So Your Mother Is Addicted To Bingo

The BBQ Pit
1

Well, actually, it’s MY mother, not yours, but it sounds funnier when the title is in the second person. However, it’s really not very funny.

My mother is just a flat out goddamned gambling addict. She retired early, as my father had a few years before, and all was pretty good. I don’t really understand why she retired; she didn’t have to, and as they had all their debts paid off, every additional year of work was basically putting tens of thousand of dollars into their savings. She was, however, “exhausted.” My mother is always “exhausted.” Anything she is ever asked to do, ever, that does not directly benefit her is exhausting. As I sit here HEr mother, my grandmother, is dying in a nursing home maybe 15 minutes from my parents’ house. If my Mom goes there for 30 minutes she’s “exhausted.” But whatever; they had saved a lot and looked pretty well set up.

Of course, nobody had factored in Mom’s $20,000 a year bingo habit. “My, Rick, but that’s a metric jizzload of bingo,” you say, and I say jizzload is a gross word but the fact is you’re right. Mom goes to bingo more or less five or six days a week. Sometimes, however, she decides to go to a casino instead and lose even more money.

Naturally, this is draining my parents’ finances with alarming speed - they have not yet shown me the numbers but the panic in my father’s voice is palpable. He cannot talk to her about it because they don’t like each other and my father struggles with having civil conversations with anyone on anything, and of course, being a gambling addict, she refuses to discuss it at all. She will not discuss her bingo habit, or a budget, or anything related to those things. She lives in a bizarre world of denial where she is entitled to live a life of carefree spending and luxury without regard to whether or not there is actually enough money to do the things she wants to do.

So now my father wants me to help him… somehow. Run the numbers, talk to Mom, stage an intervention, or something. He actually raised the idea of divorcding and then living with my daughter and I, an idea I find positively horrifying; I love my Dad, and visitng my parents is great and all, but he is unbelievably loud, never leaves the house, and for all he claims he would stay out of the way I can guarantee you are surely as the sun rises in the East, he will be yelling for stuff and in the way every day. I am a quiet, private person who enjoys having a household with just my daughter and I. And so you know it’s just fucking fantastic that I, a 41-year-old single father who’s got plenty of shit to do as it is, now have to worry about my parents’ goddamned finances and my mother’s gambling addiction. Jesus.

2

If it weren’t for the fact that my parents have been divorced for 35 years I’d wonder if you were my brother. You’re even the right age.

We haven’t found anything that works, my mother keeps scrupulous track of the money she’s “won” but she forgets the thousands of dollars she pours in in order for those wins to happen. That money doesn’t count. I wish you all the luck in the world but I have no expectation of your success :frowning:

3

That well and truly sucks. I don’t have much advice to give; like Moonlitherial, I wish you all the luck in the world with this situation, but even though it negatively affects you, I don’t see where you have a lot of say in any of it. Well, I guess you can make sure your dad knows very clearly that he is NOT moving in with you.

4

In the UK it’s very common indeed for old women to be playing bingo. Are you actually sure she’s playing to a harmful level? Bear in mind that with most bingo games she’s going to be getting 70-80% back on average* so if she’s spending CAD$100 a week that’s actually only 20-30 dollars a week overall; i.e. not harmful at all and actually a fairly friendly hobby for your mother to be having.

I may be completely wrong but certainly over here bingo is very much known as a place for old women to have some fun and socialise for not very much money at all. And it’s my opinion we should be very reluctant to interfere with the elderely.

*those figures based upon not winning the jackpot, just the usual prizes that players get every so often - the actual statistical payouts are considerably higher usually but not so relevant due to the variance. But figures that players get every few weeks should be taken into account for sure, as they make a huge difference to regular players.

5

$100 a week is a crazy low estimate; it’s more like $400. Plus casino trips. I’ve seen her at bingo, and they spend crazy cash on the rafts of cards they buy.

I really don’t believe the payout’s 80%. For one thing the money is legitimately going bye-bye, although there are probably some other budgetary issues they need to deal with I’m gonna have to get into. Really, my experience with gamblers is that the payout is basically nothing, because anything won simply redoubles their determination to gamble it away.

6

In Spain, the biggest source for college books is the student coop (yes, this is related). The coop consists of the 3rd-year students, who use this and other sources of income to help pay for an “educational” class trip (in our case, to Athens and Crete, which as everybody knows are famous for their close relationship to Chemical Engineering - hence the commas around educational). When I was a 3rd year, someone stole over 1M pesetas from our store (think the yearly salary of 50 recent engineering graduates); the people who’d been organizing the book sales thought it had to be someone internal, a student or worker of the school. They spoke with the PI uncle of a student and set up a trap.

The culprit turned out to have been one of two brothers who lived in the school with their families, working as handymen and managing the warehouse: he’d already been banned entry into several of the area’s bingos and casinos, yet his family had no idea. Most people go to bingo and buy one or two cards per round; this guy would buy as many as his table could hold. And when he won, he wouldn’t take it and leave; he’d go on spending until the place closed or he’d asked for a loan to go on playing, whichever came first. His credit cards were maxed out, he’d taken a mortgage on his house without telling his wife… (the house was in his name; the brothers lived in the school but they also had “second homes”, one at the beach and one in the mountains).

