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Comment by seanhunter | Hacker News Reader

As someone who was a bit obsessed with Hamlet as a teen, it's hillarious that they named this Polonius. Polonius is Ophelia's father in the play, and they probably named it because of his famous line:

    Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
    For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
    And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

He's a tragic but somewhat foolish figure, prone to fretting and offering kind of annoyingly obvious advice of which the above is an example.

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It may be obvious, but it's still worth stating! I loaned $1000 to a friend in my 20's, and ended up losing both the friendship and the money (though one was not wholly causal of the other).

I believe this is type of BS pushed by people with the agenda. What kind of friend you are (talking about real friends, not drinking buddies) if you let your friend sink.

My friend loaned me $3000 cash when I was at the vet and my dog needed an urgent surgery. And I paid him back and he did not loose money and we did not loose friendship. And later on when I started to make good money I sometimes loaned to friends. One could not pay me back but we did not loose friendship either as he simply had circumstances beyond his control. I just told him consider it a gift.

What sort of agenda do you imagine people have? That you had a good experience with a friendly loan doesn't discount the bad experiences of thousands of people who did lose their friendships.

We've given money to friends on multiple occasions to pay for medical bills, groceries, and the like, but every time I've entered a reciprocal business arrangement with friends or family (be that a loan or a paid work arrangement), I've regretted it immensely.

Everyone's situation is different. The fact that you've regretted it means zilch for somebody else. Maybe it is you an the type of friends / family you have. I helped my daughter few times and did not think one second about it. No regrets. You can not and should not generalize a particular situation.

You're also generalizing though. The point is that either outcome could happen and you should be mindful of that. If you specifically never have an issue like that, good for you! But other people have been burned, and it's not any more valid for you to dismiss their experience.

I don't think accusing folks of having an "agenda" is a productive argument. I do think some of the rest of your post is valuable.

I have both loaned money and borrowed from, at various points in my life, friends and family. When lending, I have always looked at it as 1) A way to see how reliable my friend/family really was. 2) A sort of 'gift" - knowing full well they may not repay- thus I only loan what I am willing to lose. There have been times when I have lost more money than I would have liked to, but I knew it was a possibility going in, and thus I did not lose the friendship. I just know that at that point in time, the person I loaned to was not as reliable as I had hoped, and I know to be cautious in the future.

There have been many great business deals conducted between friends. If we decide not to do business with our friends because it is possible that the deal will go sour, we are left doing business with strangers, and we lose a lot of potential opportunities, not just to improve finances, but also to strengthen relationships.

> And I paid him back and he did not loose money and we did not loose friendship.

You know all this talk about friendship, but you still mention "And I paid him back" in the same breath as "did not loose friendship". Sometimes you have to deal with the fact that you will never see the money again over such trivial things as a thoroughly mismanaged business venture.

If you do this, always call it a gift. Perhaps the friend becomes rich and pays you back but usually not.

I loaned $2000 to a close friend in my 20s. He never paid me back, so when he got married I just told him to think of it as an early wedding present.

The friendship was (and still is) worth a lot more than $2000 to me.

That's great. In my case, the person said he needed the money because of a rent payment deadline, but then something else happened such that he could make the deadline anyway, so he spent the money I'd lent him on jewelry for his girlfriend, with no regard for the reason I lent it to him. I lent it to him because of what I thought was a need, and then he used it merely to pamper his GF, and made no motion toward paying me back.

Later in his life he went to prison for a year (for unrelated reasons).

I think the positive experiences people are presenting are great. I don't think the Hamlet quote is remotely a hard-and-fast rule, but it does embody a principle that is worth stating, and which can be useful food for thought in making a lending decision.

Sounds like this was a bad friend. If it wasnt the loan, it would have been something else.

Absolutely! But I didn't know that at the time of the loan. It turned out it was a test of character, a test whose results were demonstrated when he eventually spent a year in prison.

When you lend money to a friend consider it a gift and if it is returned it's a happy surprise. Otherwise say no.

Thanks for the explanation! But if his advice is to completely forego borrowing and lending, it's a bit counterintuitive to use his name for the borrow checker? OTOH, the borrow checker can certainly be described as "prone to fretting and offering kind of annoyingly obvious advice", so maybe it's appropriate after all?

We love ironic names :)

Yes, if you look at the Polonius repo, this quote is featured prominently :)

Funny that this comment was made by yet another Hamlet character

Alas, poor me!

What does dulling the husbandry mean in this context?

He's giving the advice to his son who is about to go off to university.

What he's saying is if you get accustomed to borrowing you will lose your ability to budget properly.

Management and conservation of resources

Shakespeare was advocating for RAII?

Losing full control of your finances

Given the context, it’s always funny to see these things played straight—-to thine own self be true tattoos and the like.

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