Welcome to Fintastic Females, our adventure to finding the mythical island of freedom together. I’m Rupali,with my co-host Kalyani. We are your next-door finance experts sharing our experiences in the world of money and energy. Welcome, everyone, to our series that we’ve decided to call Money Matters, where we’ll be taking an everyday kind of problem, challenge that comes up in a lot of our lives, and talking about how we choose to see it and working through that in our group coaching model as well. We rely on our listeners reaching out to us with questions for this bite-sized segment on our podcast, and we’d love to hear back from you as well. So please reach out to us with your questions on our social media. Today’s topic is about money and family. So when you have that family member or even a close friend that asks for money, and when I say ask for money, it’s a broad kind of topic, but the specific question that came through was about investing in the opportunity, the business that they’d like to start up. And so what we’d like to cover is really give you that toolkit in terms of how you are able to then process and think through it because sometimes when someone asks us for money, you’re like, “What do I say?” Yeah. So today we are gonna give you a toolkit to work through. Okay, let’s get into it. If someone asks you for money, then what’s your first thought? Let’s start with that. I think we all have that impulse thought where you’re like, “Oh no, oh, oh, what do I say? Oh, I’m not sure.” But it’s all about just being present in what you’re thinking and feeling. So as soon as you have that thought, that, “Oh no,” just take this step back, hear that person out and say whatever it is that you’d like to say, but walk away with the option to get back later. Yes. Because that gives you the opportunity and time to really think through it. For me, it also really comes down to your relationship with that person in terms of how clear you’re able to be. If that relationship is very formal or it might be a close relationship, they might even be your siblings. But sometimes if you don’t have the history of having, let’s say a blunt conversation or saying what you feel to them easily, then this could add a lot of pressure to the relationship, which is never a good thing. Because there could be instances where you end up investing in their business or their opportunity, and let’s say they don’t do very well, and then it becomes a question of, “Oh, you invested and you didn’t lend, so do I really owe you money? You invested knowing the risk of this opportunity not doing very well.” And then it becomes a very difficult conversation, especially if these are larger funds or funds that you were depending on. So, I think to your point, in the first conversation when it comes up, it’s always good to clarify 100% what is this? Are they borrowing money from you for six months? Are they expecting you to become a partner in their business? What is it? Once you understand the ins and outs of it, walk away from that situation to just get yourself that space to really process it. So, if you felt taken by surprise in that moment and you felt like, “Oh no, I don’t want to do this,” you can actually sit with it and say, “Why did I feel this way? Is it because I don’t have the money? Is it because I don’t want to invest? What is it?” By carefully evaluating these factors, you can make a thoughtful decision that protects your interests while maintaining the harmony of your personal relationships.