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Neither a borrower nor a lender be
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
It's coming up to rent day and Alice is a little short. Bob, on the other hand, has money to spare, and casually offers to lend her the cash - after all, what's a few quid between friends? No need for collateral or payment deadlines, The Power Of Trust will prevail!
Now one ( or more) of several things happens to severely strain their friendship:
- Alice is slow to pay the money back. Bob starts off understanding, but gets more and more annoyed the longer it goes on and the more his own financial pressures build up.
- Bob assumes this will happen and starts pestering Alice for the money unreasonably - she's already paid it out, and can't return it yet, and her good friend has suddenly transmogrified into the All Devouring Black Hole Loan Shark!
- Alice suddenly has money to burn, and does so. Bob is either angry that she hasn't learnt her lesson, that she seems ungrateful, or that she apparently didn't need the money as much as he thought. He may be too proud to mention needing the money, and Alice will assume he's getting along fine without it.
- Bob assumes this will happen, and starts watching over Alice's shoulder, reading her receipts, and generally being nosey and superior - less Loan Shark and more Bank Manager.
This will rarely be the moral grey area it would usually be in Real Life: one party (most often the greedy lender) will be clearly in the wrong, and will learn An Aesop about the importance of Friendship and Trust. If the borrower really was taking advantage, the relationship can be more significantly damaged, especially if they continue to refuse to pay it back.
One of the Money Tropes. Closely related to Broken Treasure, where a borrowed possession is lost or broken, leading to similar problems. If the ill-advised borrowing is from a suspiciously helpful stranger, they will probably turn out to be Loan Sharks.
Examples:
Anime
- Cosigning a car lease for an old work acquaintance is what sets the events of Kaiji into action. And, of course, the guy he did it for shows up and proceeds to die, ensuring Kaiji will never get re-payed for the headache.
Comics
- In Knights of the Dinner Table, a Running Gag is for one of the characters, usually Dave or Bob, to show up to the game with some expensive extravagance, like a $75 electronic
GM screen "player advantage screen", or drop everything to spend a week at GaryCon, with long-suffering B.A. or Sara pointing out that he still owes money or that his car has urgent repair needs he's been putting off.
- One strip deals with all five characters dealing with an tangled web of World War I alliance-proportions' worth of owed money between them. The equally complex solution ("Take the money you owe me, pay it back to him", etc.) clears up everyone's accounts except for Bob, who now owes money to everybody.
Film
- Subverted in A Bronx Tale. Calogero is owed twenty dollars by a casual acquaintance, which escalates into such a tense issue that the kid ends up just running every time he sees "C" coming. C is venting about this one day to his mentor Sonny, who asks C if he even particularly liked the guy to begin with. C replies that he never really did, and Sonny points out that he's free to just forget about it if he wants — the other kid will continue avoiding C in order to avoid repaying the debt. "He's out of your life for twenty dollars."
Literature
- In Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace", a woman borrows a fancy necklace, loses it, can't bring herself to tell her friend, beggars herself and her husband to buy an identical necklace to give back... and then, after a lifetime of misery based on that single decision, encounters the lender again, spills her guts, and discovers that the woman had only lent her costume jewelry.
- In George Eliot's Middlemarch, Fred Vincy casually persuades Mr. Garth to underwrite a debt, assuming that he will easily pay it back from an expected inheritance. When this doesn't work out as expected, he tries to scrape up the money owed but comes short, forcing the Garths to give up their life's savings which were earmarked to fund their children's apprenticeship. Fred is guilt-torn, but later, when Mr. Garth's fortunes improve, it's he who gives Fred the means to redeem himself and repay the money.
- In one of Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno books, the Professor tries to explain the meaning of the word 'convenient' with a poem about two men, Peter and Paul, which begins with one deciding as a gesture of friendship to lend the other fifty pounds. Said poem takes this trope to its extreme, as the lender does not find it "convenient" to provide the money until well after the date in which the lendee is forced to pay it back... and after the lendee is reduced to homelessness... and while the lender still hasn't found it convenient to lend the original money at the end of the poem, he has decided in his magnaminosity to lend fifty more pounds! Which the lendee rejects, exclaiming that "it would not be convenient!"
- In one story by Ephraim Kishon. Played with insofar as it's the friend who really becomes obnoxious, despite the narrator being polite and helpful.
Live-Action TV
Music
- "Listen Up" by The Gossip:
Everybody knows someone like that
Who borrows money and won't pay you back
They'll talk about you at the drop of a hat
Lie about it to your face when they're caught
Real Life
- Real Life: some religions ban money-lending with interest entirely, as it can be seen as capitalising on another's misfortune ("Usury"). This is the case with Islam, and was also true in Medieval Christianity, with the interesting side effect that people simply borrowed from the comparatively Unfettered Jews, giving rise to the "greedy Jewish moneylender" stereotype that unfortunately survives today.
- The webcomic
 Suicide for Hire had a field day with this one, when beating up a bunch of Straw Man Christians
- Judaism includes the same ban, but the Jews were able to charge interest because of a bit of canny Loophole Abuse: they weren't allowed to charge interest to fellow Jews, but Christians were on their own.
- It's worth noting how many broken friendships are caused by this. In fact, there's a reason why a gigantic chunk of cases on most "judge" TV shoes have to do with loaning money. It's better to treat any money loaned to friends as a gift, although it would be nice if they paid you back.
- For the majority of these cases, the agreement was only verbal and it gets hard to prove that the friend owed the other friend money when one can easily "forget" or not remember the details of the loan correctly.
Theater
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