Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday you did not pay a dime for.

Loving and caring for your family does not mean you should give in to every single demand they make. More often than not, in the long run, saying ‘no’ to these demands would prove just how much you care about them, since you don’t want to ruin the relationship over petty disputes.

It’s not difficult to come to this conclusion: If you know that what a family member is asking of you can lead to drama in the future, saying no to them is basically saying, «I don’t want to ruin us in the future by agreeing to this now, I would rather keep things the way they are because I love you.»

This is a sentence the nephew in the story below should have told his aunt and uncle. Two years ago, this family member received a high income, which led his aunt and uncle to ask for $8000 for their failing restaurant. The nephew was kind and naive and couldn’t foresee that loaning this large sum would lead to a future fallout with his family, so he agreed to give them the money.

Two years have passed, the restaurant is still standing, but the nephew did not get any of the loan back.

A week ago, the nephew saw on Facebook that his aunt and uncle went on a holiday in Ibiza. This felt really off to him, knowing that they claimed they had no money to pay him back. But suddenly, they have enough money for an expensive vacation abroad? So, the nephew wrote to his aunt and uncle, asking them about the vacation, which quickly led to a whole dispute in which he accused them of wasting money that is not really theirs.

By the looks of it, the aunt and uncle have no intention of giving back the money, and this family relationship is heading for destruction. If only the nephew knew how bad an idea it is to loan money to a family member, he might have been able to avoid this whole situation…