What to do when your friend is a mooch

Kristin Marthaler

Kristin Marthaler

There are many things different between living in the real world and living in college. One thing that isn’t different in this world is that it is full of mooches. Wherever you go or whoever you meet, there is always going to be someone in your life that will mooch off of you at some point in time.

The term mooch is usually defined as, “someone who is always trying to get you, or someone, to give them something that they do not even need at the time,” said Jamie Noble, a junior agronomy major.

Kayla Wright, a sophomore business major said, “Someone who pretends to be your friend or to like you but, in reality, is just being nice to you to get something that they want,” said Kayla Wright, a sophomore business major. Mooches are all over the place. They range from borrowing your pencil, to making you pay for the dinner tab whenever you go out to eat.

Granted, at times it is acceptable to be a mooch, such as when you are low on cash or when you ended up going out when you weren’t planning on it. Those times are understandable. It is when the friend constantly says he doesn’t have any money or that they will “pay you back,” that it becomes an issue.

True, sometimes it could be the case that your friend doesn’t have any money. But then again there is a difference between mooching and charity. Matt Prosch, a sophomore history major thinks a mooch is, “Someone who constantly asks for other people’s stuff, because they are too tight or too poor to buy it themselves.”

But there is a difference between mooching and charity. Charity is where you are willing to lend out money to someone to help them out. Mooching is where you reluctantly hand over money to someone, knowing far too well that they probably won’t pay you back.

There are many ways to stop this behavior. One way can be to stop talking to your friend. Knowing that isn’t possible, there is always sitting down with your friend and letting him or her know that you don’t have very much money yourself and can’t always be helping him out. If your friend doesn’t understand that, then just say “no” the next time he asks you for something. If truly your friend, he or she will stick around no matter what.