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I've been helping my 62 year old mother with money on and off for the past few years. When her car broke down, I purchase a car for her when her and when she needed money, I let her borrow money. Year back, she owed the credit card companies $10K which I paid for. She currently lives on her own in a less desirable neighbor, but her rent is cheap.
Just recently, her home was burglaries, and now looking to move out. I helped her move and is temporary staying at my place. We found a place that required a credit check that we could do our self.
After running her credit, I discovered that she has 8 credit cards and has a balance of over $70K of a $72K line of credit. She currently makes $31K a year. Least to say, I was pissed off and couldn't help but to yell at her. I truly believe if her credit line was $100k, she would owe $99K.
I discovered that she has also been paying for her friends cell phone bill. Her friend is 80 years old or so with no income, but she has 7 kids to support her, my thinking is why does my mom have to pay her cell phone bill, let alone whatever else she pays. I wish I could see her credit cards statements to see what she's spending her money on, but what good is that going to do, it would just upset me even more.
I work so hard to be in the black and I feel like one day I will have to support her, but how can I with her spending habits? If this was my spouse, it would cause for a divorce, but this is my mother.
She plans on renting a room from her co-workers who has 7 or so pets, and the place smells like an animal shelter. There is another place, but rent is more and I would have to dish out money for the security deposit.
My question to you all, is what would you do?
1) Leave her alone and have her move in with her co-worker and if she ask for help, don't help financial.
2) Help her with her debt knowing that she will get into debt again.
3) ??
Help her out by loving her, but stop giving her money. Let her stay at her friend's place. A financial crisis is probably in her best interest. She is at the point where she can't create more debt, so she is stuck. I hope there is a bus line near her new house so she can get to work when this car breaks down. She will have to live within her means.
I have no idea, but not on herself, she doesn't have anything worth of any value. No nice TV, no purse, no jewerly, nothing really, rarely even eats out. Only thing I can think of is she's buying stuff for her friends / gifts / donations.
I'm in the same boat. Mom has always out spent her means, and she is in her 70s. She was, and ciontinues to max out credit cards. I gave her a sum of money to help her get by on occasion. But i find she spends it on 'fun' things, like trips and dinners out.
I actually threatened to take over her finances, and label her incompetent if she kept it up. I think that scared her a little and she is doing better, or else hiding it. But I'm one of the few people she knows with 'money'. On top of that she is handicapped and can't get around easily.
With that much debt I dont know if a subsidized assisted living facility would take her, but you can check. Thats where my mom is.
This is one reason I have chosen not to marry, all the women in my family are terrible at managingtheir money. They just expect someone to bail them out when they run into to deep of a problem.
Anyhow I may give her money for her birthday and xmas, but few times outside of that. After a while it becomes easy for them to think of you as an ATM. I would sure as hell cut off the friends cell phone payments. Also I would have her draw up a journal of how she spends her money each month. Thats when you can better attack the problem.
Looks like the boat has enough room for ME!! Yes, I am helping my mom out by loaning her money to get her finance back together (a futile effort) every time we get into the black, she goes out and spends another 20k... and I get yet another phone call about her dire situation... She is planning to retire after 4 years and I plan to move her to the middle of nowhere so she can't spend anymore... she'll just have to live the good old life with doing boring stuff... she's earned it... an easy solution is to find out what she likes to spend on and then move her where there is none of that...
I suspect that in days gone by, these women would have ended up in nunneries. The reality is that they are all financially incompetent, and chances of that changing are zip. Unless you want to go down with the Titanic, all you can do is watch, and wait for the inevitable bankruptcy, declaration of incompetence, and placement under court ordered supervision.
My grandma is one of those people too. She has absolutely no concept of the value of money. Honestly, $50 is the EXACT same to her as $50,000. Grandpa left her with more than adequate money to live out her life on, if she spent it in a reasonable manner, but she wasn't. We finally had to step in and set it up so my mom is the trustee of all the varied assets, and grandma gets an allowance.
The biggest thing we did was to change her phone number, and put the new number on the "do not call" list. Before we did that, she was getting up to 20 calls a day from solicitors, and she would buy things from ALL of them. They had learned, from previous conversations with her that she has 2 blind brothers, so every solicitor said the magic words "Part of the proceeds go toward the Federation for the Blind" or some other such organization. She would buy 2 GROSS (dozen dozen) kitchen knives for hundreds of dollars, or CRATES of light bulbs or garbage bags. Then she'd turn around the next week and do it again. She bought a vacuum cleaner for $3000 that you could buy at a store for about $200. Changing her number and putting her on the Do Not Call list was the best thing we ever did for her.
My grandma is one of those people too. She has absolutely no concept of the value of money. Honestly, $50 is the EXACT same to her as $50,000. Grandpa left her with more than adequate money to live out her life on, if she spent it in a reasonable manner, but she wasn't. We finally had to step in and set it up so my mom is the trustee of all the varied assets, and grandma gets an allowance.
The biggest thing we did was to change her phone number, and put the new number on the "do not call" list. Before we did that, she was getting up to 20 calls a day from solicitors, and she would buy things from ALL of them. They had learned, from previous conversations with her that she has 2 blind brothers, so every solicitor said the magic words "Part of the proceeds go toward the Federation for the Blind" or some other such organization. She would buy 2 GROSS kitchen knives for hundreds of dollars, or CRATES of light bulbs or garbage bags. Then she'd turn around the next week and do it again. She bought a vacuum cleaner for $3000 that you could buy at a store for about $200. Changing her number and putting her on the Do Not Call list was the best thing we ever did for her.
+1
I can easily see how an elderly person could get sucked into a cycle of phone call/mail solicitation hell.
I remember when my parents had to take over my grandfather's financial management (and my grandfather was a CPA, so it was not an easy decision for either side). Phone solicitations weren't too much of an issue due to the assisted living facility he was in. The mail, on the other hand, was horrific. He would receive scores of appeals every day for money. He got on some of those lists where you get a book to preview for free for 21 days, and then- an invoice! Or, he would receive invoices for "pledges" he allegedly made. The staff couldn't do anything about these appeal sharks due to federal laws about tampering with the mail. My grandfather was too overwhelmed by it and would either send checks to everything or throw mail in the trash without even looking at it. Unfortunately, this mail included dividend checks!
After my dad moved Grandpa to a nearby facility, gained power of attorney, and had all mail forwarded directly to our house, it took a long time and and a lot of Return to Sender efforts before the volume of mail even started to go down.
After my dad moved Grandpa to a nearby facility, gained power of attorney, and had all mail forwarded directly to our house, it took a long time and and a lot of Return to Sender efforts before the volume of mail even started to go down.
Yeah, my mom has PoA as well as being the Trustee, and also gets all of grandma's mail. We found that she is subscribed to some magazines for up to 12 years, because every time she got a card that said "your subscription is expiring", she would pay it, and they send those cards all the time. She even had 2 subscriptions to the SAME magazine in one case.
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