Shoutout to my sister for calling out my 'small loan' habit at dinner
Two Sundays ago at my mom's house in Toledo, my sister asked how much I had lent our cousin total over the past year. I said it was no big deal, just $50 here and there. She pulled up her notes app and read off nine separate sends going back to January, which added up to $1,150. I had been telling myself each one was tiny and separate, so I never saw the pattern or ever said the word no. Now I owe her for saying it out loud, even if dinner got quiet for a minute. How do you bring up a running total like that with family without it turning into a fight?
The notes app thing is KEY here, because saying "nine times" is easy to argue with but a list with dates is hard to brush off. Your sister basically did you a favor by keeping score when you wouldn't, and yeah dinner got quiet but that beats finding out at $3,000. Maybe you do the same thing for yourself going forward, track it somewhere, so the next ask gets a real answer instead of a reflex yes.