Can somebody take control of their finances?
They’re never going to get better at managing it themselves, not at this point, and everyone else needs to stop enabling them.
Nvmd
I don’t know anything about car leasing :o , but I do know about folk who can’t handle their finances.
I’ve always had one credit card and paid the full amount every month.
A co-worker sneered at this, saying “I have three credit cards and I buy whatever I want.”
I asked him how he paid the interest.
His explanation was that he ran the first card up to the maximum, then used the second card to pay the interest - until that card hit maximum, when he used the third card to pay the interest on the previous two. :eek::smack:
I would stop enabling such people.
When I was young and stupid(er), I spent years shifting the same $5000 around between cards. It’s a great way to screw yourself forever.
Although I’m not sure how your co-worker was doing exactly what you describe; typically you are not permitted to pay a credit card with another credit card. Unless he was taking cash advances, depositing the cash, and paying with that, which is just about the worst possible thing you can do with a credit card.
I’ve leased cars for a long time. IME, about half the time you turn it in early, they’ll attempt to roll the remaining payments into the new lease. More often than not, all you have to do is say “No, I was hoping to get those last few payments waived” or “I thought you could eat those last few payments”. It’s a good reason to not tell them about it until after you’ve worked out the numbers on the new car that way they can’t change anything. Also, when turning in a car early, I’ll usually mention a few times that ‘I still have 3 or 4 months left on my lease, so I’m really in no hurry, I just wanted to start looking’.
Also, a while back I learned a trick, which does work. In the last year or so of your lease start checking the value of it (I go 10% under the middle value on KBB). As soon as it’s worth more than the buyout, bring it back to the dealer and tell them you want to trade it in…not turn it in, but have them buy it from you. I was skeptical when the finance guy told me about this, but it actually works. On my last two cars, the buyout was something like 15k and it was worth $16k. Use the extra as a down payment.
Along with that, there’s not a lot of wiggle room on leasing cars, but there is wiggle room on the trade in value. With my current car, at the very end of finalizing the deal, just before I started to sign the papers, I noticed all the numbers had changed. Turns out they flat out refuse to let a car go without the all-weather protection package that costs $500. I told them that wasn’t fair and I was getting up to walk. They eventually raised the price of my trade in my $500 to cover that. It really was bullshit.
Back when I was juggling a bit too much credit card debt, I would transfer debt back and forth as cards would run ‘interest free transfers for X months’. Now, I was careful about it. If one card had 3k on it and the other card was running the offer, I would only transfer as much as I could pay off in the time they gave me, usually 500 to 1000. If neither card appeared to by running a deal, I’d call and sometimes I could get one over the phone.
Your co-worker, I suspect you know, was paying interest on interest on interest. Hell, he might as well have just let it revolve with the rest of the debt.
It’s even worse if he was taking cash advances to make the payments since I don’t think you can pay a credit card with another credit card.
But some people truly don’t understand money. I have one friend that gets hundreds of dollars a year in parking tickets because she thinks it’s bullshit that the city charges $10/month for a permit to park on the street. No amount of explaining to her that bullshit or not, she’d be saving hundreds of dollars a year by getting it.
Well, THE worst thing you can do with a credit card is to sharpen the edges by rubbing it against a stone then using it to slash open your various veins and arteries, but taking cash advances is a close second.
You can do balance transfers or BT checks between cards forever. There are usually fees and you can’t always get 0% but sometimes you can. The biggest issue is when your utilization percentage lowers your credit score and you receive adverse action and can no longer get the best deals and/or too many banks blacklist you. I’m not saying it’s a good idea but I’ve done this with multiple 5 figure transactions in the past and suffered exactly zero negative consequences (the small fees more than offset by lowered opportunity costs and profits from doing this).
Going carless won’t fix anything in their finances, they’ll just find something else to blow $600 a month on and then they’ll be asking for financial help all over again.
I don’t know what hte solution is, but these people are incompetent and no matter how much money you give them they’ll find a way to blow it. There are people who win massive lottery wins and are broke within a few years. Your in laws sound like that.
I think the OPs family needs to have an intervention. Before someone gets hurt or worse.
The worse thing Mr.Wrekker ever had to do was take his parents car keys and checkbook. The driving had to stop. And people were taking advantage of his parents generosity. Including church people and distant family members. They flocked to the door asking for money. We’re not sure how much they gave away, certainly in the several thousands. Mr.Wrekkers sister was ill herself so she couldn’t help and his brother was dying. It all landed on his shoulders. He still laments of how he hated to do it. He made sure the utilities were paid and groceries were in the house. He hired help for them for cooking and cleaning. When they were getting sicker, he hired nurses. We were able to keep them in the house through his Mothers hospice care. Still it was hard for him to see his parents so helpless.
Yeah, OP, get your sibs together and intervene. There’s no reason for you guys to have to foot the bill for them to blow and mis-use. IMO.
I’m curious as to how someone can get a driver license and get a car registered and keep the car registered and keep the driver license without having insurance on the vehicle. ISTR most (if not all) states are a bit on the heavy side with enforcing insurance requirements.
I hear you. The peeps riding around without insurance boggles the mind. There must be a loop hole in the workings. Of course if they’re stopped they’ll be in deep doo-doo. I guess if they’re in an accident and are found at fault they’ll just file bankruptcy or something.
They only look for Sedona Orange…
…Metallic.
Haven’t the bankruptcy laws been reworked to protect the government from its debtors?
With an obvious big ol’ target painted on it.
The most obvious work around is to buy insurance, register your car, and cancel. I don’t think there is any tight coupling between the insurance companies and the DMV. In my state, you only renew every two years, so if you don’t get pulled over or have an accident, that could be a lot of money in your pocket.
[url=]Don’t pull that stunt in California:
[quote]
When Is My Vehicle Registration Subject to Suspension (CVC §4000.38)?
Vehicle registration is suspended when:
[ul][li]DMV is notified that an insurance policy has been cancelled and a replacement policy is not submitted within 45 days.[/ul][/li][/quote]
Not sure how the topic got around to “they don’t have insurance” - because they do.
The rollover from the previous lease: I am pretty sure they got it from a different dealership, and the new dealership paid off the old lease and rolled the cost into the current car’s lease. So there were several months of payments on the old car that increased the balance of the new car’s leasing package.
I’m a bit stunned at the concept that a leasing dealer would demand a fee when turning the old car in but my sister-in-law seemed to think it wasn’t unusual. We haven’t seen the paperwork, though.
The parents are absolutely incompetent with this sort of thing. They had been told not to make another deal without SIL being involved, and did it anyway. Evidently they also blabbed to the dealer that they’d been through a bankruptcy :smack::smack::smack: which I’m sure raised the interest rate several percent right there.
It’s a part of southern Florida with an aging population; I’m sure when we visit we lower the county’s average age by about 10 years. So many car buyers are gullible and easily talked into very bad deals.
What a conundrum…letting your parents become homeless or enabling them to your own financial detriment.
When the vehicle is the subject of a lease or loan, the owner or lender is definitely going to have to be notified if the insurance policy is cancelled. And then they can come and repossess the vehicle.