Blog
Saying thank you when someone pays you back
I think the most underrated part of lending money is the very end of it, when the money comes back and you have about four seconds to decide how to react.
Most of us don’t really decide. The Venmo notification pops up and you heart it without much thought before going back to whatever you were doing. Which is fine! Nobody’s keeping score of your emoji game. But I’ve started to notice that how you close the loop says a lot, and it tends to shape whether the next loan feels easy or awkward.
A while back my friend Marcus paid me back $120 he’d borrowed for a car repair. It had taken him a couple of months, longer than either of us expected, and I’ll admit I’d gotten a little twitchy about it. When the payment came through, my first instinct was to text something like “finally, lol.” I had it typed out. I’m not proud of that.
I deleted it and wrote “Got it, thank you, seriously. Hope the car’s behaving.” And he wrote back right away, something about how he’d felt bad the whole time and was relieved to have it off his plate. That exchange took maybe thirty seconds, but it kind of reset things between us. If I’d sent the “finally” text, I think he’d have read it as a little jab, and he’d have been right.
People who pay you back, especially if it took a while, are often carrying some low-grade guilt about it. You may not see it. They might not even say it. But it’s there, like a stone in a shoe they’ve been walking on for weeks. When they finally hand the money over, they’re kind of bracing for how you’ll respond. A warm thank you lets them set the stone down. A cold one, or no reply at all, can leave them wondering if you’re still annoyed.
There’s a funny tension here, though. Some people push back on the idea of thanking someone for returning your own money. It was yours to begin with, right? Why would you thank them for giving you something that already belonged to you? I get the logic. I just don’t think that’s how friendships actually feel from the inside. You’re not thanking them for the money so much as for keeping their word. That’s worth acknowledging, even if it’s a small thing. Especially if it’s a small thing, maybe.
The tone doesn’t need to be gushing. In fact, I’d say overdoing it can backfire a bit. If someone pays you back $25 for pizza and you respond with three paragraphs about how much their integrity means to you, it gets weird fast. They’ll think you doubted them. A simple, specific line usually does it. Mention what the money was for if you can, because it shows you weren’t just tracking a dollar figure, you were tracking a shared moment.
Something along the lines of “Thanks for the $25, that pizza was worth every cent” lands nicely. It’s light, and it puts a period at the end of the sentence.
I also try not to mix the thank you with anything else money-related. Like, don’t say “Thanks! Also, you still owe me for the parking thing.” Even if that’s true. Let the thank-you breathe on its own for a bit, and bring up the other thing separately, later. Bundling them makes the gratitude feel like a setup.
And if the repayment comes in pieces, which happens a lot, it’s nice to acknowledge each piece. My sister Becca paid me back for a plane ticket in four chunks over the summer, and every time one came through I’d send a quick “got it, thanks!” It probably seemed like overkill to her. But I wanted her to know I saw each payment and that the total was getting smaller in my head the same way it was in hers.
One more small thing. If someone pays you back in person, with cash, don’t count it in front of them. My dad taught me that. He said it’s like checking your change at a friend’s house. Just fold it into your pocket and say thanks. If it’s short by a dollar, who cares, and if it’s short by more than that, you can sort it out quietly later.
I think about the Marcus text a lot, actually. How close I came to sending the snippy version. These days when a payment comes in, I try to pause just long enough to think about the person on the other end, who probably hit send and then sat there for a second wondering how it would land.
He still drives that car, by the way. Every time I see it, it makes a noise I can only describe as a sigh.
The OweMate blog is written by the people who make OweMate, a simple way to keep track of money between friends and family.