Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

Should I charge my children interest when they borrow money? 
I think there's value in charging family members/friends interest if it will make them take the loan seriously.  The problem is that if you're thinking about charging interest because the person seems to be borrowing from you too cavalierly, it may be too late to make them take it seriously. In the situation you describe, if you're concerned about the loans being paid back, I think you need to have a serious conversation with the kids and make it clear you expect them to pay the loans back on whatever schedule you agreed to.  If, based on your knowledge of your kids, you think charging interest would help motivate them to do this, great.  If not, charging interest is unlikely to accomplish anything that the conversation itself won't accomplish.  If you haven't previously outlined a specific schedule or set of expectations for how you want to be paid back, just doing that (in writing) may be enough to make them realize it's not a joke. The conventional wisdom is that you shouldn't lend money to anyone unless you're either a) okay with never being paid back; or b) willing to pursue legal remedies to ensure you're paid back.  Most people aren't willing to sue their own family members over small loans, which means in most cases it's not a good idea to loan money to family unless you're "okay with" never being repaid (whatever level of "okay with" makes sense for you). I should note that I don't have kids; my advice here is just how I would handle it if I were considering loaning money to my brother or a close friend or the like.  This means I don't really know anything about "teaching the kids about the real world", but I have to say my hunch is that if your kids are 25+ and married, it's too late to radically change their views on how "the real world" works; unless they had a very sheltered early adulthood, they've been living in the real world for too long and will have their own ideas of how it works.