How should one refuse to father in law (Chinese) when he wants to borrow money?
"In these situations, one solution is to use the ""I was just about to ask you the same thing..."" response. This is kind of a famous way to deal with people asking you for money, whether it's someone asking to borrow ""$10 at lunch time"" or ""$3000 for a car"" or the like. So: Person X asks you for money, say $2000. Your reply: Ah, that's bad luck, I was just about to ask you the same thing... Follow this immediately - just keep talking - by launching in to a really incredibly detailed discussion of why you need to borrow money (pick a slightly larger amount, slet's ay $3500).  Just ""keep talking"" and don't let the other person get a word in. Go in to great detail about just what you need the $3500 for and why. It's a good trick."
Others have covered the usual vehicles for getting money out of a property. There's another category of home loan called a hard money loan. It would take a lot of inquiries to find a hard money loan given your needs, but chances are its doable. The terms can be onerous, and hard money lenders don't mess around when it comes to foreclosing after a few missed payments. It's an off-the-radar industry and the private lenders and specialized trustees operate together with strike-force precision. Trustees normally should be trust-able by borrower and lender, but in the case I describe below, one man owned the small company that lent, and the small company that acted as trustee. Borrower beware. Yet, if your credit score and income are dismal, but your home equity is great, hard money is the only way to borrow against your home. In making hard money loans, lenders don't consider your credit score or income, just how much equity is in the property. I daresay they hope you'll default. They don't always hang onto the loans. If you look like a payer instead of someone they can foreclose on, they might sell the loan to someone who wants a stable monthly income. You don't know a thing about that person.  A Cautionary Tale: *Check out HankandHelen.blogspot.com for a currently-unfolding saga, in which an elderly couple's grandson convinced them to let him take title to their house, borrow against it, invest the proceeds, and share the profits. It didn't work that way. He went through hard-money lenders. He borrowed $360,000 and then $65,000. Those were mysteriously paid off (total mystery at this point), and he borrowed $47,000.  About a year later, he lost the house by defaulting the $47,000 loan. He was only about $2000 behind in payments when the trustee issued a notice of default, followed by a notice of sale. The trustee put the place up for auction, which didn't require a court order: that's the way it is in California and many western states, and a few others. The hard money lender bought the loan at auction for $83,000, and a home worth about $800,000 no longer belonged to the grandson.  A fundraiser brought in about $120,000 and the couple bought a mobile home in a mobile home park. The acre of land and swimming pool they used to own will be for sale soon, or possibly demolished for a mansion to be built. (House in the area go for about $2.5M when improved with very large, new houses.)* I poke around PropertyShark.com when I see a house bought cheaply at a foreclosure auction. Quite often the (former) borrower had inherited the house, treated it like a piggy bank, defaulted, and boom--no more house. It never makes sense to put a house at risk for a small amount like $5000. If you can't pay those credit card bills, the lenders can hound you and maybe get a court order to extract something from your checking account every month, but they can't take your belongings. When you sign a deed of trust or mortgage, you're giving a third party the right to kick you out of your home and take possession of it. You don't have any say in the matter. You might go to court, and say whatever you feel like saying, but if you owe many payments and can't pay them immediately, you're very likely to be out of luck. Someone mentioned paying off credit card balances with the highest interest rates first. That's done by throwing whatever cash you have at them while paying the minimum on the lower-rate balances. That's financially sound, but there's a technique that turns out to be more motivating for some, which is attacking the lowest balance first. It leads to the quickest reduction in the number payments you're required to make every month, and quickly lets you add the money you were applying to the smallest balance to the payment you make on the next-smallest balance. (Close each card as you pay it off if you don't want to accumulate debt again.) P.S. I don't know what your home's feed is, so I didn't address that. If it's some kind of rental income, every lender I have encountered credits 75% of the current monthly rent toward your gross income. They assume there will be vacancies and other costs. I say to always say yes when asked to loan money to a friend or family member as long as you have the money to do it with. That is the key: having th emoney to do it with. And - don't expect to get it back ever. If you do, great. When you don't, your expectation was met. Although not often, I've lent money to friends and most of the time have been paid back. $10, $300, more. For the times when I was not, I do remember but I don't hold it against the person. Money is only money, after all. Friends are precious and worthy of your aid, support, and respect. If they weren't, then one must ask if they are really a friend. - I have also had to borrow money once for a non-trivial amount. My family, who can easily afford it, refused but a friend helped me at a critical juncture. I offered to make a contract but my friend said no, pay me back when you can. I have tried to start paying back a couple of times but my friend refused telling me to wait until I was more financially stable. - If I am ever lucky enough to be in the position my friend is in, I will emulate this behavior and do the very same thing - and love doing it all the while. India and the United States have a tax treaty, so if you pay tax in the United States, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PAY TAX IN INDIA OR VICE VERSA. Your father in law can wire the money back to your US bank account  if you provide him with your routing number and swift code. He might be charged a little fee depending on the amount he is sending(It is usually Rs.1000/-), but once the money comes back it is absolutely tax free. If it is a lot of money, you might get an inquiry, but assuming you have already payed taxes on it, it should reflect on your W2, so you do not have to pay any further taxes. Cheers! Well first problem is usually that you are trying to do too much, you end up micro managing, once a company becomes large enough this is impossible to keep doing at the same level.   