not in the wrong in any way. Her friend promised to pay the money back quickly and took months instead. Her friend is the one who messed up and caused their friendship to end.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

I think the friendship is over.

Always get it in writing.

It may have been that it was hard for her to send the extra money without her husband finding out.

Nobody thinks she did anything wrong.

I’m honestly surprised she got the money back at all. Instead of ghosting her, her friend should’ve just talked to her. She promised to pay the money back. Why wasn’t she? What was really going on? Her friend breaking her promise is what ended the friendship.

Never loan a friend money if you actually need the money. It won’t end well.