Lending Money to Another BudgetLabs User

A peer debt is a real loan between two people who each use BudgetLabs — a parent lending a child $2,000, one friend covering another's rent for a month. Both sides see one shared, honest number: the borrower sees it as a debt she owes, the lender sees it as money she's owed. Nobody has to update a spreadsheet by hand or take the other person's word for what's left.

BudgetLabs never moves money. Cash still changes hands the way it always has — Venmo, cash, a bank transfer, whatever you'd normally use. This feature only records that it happened, and keeps both people's numbers in sync when it does.

Who can do what

• Proposing a loan is a Pro feature. The lender — the person who wants the tracking — needs a Pro subscription.
• Accepting a loan is always free. If the gate applied to the borrower too, the loan couldn't exist at all whenever she was on the free tier. Only the lender pays.

Proposing a loan (lender)

1. Open Assets.
2. Start a new peer loan, and enter the borrower's email address, the amount, and a short description (e.g. "Car repair loan").
3. Save. BudgetLabs emails them a one-time invite link, good for 14 days.

The email states the amount, the description, and who's proposing it, so she has a record of it in her inbox too — but she doesn't have to go dig it up. The acceptance page shows the same terms directly.

Withdrawing a proposal (lender)

Sent to the wrong address, no longer needed, or the invite email just never made it? From the receivable card on Assets, a proposal still awaiting a reply can be withdrawn at any time — the link stops working right away, and you're free to send a new one. An invitation left unanswered for 14 days is shown as expired rather than still "awaiting," with withdraw as the obvious next step to clear it from your list. Withdrawing is different from forgiving: a withdrawn proposal never became a real loan, so it's marked declined, not forgiven — the two stay distinct so your history stays honest about which one happened.

Accepting a loan (borrower)

1. Open the link from the invite email and sign in if you're not already.
2. Read the terms shown on the page — who's proposing the loan, the amount, and what it's for — before you decide.
3. If you have more than one budget, pick which one this loan should belong to.
4. Tap Accept Loan — or Decline if the terms don't match what you agreed to, or you'd simply rather not. Declining tells the lender you won't be taking it on and creates nothing; if it was a mistake, ask them to send a new invite.

If the link is invalid, expired, or was already answered, the page tells you that immediately instead of showing a form you can't use.

Once accepted, the loan appears on your Debt page — badged as shared and non-editable, with one action available: Record a payment. It counts toward your debt total like any other debt. The lender sees it on their Assets page as a receivable, not a debt (it's money owed to them).

Recording a payment (borrower)

1. On Debt, find the peer loan and tap Record a payment.
2. Enter the amount and the date the money actually moved.
3. Save. The payment shows as awaiting confirmation — it doesn't reduce the balance yet.

Confirming or rejecting a payment (lender)

1. On Assets, the receivable card lists any payments awaiting your confirmation.
2. Tap Confirm once you've actually received it — the balance drops immediately, on both sides.
3. Tap Reject if it never arrived, or the amount is wrong. The balance stays exactly where it was, and the borrower can see the payment was rejected rather than silently ignored.

Only confirmed payments ever reduce the balance — a payment sitting in "awaiting confirmation" doesn't count yet, on either side.

Forgiving a loan (lender)

At any point, the lender can forgive the remaining balance from the receivable card. The loan is marked forgiven rather than deleted — the record and its payment history stay intact, since erasing them would erase the borrower's proof that she made the payments she made.

If someone closes their account

• If the lender leaves: the loan record and its payment history are kept for the borrower rather than erased — only the connection to the lender's identity is cleared. It shows up on her Debt page as an orphaned loan with two options: Keep as my debt, which copies the outstanding balance into a personal debt she owns and tracks normally, or Close loan, which removes it from her debt total outright. Either way it stops sitting open with no lender left to resolve it.
• If the borrower leaves: no new payments can be recorded against the loan — there's no one left with permission to submit one — but a payment she already submitted before leaving can still be confirmed or rejected afterward.

Privacy

Proposing a loan tells BudgetLabs the borrower's email address so we can send the invite — it's encrypted at rest and never shared outside BudgetLabs. Once accepted, the lender's household can see that email address on the receivable card for as long as the loan is open. Before she decides, the borrower sees the lender's first name (not their email), the amount, and the description — both in the invite email and directly on the acceptance page; anyone who merely holds the invite link can see those same terms once signed in, which is what lets the page show them to begin with, and is no more than that link already lets them do by accepting it. Anyone else on either side's shared household budget can also see the loan's terms and payment history — that's inherent to a shared, honest record between two households. See the Privacy Policy for the full picture.

Related

• Debt tracker — where a peer loan shows up on the borrower's side.
• Assets and savings — where the receivable shows up on the lender's side.
• Family Sharing — for splitting one budget across a household, rather than tracking a loan between two separate budgets.