Woman Asks Brother to Repay the $3,200 He Borrowed, but He Says ‘Family Doesn’t Keep Score’

A woman is questioning whether she was wrong after a disagreement with a family member over unpaid loans.

In a Reddit post, the 28-year-old explains how lending money to her older brother caused tension and silence between them.

“I lent my older brother (31M) around $3,200 over the past year,” she writes. The money wasn’t given all at once but in “multiple things: car repairs, part of a security deposit, and a few ‘I’ll pay you back next week’ groceries or bills that never got repaid.”

She says she never pressured him for the money and trusted he would repay her once he was more financially stable. “He’s not unemployed, just bad with money,” she says, adding that he always seems to have cash for “takeout, streaming subscriptions, and spontaneous weekends away.”

When she finally brought up repayment, she didn’t ask for the full amount at once. “I told him I need to start seeing some of it back,” she says, suggesting a small plan of $100 per month.

But his response surprised her. “He got super offended. Said I was ‘acting like a bank,’ that I was cold and transactional, and that ‘family doesn’t keep score.’”

Things got worse when their mom got involved, telling her she was being “petty” and should be more patient. “But this isn’t a gift,” she writes. “I’ve been budgeting tightly myself, and I’ve had to delay some of my own goals because of this.”

She shares that her brother now barely speaks to her. The emotional distance has made her question whether bringing money into family matters was the wrong choice.

“I didn’t expect him to treat me like an ATM,” she says, turning to Reddit for advice.

“I don’t think I’m wrong for expecting to be paid back,” she insists.

In the comments, one user was blunt. “You were the idiot. Congratulations!” they wrote. “Never lend money to family or friends unless you expect to never see it back.”

“You are not gonna get that money back,” they added. “Now let’s see if you will continue to be an idiot. Will you continue to give him money in the future?”

The original poster responded honestly. “Yeah… honestly, you’re probably right,” she said. “I didn’t expect it to blow up like this, but now I realize I kind of walked straight into it.”

She admits that at first, it didn’t feel like lending. “I didn’t think of it as ‘lending’ at first, it was just helping, and then it snowballed.”

The experience taught her a hard lesson. “And no, I won’t be giving him another cent,” she writes. “Lesson learned, just wish it didn’t cost me over $3k to figure that out.”