He didn’t get fired: the scandal was viewed as unnecessary and not beneficing anybody, and nobody was mad at him personally. We wanted him to get better more than we wanted to get even (many of us weren’t even worried about getting even, we’d already agreed that if the money wasn’t recoverable we’d just go someplace less fancy - but we wanted to know what hole was it going into). The school covered all debts, he was sent to gambling rehab, no access to money at all until the people from rehab said it was ok to let him have some (if he needed anything, his wife, brother or sister in law would go with him to buy it), no CCs, house changed to be in his wife’s name. He was still there last time I dropped by the school, about ten years ago; should be retiring in a few years.

It is a horrible situation. You have someone who’s supposed to be an adult, able to make his/her own decisions rationally, but who is not. I got no advice, RickJay, all I can offer is my sympathies :frowning:

7

My husband is a Financial Advisor. He comes across this sort of thing all the time. His most frustrating cases are not addicts, but rather soft-hearted Moms who keep financially bailing out their deadbeat kid(s).

My advice is that if they don’t already have a FA, have your Dad hire one. Have him bring any investment statements and tax returns for the last 2 years. Then have your Dad provide him with much is being taken out per month, from both parties, so that the FA has a true picture of what their current spending pattern is.

Ask the FA to run some analyses, and then meet to discuss. Ask to be included. At the very least, afterward, everyone will have a clearer picture of where they truly stand, as well as the information necessary to know whether Dad needs to make serious changes, such as getting a part-time job, separating their accounts or even divorce.

An FA can run some interesting reports, one of which may resonate with your mother. One is what my husband calls a “Drop Dead” report. That simply gives a projected date of when their money is projected to run out, based on how much they spend per year.

“Mary, do you see the ‘May 16, 2023’ date on the top of this report? That’s the date you’ll be flat broke, after deducting the 5 grand you just (sent to your son/pissed away at the Bingo parlor). Now if you plan on dropping dead by then, please let me know and I’ll quit stressing about it. But otherwise, if you plan to live longer than 68, you need to make some changes in your spending.”

Another report, one that my husband calls the “Allowance” report, tells you what you should feel comfortable spending each month (assuming something like a 5% ROI), should you live to the age of x.

**

Once you get these reports, you can have the FA or you approach your mother in varying ways. No matter what, I think making the money less accessible (e.g. in an account that isn’t attached to an ATM card) is imperative.

If it were me, because she’s acting like a petulant child, I’d first approach her with concept of an allowance. Instead of saying, “You have to cut back your spending!” instead say, “Mom, you have $800 to spend however you want each month.” Give it to her in cash at the beginning of the month. That way, you’re not telling her to give up anything. You’re giving her a reasonable amount of fun money and giving her free reign to decide how and where she spends it.

Good luck to you.

8

Is there any chance she’s planning on inheriting substantially from her mother?

Seriously, I think you should tell your Dad to take whatever steps he feels is necessary to secure his half of their mutual assets. He should speak privately to a lawyer about what his options are. Only he can decide if it’s worth the shit fight that will ensue to just cut off her access to all but a small regular allowance for ‘entertainment’, or whether it’s worth a divorce.

He should not drag you into it. He can talk to you, and ask for your opinion and advice, but this is not your place. This is his wife and his marriage. He, and he alone, can either act to protect himself or not. No one can, or should, attempt to do it for him.

Also, you need to make him aware, as delicately as you possibly can, that coming to live with you, his assurances aside, cannot possibly work out, in your honest opinion. Tell him honestly that you are so convinced, that it would be unworkable for all three of you, that you would not even be willing to try such an arrangement. Be honest, he’s your father he deserves the truth. And he deserves to face the difficult choices that lie ahead of him knowing that this option isn’t now, and never was, on the table.

You should still support him, should he choose to divorce, or cut her off. Encourage him, tell him he’s doing the only thing he can, tell him you’re proud of the hard choice he’s made, tell him you’ll help him find his way to a new life alone, if that’s what he wants, etc. That’s different from propping him up, and becoming a crutch to him.

9

I won’t vouch for effectiveness, but every casino I have ever been in had info available about how to get help with a gambling problem. It would not hurt to give one of those hotlines a call and just see what resources might be available.

10

Gambling and the resultant addiction possible thereof really stinks.

It sounds like your mother is an addict, what with all this “exhausted” talk.

Were it my mother and father, I would have no problem whatever simply being honest with them. Once.

“Mom, I think you might have a gambling problem; if not, you will at least very soon have a financial problem. I think it would be wise to address this issue ASAP. I care about you because I am your son; I am not your parent, however, and therefore it really isn’t my problem however the fuck you wish to screw your own life, so long as it isn’t killing you. That is all I will be saying to you on this subject.”

“Dad, man the fuck up! I am your kid, not the other way around. I love you, but you aren’t staying with me. You in some way helped to make this mess, so you can clean it up yourself. That is all I will be saying to you on this subject.”

It doesn’t make you a bad child/sibling/friend/whatever to be real with people, and expect them to behave like responsible adults. Don’t jump on someone else’s Drama Wagon just because they want you to, even if you love them; it only leads to the Not OK Corral for you.

11

My mother-in-law once posited, “If an alcoholic overdoes it one night, they pass out. If a gambler overdoes it one night, they can end up losing the mortgage payment.” Kind of lowballs the perils of alcoholism, sure, but it was still an interesting point.