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.
• Either side can record a payment. The borrower records what she paid from her Debt page, and it waits for the lender's confirmation. The lender can also record a repayment she received, straight from Assets — no confirmation step, since she's the one owed.

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.

Resending an invite (lender)

If the invite email never arrived — it landed in spam, or the link expired before they got to it — you don't have to start over. From the receivable card on Assets, choose Resend invite (in the card's menu for a still-awaiting proposal, or right on the prompt for an expired one). BudgetLabs sends a fresh email with a new link good for another 14 days. The previously-sent link stops working at that point, so only the newest one can be accepted.

Withdrawing a proposal (lender)

Sent to the wrong address or no longer needed? From the receivable card on Assets, a proposal still awaiting a reply can be withdrawn at any time — the link stops working right away, and you're free to send a new one.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 resend or withdraw as the obvious next steps 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 lender has already recorded a repayment — say you handed over some cash before you got to the email — the page shows "$X already repaid · $Y remaining" under the amount, so what you're agreeing to is what's actually left.

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.

Recording a repayment yourself (lender)

You don't have to wait for the borrower to log a payment. If she hands you cash, or the transfer lands before she gets around to recording it, record it yourself:

1. On Assets, find the loan in the Money You're Owed card, open its … menu, and choose Record a repayment.
2. Enter the amount and the date you received it (Received on).
3. Optionally pick a Deposit to account — one of your own checking or savings accounts. Leave it at Not tracked (cash in hand) if the money didn't land in an account you track.
4. Add a note if you like, and save.

A repayment you record is confirmed on the spot — you're the one owed, so there's no second signature to wait for. The balance drops immediately on both sides, and the borrower sees it on her Debt page as a confirmed payment the next time it loads. She never sees which account you deposited it into.

Deposit to. If you pick an account, BudgetLabs also writes one deposit transaction into it, dated the day you received the money and described "Loan repayment — her email · loan description". It's filed under a reserved Loan Repayment income category that's excluded from your budget and hidden from the Budget Breakdown, the same way Transfer and Credit Card Payment are — so the account balance rises without reading as income you earned. As with reimbursements, the deposit can't be dated before the account's last recorded balance.

Before the borrower has accepted. You can record a repayment on a loan that's still awaiting a reply — money changes hands whether or not the invite email was opened. The row shows "$X already repaid · $Y remaining", and the same line appears on the borrower's acceptance page so she agrees to what's actually left. Expired, declined, settled, and forgiven loans can't take new repayments.

Removing one. In the card's payment history, repayments you entered are labelled Recorded by you and carry a trash button. Removing one deletes the repayment and its deposit transaction, so the account balance reverses too. Payments the borrower recorded can't be removed — only confirmed or rejected, as before.

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: she can no longer record payments against the loan, 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.