Q: Should I be a guarantor for a friend/relative, or lend money out?

In 30 seconds: The test is one line — only lend or guarantee money you’re willing to treat as “thrown down a drain, gone for good.” And since you’ve already decided you don’t need that money back, the better move is to just give it to them and say “no need to repay” — not lend, and not guarantee. Being a guarantor means shouldering the entire debt for someone; only do it if you can afford to. Flip it to check: if you can’t afford to wire them the full amount outright and generously say “this is yours, don’t repay it,” then you can neither be their guarantor nor lend to anyone.¹

Variants (how people actually ask)

• “A classmate/friend is borrowing from the bank and wants me as guarantor — should I agree?”
• “A relative asks to borrow NT$500k / NT$1M — do I lend?”
• “He says he’ll definitely repay within three years — can I lend on that?”
• “My partner/fiancé wants me to co-sign a loan to invest, and we own a house together — should I agree?”

One test is enough: are you willing to just give it away?

James collapses the whole thing into one clean test:¹

• Lending or guaranteeing means you’re shouldering the debt for them — so the precondition is “you can afford it.”
• What “afford it” means: you’d be willing to wire the money straight to their account and say “this isn’t a loan, it’s yours, don’t repay it.” Only then are you qualified to act.
• If you can’t, do nothing — don’t lend, and definitely don’t guarantee. “Someone asks to borrow NT$1M and you say ‘okay, repay me within three years’ — then don’t lend to him; either say ‘this NT$1M is yours, no need to repay,’ or do nothing at all.”
• The closing line: “Only money you don’t want back is money you can give to someone.”

James’s own practice is to keep the whole thing out of his life: “There’s no such thing as being a guarantor or lending money to people — it has never happened to me.”¹

Why “being a guarantor” is especially to be avoided

Guaranteeing is riskier than lending in a hidden way — you never received the money, yet you carry the full debt. Taiwan’s old joint-guarantee (連帶保證) system once let parents become guarantors with the debt pursuing their children, “chased for a lifetime,” dragging families into ruin. (The current system differs, but keep the risk awareness.) So CLEC’s stance is: you don’t need to be anyone’s guarantor.¹

This aligns with the first principle of 15 years of cash flow — secure your own cash-flow safety first, and don’t let an unbearable contingent liability (a guarantee) drag you under — and with the spirit of the borrowing order: borrowing is a disciplined tool for launching your own assets, not a favor for co-signing someone else’s.

Special case: when it’s a “partner + shared asset + stable income,” the test loosens

00575 a member’s situation differs from “co-signing for a friend” and is worth unpacking: after hearing about a member Xin muster, her boyfriend wanted to pledge his other unmortgaged house for about NT$2M to invest, and asked a member to be guarantor; but she’s already guarantor on their shared marital home (NT$10M+ mortgage) and doesn’t want to add more guarantee debt. James’s judgment here clearly loosens, because two risk preconditions change:²

• Repayable → co-sign risk is small: the house is in both names, and the boyfriend is a civil servant with stable income — “he can repay the NT$2M, he won’t stick you (the guarantor) with it.” This still fits the page’s underlying test — only do it if you can bear it — it’s just that “can bear it” holds here because of his stable income and the shared asset.
• The real risk is “will he mess around,” not “will you be chased for the debt”: the only risk is if he takes the NT$2M for short-term trading / gambling and loses it all (“then that NT$2M is thrown down a drain”). So James’s condition is: “If you’re willing to allocate the CLEC (index) way, I think borrowing is fine; but you have to keep your promise” — and “keeping the promise” has no paper contract and is hard to ensure. The safer move: put the borrowed money into a member’s own account and hold to the death (though the boyfriend may not agree).
• Don’t break up over an NT$2M co-sign: James circled back to add — they’re already a couple who jointly bought a house, near marriage; “breaking up over co-signing NT$2M is too arbitrary,” and he suggests wait and see; only if the other walks the gambler’s road (vice) is it unsolvable. Here the marriage/relationship risk is actually greater than the co-sign’s financial risk (the money-vs-relationship boundary is in 要不要讓伴侶或家人知道我的資產).

Contrast: for “friends/relatives” the baseline is still “only lend what you’d give away” (next section); the difference is that partner + shared asset + stable income makes “can bear it” easy to satisfy, so the focus shifts from “will I get stuck with the debt” to “will he invest with discipline” and “the relationship itself.”

Answer log

• 2026-07-25 (00575): partner co-sign special case (above) — when it’s a near-spouse with stable income and a shared asset, the co-sign’s financial risk is small, on the condition he invests with index discipline; don’t advise breakup over one co-sign, the relationship risk exceeds the financial risk.²
• 2026-05-16 (00565): A member asked, “A classmate wants to borrow and asked me to be guarantor.” James gave the “only lend what you’d throw down a drain / better to just give it” test and recalled the lesson of Taiwan’s old joint-guarantee rules pursuing children. The same point is printed on that week’s deck.¹

🔎 This question also appears in 00481, 00565, 00575 and others (keyword hits, content pending verification) — “being a guarantor / lending money out” is an evergreen asked every so often.

⚠️ Guarantees and lending involve local law (joint guarantee, claim priority) and your own cash-flow tolerance; this page summarizes James’s spoken decision rule, not personalized legal or financial advice.

Footnotes

1. CLEC James, 長篇 00565 “Waiting is the dumbest strategy — you’re not a god; buy at market immediately,” 2026-05-16, guarantor/lending @36:50–38:40; matching deck page in raw/docs/簡報資料/00565… (“You must not be a guarantor! … Lending to someone or guaranteeing means you can bear that debt … only money you don’t want back can be given to people.”). Transcript in raw/transcripts/長篇/00565…. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

2. CLEC James, 長篇 00575 “What truly teaches you is not the result, but the process!”, 2026-07-25, a member co-signing her boyfriend’s NT$2M pledge to invest @58:00–1:09:00 (“he can repay the NT$2M, he won’t stick you with it … if you’re willing to allocate the CLEC way I think borrowing is fine, but you have to keep your promise … put the borrowed money into your account”), James adding don’t advise breakup over a co-sign, wait and see @1:40:30–1:42:30. Transcript in raw/transcripts/長篇/00575…. ↩ ↩²