How do I send my friend money?

He can walk , so he can come get it if he really wants it . NO ?? Send it via paypal he can take it out of the bank , or does that take a few days to clear…?

Do you have a mutual friend who can travel?

Unfortunately we don’t. The problem is it is a pretty large city, Id guess he is 30+ mi from me. I’m n one suburb and he is in the oposite corner.

Either have someone drive you to him, or him to you. Don’t use Western Union. It’s too much of a hassle, and the last time I used their online service they double charged me and refused to realease the funds charged in error. I had to contact my bank to get the money back.

I see what you just posted. If you don’t want to take it to him, I’d say your friend is out of luck. But if he needs it badly enough, I bet he will find a way to come and get it.

He doesn’t have gas.
You mean gas for his car?
If so, i can understand that he can’t come to you to collect the money.
But assuming that he gets your twenty dollar in one way or another, what is he going to do with it.
Since he has no gas he can’t drive to the gasstation.
So, how come the gas in the car is my question?

Well, he has very little gas. Not enough to get to work tomorrow, but enough to get to the corner and fill up.

Aha, i understand.
I can’t help you thinking of a way to get the money there, sorry.

This might not work. It probably won’t but you could try. You could see if any pizza places will deliver to his house. They might be willing to help for a small fee. I have had pizzas delivered to friends even when I was in a different city.

They could slap a extra twenty on the bill and leave the cash with him.

Does he have enough gas to drive to a bus stop and ride the bus to your place?

Is there a branch of his bank anywhere near you, so that you could possibly make a deposit to his account or arrange for a transfer?

Are you his only friend?

Dies he have a bank account? Can you deposit in a branch close to you and he can use his ATM to withdrawl it?
You are a nice friend to be working so hard to try to figure out how to give away money.

A mutual friend that can go between as @gailcalled said!

Have I completely lost touch? We have a service that takes envelopes from our house to any other house in the entire city every single day. It’s call the Postal Service, or other wise known as snail mail to computer nerds.

Maybe there is a time limit here that I missed. In that case, Pay the nearest college student ride his bike over there, (or drive, if he has a car).

Why isn’t he figuring this out? He’s the one that needs the money.

@YARNLADY he needs it sent faster than the mail because as he says above:

“Well, he has very little gas. Not enough to get to work tomorrow, but enough to get to the corner and fill up.”

This seems like a case where the old project formula applies: cost, schedule, performance (CSP). If you can’t have all three, which will you sacrifice?

If you don’t want to spend money to get money to him, cost is a priority. That means no Western Union, no pizza delivery, no hiring college students, no taking a taxi, etc. No extra expenditures to accomplish the task.

If he can’t wait (and you can’t delay helping him out), schedule is a priority. That means you can’t send it by mail, wait for your wrist to heal, etc. You have to do whatever it takes to get it there right away.

It looks like cost and schedule are in conflict already because this is definitely a problem that could be solved by throwing money at it.

If this is a task that can be done by you and only by you, performance is a priority. That means no borrowing from a neighbor, getting a coworker to pick him up for work, selling something he owns, leaving him to walk, etc.

You and your friend have to work out which of the three is the least important and solve the problem in terms of the other two. Better do it before his cellphone runs out of minutes or he might need another $20 to pay the phone bill.

I know this may sound like a hard line to take but I think people don’t learn anything if you take away the consequences of their decisions i.e. he does not have enough gas because presumably he did not buy enough to last him until he would have enough money to buy more It has been my experience that we learn from our own discomfort and the consequences of our actions. If there is always someone to pick up the pieces and make things comfortable for us again then how can we learn to take responsibility for ourselves? Helping can become the sort of enabling that only does someone else a disservice in the long run. Just another perspective to ponder. my answer is probably away too late to be of any help but I wanted to offer it anyway

@Jeruba very good analysis model

I forgot I asked this. I ended up not giving him any money. He made it too difficult, and I really didnt feel like driving across town!