Lending money to family or friends is a decision where both paths carry substantial downside. Bankrate’s 2019 survey of 2,490 US adults found that 46% of those who lent money to a loved one experienced negative consequences — lost money, damaged credit, or harmed relationships. LendingTree’s parallel survey put direct regret at 24%. On the refusal side, 26% of those who declined to lend say the refusal ended a relationship entirely. The action side carries financial risk; the inaction side carries relational risk.
The asymmetry in regret type is more interesting than the asymmetry in regret rate. Lenders who regret the decision typically lost money they will not recover — a concrete, quantifiable harm. Refusers who regret it lost a relationship — an emotional, diffuse harm that may be harder to value but can persist longer. Gilovich and Medvec’s temporal framework would predict that the relational regret (inaction) grows over time while the financial regret (action) fades, but no longitudinal study has tested this specifically for family lending.
The comparison has a fundamental measurement problem: the two sides use different instruments, different survey years, and different definitions of “negative outcome.” The 35% midpoint used for the action side blends direct regret (24%, LendingTree) with broader negative consequences (46%, Bankrate). The 26% for the inaction side measures relationship loss, not self-reported regret. A cleaner comparison would need a single validated instrument applied to both lenders and refusers in the same sample. Until that exists, the takeaway is qualitative: both lending and refusing carry roughly comparable odds of a bad outcome, but the nature of the harm differs.