3 Tips For Offering Financial Assistance To A Friend Or Family Member

If you have a friend or a family member that you’ve noticed having some financial issues and you’re on firm financial footing, you might feel compelled to help them in this way. But before you go ahead and start offering assistance, there are a few things that you’ll want to consider so that you can retain a strong relationship with this person.

To help you in figuring out how to do all of this, here are three tips for offering financial assistance to a friend or family member. 

Ask Them What Will Be Helpful

Prior to offering anything to your friend or family member by way of financial assistance, you may want to first ask them what would be helpful for them. 

In many cases, people are very uncomfortable talking about money with others. Because of this, you may not know the real situation behind what your friend or family member is struggling with. With this in mind, asking them what you can do that would be helpful to them will ensure that, if they do really need your financial assistance, that you’re giving the help that they feel will most benefit them. This can be anything from paying off a bill, giving them a lump sum of money, or financing something like a school tuition or assisted living fees. 

Decide How You Want To Make Your Offer

If you don’t think that your friend or family member will tell you what they need or will readily accept your offer to help them how they want, you may want to consider just giving them an offer. 

When you come up with your offer, make sure you are clear about what you’re offering and what your expectations are in the future. If you want to give them money as a gift, tell them this. If you’re thinking of this more as a loan, be sure that this is clear to them before you give them any money. This way, you can both come into this situation with your eyes wide open. 

Give Them A Valuable Gift

Something else that you can do to help someone financially that doesn’t involve giving them money directly is to figure out what is something they need and then just buy that thing for them. 

If your friend can’t afford something for their child, get the item that’s needed. If they need a place to stay in order to get their finances back in order, offer to let them stay with you free of charge for a certain period of time. For some people, accepting gifts is easier than accepting money, so use this to your advantage so that you can still help those you love. 

If you’re wanting to offer financial assistance to a loved one, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you figure out how best to do this.