This is one of the most horrible things you can do to a loved one

My father is a great man.?Not always a good man, but a great one.?As a great man, he made a lot of tough decisions on behalf of our family and always kept us on code with one another.

It is because of my father’s ability to make strong decisions that I have a very close relationship with my family till this day.?Not much drama, just love and connection.?This doesn’t happen by accident.

Part of this connection was driven by my parents consistently sharing the rules of relationships with myself and my siblings.?In their minds, there are codes of behavior that family members should follow and it is entirely unacceptable to violate these codes.

One of those codes was stealing from loved ones.?In the words of my father, “There’s nothing lower for a man to do than to steal from his own family.”

Those words stuck with me through the years, as I would hear about people getting hooked on drugs and stealing from their relatives.??When it came to non-melanated people, I would hear chaotic stories about relatives conspiring to take their parents’ fortune or kill a loved one in order to obtain the inheritance.

But besides the obvious kind of stealing, there are more subtle ways that people steal from family.?One is when you borrow money and refuse to pay it back.

Think about it.?You have a loved one who cares about you so much that they are willing to give you access to their hard-earned money.?They need that money back and even if they didn’t, it’s still THEIR MONEY.?

To my surprise, I’ve seen (within my own family and others) several instances of people borrowing large sums of money from their relatives and never paying the money back.?In some cases, the person would even act as if the loan never took place.?

There is also the situation where the person who borrowed the money starts off extra humble, appreciative and willing to make any promise.?Then, once the money is in their possession, they hide from the other party, not answering phone calls and even getting angry at them for asking for their money back.

This is sick behavior.?It’s also pathetic and unacceptable.

It’s one thing if you borrow from a bank or corporation and refuse to pay them back.?It’s not the best move for your credit score, but that’s your personal decision.?I don’t feel sorry for banks or corporations, they can write losses off on their taxes and many of them are earning billions of dollars.

But a person who borrows from a relative and never pays them back is likely an individual who was never taught to care about the pain endured by their loved one who went out of their way to give them access to their hard-earned money.?They are also participating in the kind of economic drain that leaves many families crippled.

These situations may include the man who makes babies and lets his struggling mother pay all the child support, or perhaps the person who keeps getting sent to jail, expecting his family to bail him out.?

All of this behavior violates the code of family economic ethics.?Borrowing money is not the issue, we all have hard times.?The problem is that, when you borrow money and refuse to pay it back, you’re harming your relatives and draining economic resources.?You are behaving as a leech who drains the family institution and gives nothing back.

To avoid this kind of behavior within your own tribe, you must first ensure that your children are instilled with a strong sense of responsibility to the family.?They should be made aware that what you take, you must replace with interest, even if you are not asked to do so.?Paying “interest” doesn’t always mean a dollar amount, it could mean simply giving back something that is of greater value than what you received.

For example, lets assume my cousin loans me $1,000 when I need it most.??I make a written (informal) agreement with him via text message to repay him by a certain date.?I may not pay him interest, but I let him know “Hey man, I really owe you one.”

So, when it’s time for me to repay my cousin, I do all that is within my power to do EXACTLY what I promised him I would do. If I cannot, I apologize, do what I can at the moment and remain in consistent contact with him until the debt is repaid.

I do not squeal away from the phone whenever he calls about the money.?I don’t yell at him for telling me that he needs his money.?I also should be willing to do something to make up for my mistake, like pay him a bit of interest to make us even.

After I’ve repaid my cousin, I now owe him a favor of equal value to the one he did for me.?That could mean that I loan him $1,000 when he needs it.?If I can’t do that, it means that I come through for him in some other way that allows me to over-deliver to my loved one as a sincere expression of my complete gratitude.

This kind of economic reciprocity is critical for any family that wants to develop a healthy financial ecosystem.?Basically, it means that everyone is pulling their weight, which keeps any one relative from having to do all the financial work.??Also, it means that your collective economic situation is improving over time, rather than being drained by those who feel that everyone owes them something and they don’t owe anybody anything.?

Dr Boyce Watkins is a Finance PhD and founder of The Black Business School. To learn more, please visit BoyceWatkins.com