If you find that you don't have enough time maybe it's time to either hire someone new, or promote/transfer someone. You need to trust and give freedom to your employees to do their job in their own way which may or may not be better than yours. (Communicate with each at intervals.)   A lot of business owners struggle with this because it costs them money, and that is wrong it's cost your company money which is a separate entity than you. A piece of property that makes you less money than the week before is still making you money you are not losing money. So get that out of your head, it's not your money until you take it out of the business until then that money including profits are the property of the business (this is how the law see it by the way.)   Marginally an understaffed store will make a larger percentage of profits from revenue, a well staffed store will make more actual profits from more actual revenue because it can handle the business coming into the store better, which in turns should lead to more business. On a particular day you may see more money in profit from an understaffed store, someone calls out let's say,  but trust me when I say that will not continue for very long.   On of the biggest challenges new business owners face is they are fugal, as in they don't spend the money they need to. This means buying new equipment, and hiring and giving raises and promotions, so you can handle new business as well. Let say you are making T-Shirts, or really adding new designs to pre-made plain shirts, you can only press one at a time which for a while is enough, but eventually you are going to need another press so you can do 2 at a time, but a lot business owners will somehow expect an employee to produce more with what he has, now orders aren't being filed and you are in a panic and possibly angry but guess what you are angry at the employee not the fact you were to stupid to realize that he needs 2 presses to do the job correctly that's your own fault and you're blind to it, because you feel as if you are working twice as hard than them because of the problem you created! And let's say the problem is different now the press isn't getting hot enough and it take 20% per shirt to get it to stay on correctly and you decide to never fix it, then a light goes out then blank then blank and suddenly you realize finally all of this needs to be replaced at the same time. I've seen things like this happen, in new and old businesses things work fine for the first 5 years then normal maintenance is forgotten, have a depreciation fund ready so it doesn't feel like you are spending any money, that's what that fund is for and you put into it from the beginning, need a $2k equipment, ohh I have $4k saved for this already, it was money intended to be spent on this.   But of course some of this is going to depend on the type of business you are running! And since you have provided us no details I can't give an answer for you because all businesses are different, but I feel that these things, refusing to give freedom and authority to other employees, and refusing to spend money when needed are the biggest pitfalls most business owners fall into. a. Depends on whether it is a gift (no tax, but need to file gift tax form against his lifetime exclusion) or a loan (in which case he needs to charge fair market interest, which he can forgive as a gift with no gift tax form, but for which will need to pay tax on the forgiven income. b. This is a definite possibility. Probably depends on the specific lender, but I would imagine this might be questioned, especially if there is an expectation of paying him back. c. Relationships. I would always avoid mixing family and finances in this way. Do you want your family gatherings to be tainted by owing him money? What if you fall on hard times? What if you go on a nice vacation instead of paying him back faster? You do not need to set this up as a loan. Try finding an Indian student. He is eligible to get cash (using a travel card, may be) from India tax-free. As long as it doesn't exceed the i-20 amount, he will not have any problems. Since, $10,000 is very small amount, the student shouldn't be having any problem. I came across such a situation and I am still facing it. My friend borrowed my credit card for his expenses as he had misplaced his debit card and for the time being had asked for my credit card to handle the expenses he does. He paid for initial 2 months and then was not able to make payments, mainly due to not being able to arrange money or if it was a contri party, he would collect cash from friends but again spend the same. Months passes by... the bill had come upto 65k and calls from bank and other respective organizations Finally my dad came into picture and slowly the issue is resolving he has paid 50K remaining is still pending.   So basically, the reason I shared this part of story was he is my Best friend and in order to not spoil our friendship I did not want to take any such step which would later on affect our friendship. This completely depends on the individuals how they react to the situation. Keeping Ego, superiority, favour sort of feelings and words apart things can be resolved between friends. You do not know what is the situation on the other side.  Probably you can connect with him ask him to explain you why is not able to pay the debts and take action accordingly. If he is not able to provide a proper reason then you may take some actions like mentioned in initial answers, run after the assets he own or anything else.Stay Calm and patient. Do not take any such step which you would regret later on...! The debt is absolutely real. China loans money to US via buying the US treasury bonds. The bond is essentially a promise to pay back the money with interest, just like a loan. As you point out, the US can print money. If this were to happen, then the USD that the owner of a treasury bond receives when the bond matures are worth less that than the USD used to purchase the bonds. There are lots of reasons why the US doesn't want to print lots of money, so the purchaser of the bond is probably confident it won't happen. If for some reason they think it is possible, then they will want to cover that risk by only purchasing bonds that have a higher interest rate. The higher interest offsets the risk of the USD being worth less. Of course, there are lots more details, e.g., the bonds themselves are bought and sold before maturity, but this is the basic idea.