Should the wealthy family members help support poor working class brothers and sisters? (dynamics, retiring)
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Are we talking about people who continuously make idiotic decisions or people who have had bad breaks in life. And, by bad breaks, I mean chronic illnesses, natural disasters, and things of that ilk. If you fall into those categories, I'll move heaven and earth to help you. That's what family's for.
However, repeatedly losing your job, repeatedly indulging in risky behavior, throwing away one's money, and making one godawful decision after another in your relationships do not constitute bad breaks. And, let me tell you, unless you've had a chronic medical condition or some other major catastrophe in your life, you've pretty much gotten the life you've earned when you're 45. If you're working a $10/hour job when you're that age, it means you didn't work all that hard earlier in life and didn't try to pick up a few marketable skills along the way. If you have a string of loser S/Os, it's because you really made stupid choices. So spare me the excuses.
My sister is that way. She has a freaking MBA, divorced her prince of a husband because her life wasn't terribly exciting, quit one job after another, and is now barely making it selling long-term care insurance, despite the fact that her ex-husband paid her a generous alimony for three freaking years.
When they sold the house and split the marital assets, do you know what she did? Bought a BMW convertible. Took trips. The works. And when she ran out of cash, know what she did? She hit up my mother for money, forcing my elderly mother to take out home equity loans to keep the wolf from my sister's doors. God only knows how much equity my mother has in that house now that she's trying to sell it. I'm about to talk to my mother about it and am bracing for the worst.
So if my sister had come to me after doing her damnedest and said "CPG, I need a loan of a couple of thousand dollars," I would have scribbled out the check in a heartbeat. But since she pretty much threw away every dime and every opportunity she had, why for Pete's sake should I subsidize more stupidity on her part?
Let's say your sister has one of the strongest work ethics and integrity you can imagine, and saves and does all the "right" things people should do, like be frugal and save for a rainy day. Yet due to her lack of education she is stuck in low paying jobs all her life. You make $1 million a year and are worth $20 million. She doesn't ask you for help but would you take the initiative to help her and if so what would you do?
While i was growing and accumulating and preparing my life, i constantly offered advice to siblings. Advice that mostly was not taken.
My sibs had other priorities and goals in their lives. I helped them often, but after watching the money I loaned or gave go to bad deals, unnecessary interest, and questionable purchases I started wondering what the point of my money going - not my sibs joy or happiness - but directly down the endless debt drain, i started to wonder what was the point; especially when they refused to take my advice as to how to get out of debt.
For example, i would ask, why do you need a smartphone @ $100 a month just to call. Why does everyone need an advanced phone, why don't you just give your kids a simple phone to be used for emergency only? Why do you need a home phone if everyone has cell phones? I don't remember the answers to these questions I asked but i do remember they always related more to want than it was to need.
So, i let them live with their choices and i live with mine. I hope that when i pass, they will be able to get some joy then with their inheritance, rather than it just paying off old bills.
I guess it would matter to me whether their situation was the result of habitual bad choices, or was simply the best they could do. Not everyone has the intelligence/ability to move past a certain point career-wise. If they constantly blew through money on dumb, wasteful stuff and continued to make bad choices, I would feel differently than if maybe a blue-collar position was all they were able to do, and/or they'd simply gotten trapped in a cycle where they could never get ahead. Sometimes one choice/mistake (like accidentally getting pregnant when you're very young) can really act like a brick weighing you down as you try to swim across the pool. It's easy in that case once you have to deal with childcare, extra bills, inability to go back to school or take certain jobs that you can get stuck in a bad way long-term. That's really different in my mind from if they continued to make bad choice after bad choice. I guess I've been lucky to have a good relationship with siblings, and I'd have a hard time imagining how I would feel good about a situation where I was wealthy and they were struggling to get by.
Are we talking about people who continuously make idiotic decisions or people who have had bad breaks in life.
So if my sister had come to me after doing her damnedest and said "CPG, I need a loan of a couple of thousand dollars," I would have scribbled out the check in a heartbeat. But since she pretty much threw away every dime and every opportunity she had, why for Pete's sake should I subsidize more stupidity on her part?
I agree with your post. In your sister's case, she's proven over and over again that to give her any money is as good as flushing it down the drain. Sometimes they just need to hit rock bottom to realize the behavior has to change, and continuing to enable does more harm than good.
I have a few sisters who are extremely wealthy. The only thing I ask from them is advice. It's usually very good advice too. We are doing okay, but we went through a rough patch when we were both laid off during the financial meltdown of 2008. Luckily, we had a rainy-day fund saved up, so we were okay.
I think my sisters would have helped if I had asked, but I didn't want to. It would have been a strain on the relationship. That would have given them the right to judge all of my expenditures. It would have changed the nature of our relationship. And, yes, I'll admit it, it would have hurt my pride. But I think in cases like this, pride is a GOOD thing. It makes you focus on what needs to get done. It pushed us to get back on our feet with no help from anyone.
I haven't read all the posts, but as helpful as you may want to be there will never be any winning. You want to help...how many family members? I have been down this road too often and have learned that you may be contributing to poor money management issues. I stopped giving money to family. Instead, I found that helping out in a medical emergency, car repair, glasses, helping with tuition or books was a far better contribution than just giving money.
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