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When a friend pays you back with something other than money
The best repayment I ever got for a loan was a brand new set of porch steps.
My buddy Theo had borrowed $250 from me during a stretch between jobs. A few months later, he was working again but money was still tight, and he called me up and said, “Look, I can pay you back in cash over the next while, or I can fix those steps you keep tripping on.” Theo’s a carpenter. The steps were, to be generous, a hazard. I said yes so fast I think I startled him.
He spent two Saturdays on it. The steps are still there, solid as anything, and every time I walk up them I think of him. I genuinely can’t say that about any $250 I’ve ever been handed.
That experience got me thinking about how often friends square up in ways that aren’t money at all. It happens constantly, I think, and we don’t always notice. Someone covers your share of a concert, so you cook them dinner the next weekend. Your sister lends you a couple hundred bucks, and you end up watching her kids every Friday night for a month. Nobody writes it down. It just sort of evens out.
Mostly that’s lovely. It’s how friendships worked long before anybody had a payment app in their pocket. But I’ve also seen it go sideways, and I think the difference usually comes down to one thing.
Did you both agree it counts?
With Theo, he asked. He proposed the steps and I said yes. We both knew that once they were done, the $250 was settled. Clean. No ambiguity.
Where it gets messy is when one person decides on their own that a favor cancels a debt, and the other person never got the memo. My coworker Andre told me about lending a friend $300 for a car repair. A few weeks later the friend helped him paint his living room. Andre was grateful and bought him lunch. Then, a month after that, Andre mentioned the $300, and the friend looked genuinely confused. “Oh, I figured the painting covered that.”
Neither of them was being shady. They just had completely different math in their heads. To the friend, a full day of painting was easily worth $300. To Andre, the painting was a favor between buddies and the loan was a loan. Two separate things. It took a pretty uncomfortable conversation to untangle it.
So if you’re on either side of this, I think it helps to say it out loud. If you’re the one who owes, try something like, “Would you be okay if I paid you back by doing X instead?” And then actually wait for a yes. If you’re the one who’s owed and someone offers a favor, it’s fine to ask, “Is this instead of the money, or just because?” It might feel a little formal. It’s a lot less awkward than the confused-look conversation later.
When does it feel fair?
This is the fuzzy part, and I don’t have a tidy answer. Fairness in these trades seems to depend less on the dollar value and more on whether both people feel good about it afterward.
The porch steps would’ve cost me way more than $250 if I’d hired someone, so in pure numbers, I came out ahead. But Theo felt good too, because he got to wipe out a debt using something he was great at instead of scraping together cash he didn’t really have. That’s sort of the sweet spot, I think. When the person paying back gets to give something that’s easy for them and valuable to you.
It feels less fair when the trade is lopsided in a way that only one person notices. If you lent someone $500 and they offer to walk your dog twice, that might feel a bit thin. You’re allowed to say so, kindly. Something like, “I really appreciate that, but I think I’d rather just have the cash back when you can.” No one should feel obligated to accept a favor in place of money they actually need.
And it can feel off when the favor becomes open-ended. Babysitting is the big one here. “I’ll watch your kids sometime to make up for it” is warm, but it has no end point. How many evenings is $200? Nobody knows. Without some kind of rough agreement, the debt kind of floats forever, and both of you feel vaguely uneasy about it. If you go this route, pinning it down a little helps. “Four Friday nights, and we’re square?” Sounds unromantic. Works great.
My sister Becca and I did exactly that, actually. She’d covered my half of a gift for our parents, about $150, and I offered to take her two kids for a few weekends so she and her husband could get some time to themselves. We agreed on three Saturdays. By the end of the third, I was exhausted and she was thrilled, which I’m told is roughly how babysitting is supposed to go.
Theo, meanwhile, has started borrowing my pressure washer. I haven’t decided yet what it’s worth in steps.
The OweMate blog is written by the people who make OweMate, a simple way to keep track of money between friends and family.