First, a clarification. I see my MIL as little as I possibly can, and I do not discuss her finances with her. My concern is a pretty selfish one. I don’t want her on the street because I don’t want her showing up on my doorstep.
My mother-in-law goes to the riverboat casinos a couple of times a week. She lives a couple of hours from the nearest one.
We saw her last Thursday and she had been given a “free” hotel room for Friday through Tuesday, and she says things like the casino is “giving” her money in amounts like $75 or $100 per day throughout her stay.
She is retired and living with her sister’s family, in a converted garage.
She now says that she may be going back to work. She gave me the impression that it was because she was bored, but now I’m not so sure.
This is causing massive klaxons of panic to go off in my head, but I have zero idea of what sort of money she would have to be spending in a casino to be getting these sorts of perks.
I’ve spent some time writing software for casinos. I’m hardly an expert, but I’m somewhat familiar with how they work their cpmps.
It’s hard to say exactly how much she’s spending. but you can be sure that the cost of their comps is less than what she’s spending. The casinos know exactly how much a given customer spends and can customize the comps based on what the customer spends. They have complex mathematical formulas that compare the theoretical win of a game (that is, the amount of cash a casino can expect to make from a slot machine or game) versus what a customer is spending. Exact formulas are usually kept very secret. But suffice to say, the casino never loses money. If they’re comping her hotel rooms, she’s spending more than what it costs the hotel to provide that hotel room. And believe me, they have reason to want to comp hotel rooms. Anything that keeps the customer in the casino earns them money.
They also study spending patterns and design comps to fit certain groups. Blue-haired grannies are a group; if your mother in law fits, she can expect things like a free dinner between, say, 6 & 7. Why? Because the research says that blue haired grannies tend to go home to eat at 5pm. If they comp a meal at 6, instead of going home at 5, they’ll stay an extra hour and feed quarters into the slot machine.
Okay, so if a hotel is giving four nights free in their hotel (rooms that are advertised at around $150/night) plus lots and lots of meals plus cash money, she’s most likely dropping a lot of money off at their door, right? And she has two of these places doing so–one across the river from Louisville and one somewhere in Illinois (she lives in Bowling Green, Kentucky and has to drive over an hour to get to the nearer place and over two to get to the farther place, numerous times a week).
Well, I wouldn’t say it’s a one for one thing. It doesn’t cost the hotel $150 to provide a room, nor does it cost them $100 to give a $100 comp. But if they are giving her that many comps, then yeah, I’d be worried about how much she was spending.
A related story: I once went to a marketing seminar at a national gaming conference. They talked at length about how they provided a family for these older, mostly female customers. They trained their workers to greet them by name; they made a big deal about remember what kind of drinks to comp and little things about their lives (ie, “Hi Mrs. Smith! How did your granddaughter’s birthday party go last week?”)
If your M-i-L is anything like the somewhat lonely older women I know, this kind of attention is like heroin to an addict. Heck, even the not-lonely older women eat it up. It’s really sad, and ultimately I’m really happy that I didn’t spend very long working in the Casino industry.
FWIW, you can be comp’d for just the amount of money you have in play over a period of time, you don’t have to lose that money. Not saying that the MIL is winning or even breaking even, just that you don’t have to lose to be comp’d.
I have a gambling aunt that has never kept money, but the casinos drain it much better than her old methods. Auntie and uncle should have been able to live a nice retirement right now. They have downsized their housing steadily and now are living in a crap house they get for little rent from my uncle’s employer. Auntie and uncle have to work, because they spent all their money on trips and casinos. Mostly it went to the casinos. Tough shit for them. Don’t be surprised when your MIL is to this point. She sounds like maybe she is to this stage already.
Caesar’s (the one across from Louisville) is pretty tight as far as comps go, in my experience. So if she’s really getting that kind of love from them, she’s dropping some large change.
My mother plays slots in Atlantic City. A lot. On average she is probably down there once a week, sometimes twice a week, for the past 15 years or so. She lives almost 2 hours away. They have sent limos to pick her up or drop her off.
While I really have no idea how much she is spending down there, I am sure it is a whole lot. My gut tells me she goes down there with at least $1000 every trip, and possibly even more.
