Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:I would not pay off the debt except if there was a lien on the house. I’d help with food and basics.
A HELOC is a lien on the house. And if she’s only making interest payments it’s getting bigger and bigger.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Yes op you are a huge AH. Do you want her to work u til she dies? She’s 69!
Op here. She only worked for about 20 years, is super healthy, looks to be in her 50s, and could easily get a (desk) job in her field making 100K. She just doesn’t want to work anymore but didn’t save enough to live on. I’ve been working longer than she has in my mid forties.
Anonymous wrote:How big is the house? Could she sell it and get a smaller apt / condo and have some money to save, invest and live off of?
OP, I am curious about your parents finances and how your husband would react if the roles were reversed
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Yes op you are a huge AH. Do you want her to work u til she dies? She’s 69!
Op here. She only worked for about 20 years, is super healthy, looks to be in her 50s, and could easily get a (desk) job in her field making 100K. She just doesn’t want to work anymore but didn’t save enough to live on. I’ve been working longer than she has in my mid forties.
She didn't save for old age because she was making sacrifices for her son.
You are a galactically huge AH.
No, she actually made a series of poor financial choices including multiple divorces, repeated custody battles, and staying at home for 20 years and not working.
Op, I get it. My mom regularly touts the narrative that as a single mom she chose to make sacrifices for me in lieu of saving for her retirement when in fact she made a series of terrible choices, including marrying a drug addict and working only sporadically in “passion jobs”, which would have resulted in her being broke regardless (despite the fact that she herself grew up upper middle class with far more advantages than I ever had) and it’s only thanks to assistance from her extended family that I was able to go to college, etc.
A few years ago she ultimately decided at 62 that she was just done working (a white collar desk job), despite having 0 retirement savings and has since been living off of social security alone, though constantly hinting that she could use assistance.
My husband and I make a decent enough HHI of 270k, but still worry about saving enough for retirement/college for our two kids. There’s absolutely no way that I’m going to draw from that to subsidize her “retirement”, despite the fact that I know her friends/outsiders are judging me for not helping out more as she is clearly struggling financially and we relatively appear to be comfortable.
Anonymous wrote:Of course you give the money, as a gift. She is family. Keep in mind that not everyone have the same financial smarts and that is ok. She sounds like she has a game plan and it could work. Give the old lady some credit. Your husband is a good man.
Anonymous wrote:Give her the money an exchange for a legal financial guardianship, and a monthly allowance for her.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:custody battles for your husband?Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Yes op you are a huge AH. Do you want her to work u til she dies? She’s 69!
Op here. She only worked for about 20 years, is super healthy, looks to be in her 50s, and could easily get a (desk) job in her field making 100K. She just doesn’t want to work anymore but didn’t save enough to live on. I’ve been working longer than she has in my mid forties.
She didn't save for old age because she was making sacrifices for her son.
You are a galactically huge AH.
No, she actually made a series of poor financial choices including multiple divorces, repeated custody battles, and staying at home for 20 years and not working.
Yes, she had two different marriages and two different husbands and fought each multiple times in court over custody of the kids from each marriage (she never got sole but wanted it). She also has just made a slew of poor financial decisions, has racked up lots of credit card/other debt, co-signed private loans for my DH when he was an undergrad (before required financial disclosures and counseling students get now) with high interest rates instead of getting public loans with lower interest rates that he could have gotten, has always leased new cars instead of buying cars, etc. She graduated college and from her masters program debt free. She stayed at home with kids for 20 years in part because she did it want to work. She’s inherited money from her parents and blown through it all. She has refused for decades to go to a financial planner despite everyone suggesting it. She didn’t even start investing in a 401k until her sixties.
As a person who graduated college with nothing but debt and got through it on Pell grants, worked really hard with my husband to crawl out of 100K in student loan debt, built up our savings, delayed child bearing til we could afford it, waited to buy our first house in our late 30s when we could actually afford it, and has worked full time for 20 years and is staring down 30 more years it feels wrong to me to give away nearly 10 percent of our cash savings to his MIL because of her poor decision when I have made so many sacrifices to try and put our family in a good financial position.