Questions about lending money privately
Plain answers to the questions that come up when the loan is between two people who know each other — where the hard part is rarely the arithmetic.
Answers
- Lending money to friends and familyWhat to agree before the money moves, what to write down, and the failure modes that end friendships rather than loans.
- Should I charge interest?When interest on a private loan is reasonable, when it is counterproductive, and what to do instead.
- Tracking a loan in a spreadsheetA spreadsheet that actually works, the four places they usually go wrong, and when to stop using one.
Looking for how the product works?
These pages are about the situation. For the mechanics — repayment plans, monthly interest rates, overpayments, what happens when a payment is late — see the guide, or run your own numbers through the free calculators.
One thing worth saying up front
Nothing on this site is legal or financial advice, and none of it is specific to where you live. Rules on private lending — interest caps, licensing thresholds, what makes an agreement enforceable, how gifts and loans are treated for tax — vary enormously by country and sometimes by region. For anything with real money at stake, the general reasoning here is a starting point for a conversation with someone qualified locally, not a substitute for one.
Stop recalculating this by hand
LoanCompass keeps the schedule, the repayments and the running balance for every loan you have made, so the figures on this page stay current without you rebuilding them. It is free while in early access, and no money moves through it.