The casinos do offer cash just for going down there, and sometimes she just goes to collect. Anywhere from $100 to $1000 and sometimes more. They give her gifts like computers, DVD players, TVs, all kinds of electronics really. She’s comped all her food, is a member of their VIP lounges, gets the best seats/tickets for shows, and plenty of other things. Her two ‘home casinos’ are the Taj Mahal and Showboat and at both she’s comped some of the best suites they have to offer. She’s comped completely paid trips to Tahoe, Vegas, Atlantis, etc.
She swears she’s breaking even, but I seriously doubt this. She’ll call to tell me she’s won a $10K or $15K jackpot every couple of months or so, but she sure as hell doesn’t call me to tell me when she’s down there withdrawing $2 or $3K from her checking account. As far as I know she has no retirement to speak of, and she only works to pay her bills and go to AC. But whatever, it’s her life.
This doesn’t mean your MIL is spending that much money. My mother has definitely worked up to this level. 15 years ago she was probably only going down once a month or so, and only spending a couple of hundred at a time. Even then though, they were comping her food and shows and rooms and stuff, just not at the scale they are now.
The casinos don’t play poker against the punters. They take a rake (typically 10%) from each pot, plus it’s customary for the winning player to tip the dealer.
Blackjack uses multiple packs, plus frequent redeals so card-counting doesn’t work any more.
There’s no casino game you can ‘break even’ on.
Good grief, here in the UK we have one zero on a roulette wheel and we make a profit. You chaps have two zeroes!
Watching casino owners spend billions building their hotels, plus paying for staff, heating, lighting etc, proves that they make profits of millions every year. Without fail. Much of it comes from gamblers who think they don’t lose.
Whatever it is. . .it’s probably not going to get smaller as time goes by.
It’s hard to say, though. I know some well-controlled gamblers who can do it, and not lose much and do it slowly. Then, there are people who will lose everything they have as fast as possible.
But, if she’s going every week, and they’re comping her. . .she’s probably losing more than is good for her.
He tends to be of the shrug your shoulders and assume that everyone’s an adult mindset. He thinks she doesn’t have all that much so losing it is no big deal. I think he’s insane.
She is an adult, and you can’t stop the gambling. The best you can do is leave it at telling your husband, and you already did that. It’s time to leave things be, and drop it for now.
Tell him about my M-i-L. She had enough money to keep her very comfortable for the rest of her life after my F-i-L died. She didn’t go to casinos, but she played bingo and bought lottery tickets (I have personally seen her buy $75-$100 worth of lottery tickets at once.)
That lasted about 3 years, during which time she sold everything she owned and moved to an apartment. She didn’t spend all her money on gambling - she did give her kids some, and bought an insane amount of old lady crap like crystal figurines.
Nowadays, we support her to the tune of several hundred dollars every month. I would encourage your husband to think about what’s going to happen if/when your M-i-L spends all her money.
She is probably spending loads of money there. I couldn’t give you an exact number, but she has to be spending thousands of dollars to be getting comps like that.
If you think she could be going because she is bored or lonely maybe you can help her find a book group or something to be involved in so she has companionship and something to do with her time.
If you think she is going because of the thrill of winning and she is addicted you should talk to your husband about getting her some help.
Under no circumstances should you give her a dime of your money to “help” her out of a bad financial situation unless she is enrolled in an addiction program and sticking to the program. Anything you give her will just be put to gambling unless she has gotten some help.
Oh dear. The problem is, of course, that’s it’s your future money she’s going to be wanting to live on. Yes, she’s an adult, and on the whole I subscribe to that philosophy of “let adults do what they want,” but it’s going to cost you directly when she runs out. (Why, yes, my in-laws are doing something rather similar! And someday we will be supporting them!)
I have no idea how to deal with this if your husband won’t; it almost sounds like she needs someone to stage an intervention and drag her to Gamblers Anonymous. (Do interventions ever work?) But you are probably pretty powerless without your husband backing you up. You have all my sympathy, believe me.
Scary that more than one of us are in this situation. I, too, wish we’d paid more attention when M-i-L was tossing money out the window. Unfortunately, I’m not sure what we would have done about it. She was depressed and stubborn; I don’t think we would have gotten through to her.
She admits now that she was stupid, but that doesn’t bring back the money. Now the choice is to let her live off her social security (in other words, in poverty) or pitch in so she has money to live at least a somewhat normal life.