Indeed. I can’t stand leechy people like this. Lending them money is the worst thing you could do- you’d never see it again. Seeing able-bodied people shirk responsibility like this makes my skin crawl.
I’m thinking of the scene from Pulp Fiction in which Vince and Jules go to the apartment to recover Marcellus’ money.
“Does Marcellus Wallace look like a bitch?”
Some folks will try to do you no matter what, be they friends or family.
If you think about helping them, your codependency alarm should wake the neighbors, IMHO.
Stand strong and do the good deed. NO!
He has 11 siblings, assumedly the brothers and sisters of this women, and some of them they look to you with big, expectant moon eyes to give this women $ 12,000. in cash? That’s quite a family you’ve married into. What the hell are they thinking that they expect you to be taking primarily financial responsibility for this irresponsible sister of theirs and her kin? Good Luck!
I blame the poodles–damn things are parasites… 
AHEM
They went to the apartment to recover Marcellus’ Briefcase with Unidentified Glowing Contents[TM]. Things might be different where you’re from, but in L.A. where the movie is set, money doesn’t usually glow.
:rolleyes:
It took me many years to learn this lesson.
[sub][Whoa, this runs long. But it’s got important lessons in it. And I really need to vent. (You could skip to the paragraph that starts with “My sister”.)][/sub]
I used to bail my brothers and sister out of their frequent cash-flow emergencies. A hundred here, two hundred there, occasionally a thousand or more. They would pay it back when then could manage it. Sometimes there was interest, but I was pretty loose about that part. We would set up a schedule for repayment, based on whatever the borrower estimated to be a reasonable expectation. Those estimates generally turned out to be very optimistic, and I rarely saw a timely payment. I scolded a bit (okay, maybe a lot), but kept on loaning.
It got out of hand. Older brother was so wildly off in his promised payments that I lost confidence altogether and stopped risking my money in his business schemes. He seemed disappointed. “I paid you back every penny I ever borrowed,” he said, which was true enough, but I didn’t see why that should give him control over my money.
Younger brother was homeless, so Mom and I bought him the trailer of his choice, with the understanding that he would try to repay us in time. He sold the trailer and used the money to rent a container to ship a bunch of junk to Costa Rica for resale. Lost his shirt. Later he wanted me to buy a replacement engine for his pickup; I declined (gently, I thought). He began making casual death threats immediately after that. Every time he passed me on the street he’d say something about how he was going to kill me when I least suspected it. (He was into some bad drugs then, I think.) Anyway, he lives in Costa Rica now, and he calls collect to ask for money. For a while I sent money to the mission where he was hanging out, since they were feeding him and paying for his rehab. He’s left though, because they weren’t his style. Now he wants me to buy him an internet account, which I have agreed to do, and he also wants me to give him $5000 to start a business, which I have told him not to expect.
My sister would borrow some money, pay back a little of it, then urgently need more. This went on for years and years, with her debt going down a little, up a little more. After about 70 of these little emergencies, her debt to me climbed to $5,700. And it turned out she was borrowing from others, too. So, since her sign-making business wasn’t making enough money, she came up with a plan. She would get our mother to co-sign a loan, which would pay off all her other loans and buy $10,000 worth of new sign-making equipment. I advised Mom against this plan, having learned a painful lesson myself. My sister heard about my advice and stopped speaking to me altogether. Mom eventually relented (on the advice of Older brother), saying “she agreed that if she doesn’t repay the loan, this will be her inheritance.” We were back on speaking terms as if nothing had happened. She made two payments. After that, more good money went after bad trying to protect the investment. Mom decided it would help if she assumed the ownership of the business while I ran it, and we would let my sister just handle the sign-making part. But as soon as the responsibility was transferred, damned if she didn’t take another job elsewhere, then use the money to take an extended holiday trekking across Australia. Shortly afterwards, she moved to British Columbia to marry her trekking partner. Eventually she got a very decent job in a large fiber optics firm. She made a $5000 payment on her $60,000 debt, and then, now get this…bought a BMW Z3 on credit! Then she got laid off. She asked if I could provide some part-time work, and I carved out a few hours in the family store even though she has a history of quitting with no notice on several occasions.
When our semi-estranged father passed away in May, I was the sole beneficiary of his will. My sister didn’t show any obvious resentment at first, but that changed quite suddenly on the day our mother mentioned to me that she was shopping for a new washer and drier. Mom said something (which I took to be humorous) like “wouldn’t you like to inherit a nice new washer and drier?” and evidently I responded with something (which I must have meant to be humorous also) like “yeah, don’t want to inherit no used appliances!” Now, I happen to know that I am not the sole beneficiary of our mother’s will, and I hastened to assure my sister of this as soon as I realized that she was upset by the exchange. But it was no good. She stormed out of town, breaking her stony silence toward me only with an e-mail asking me not to be present when she came to visit Mom for Christmas. There was a long pathetic sob story about bleak financial times and not being able to count on family members, and all her friends asking whatever happened to her father’s estate. She said, “I tell them that there isn’t any estate share to help us out, because my sister was left to divide things as she sees fit, and chooses to withhold virtually everything from everyone (and if that’s not enough, she’s made it clear to me that she has her eye on her mother’s estate as well).” Apparently they all agree with her that I am completely monstrous. Then she said, “I will also take this one opportunity to let you know that your presence in my life will in the future be minimized to the furthest possible extent, as my father’s was.”
I made one attempt to explain myself to her, including the fact that the estate is still in probate and hasn’t been released for distribution. Even though I really wasn’t “left to divide things”, I intend to follow verbal instructions to “remember” certain persons, including my sister, but I can’t even do that until the estate is released to me. She responded with cheap insults and incoherent amplification of her grievances. I give up.
The moral: Loaning money to the financially stupid just makes everybody miserable, including the people you are trying to help.
Do stick to your guns, Biggirl, for everybody’s sake.
[sub]My sincere thanks to anybody who actually waded through all that.[/sub]
Well, Biggirl, I’m not mad at your in-laws and I think most of the anger I’ve seen here is wasted on them. These people need help. They are in sad shape. The few hundred you’d like to give them would do next to no good and your 12,000 probably wouldn’t either. What they need is to learn how to make and manage money. It’s a hard lesson to learn.
I think all the anger on this board is the buried resentment most folks feel at having had to learn these hard lessons, which often manifests itself as anger. If you withhold the money out of anger, as a form of punishment, you’ll feel guilty, I wouldn’t set myself up for that if I were you.
Withhold it because the money is not what they need. They do need help. But you may not be the one who can give it to them.
Is this a cultural thing? Because my german relatives would be equally indignant…at the audacity of your “free-loading” relatives. They’d call me up saying, “Did you hear about “B”? Can you believe she has the balls to ask YOU for money when she has two grown children who won’t work?”
We may be stubborn as a bunch of billygoats, but we’ve all inherited a kick-ass work ethic. It doesn’t matter if you shovel shit for a living or have one of them “fancy degrees.” You’ve got to have a job. Preferably two. And if you call in sick, you’d better have the freaking bubonic plague.
Nope, let your clueless relatives figure their own way out of this mess. If it doesn’t occur to them that a “job” is the answer, then they don’t have a prayer.
Speaking of prayer, when the relatives call you up next time and ask what YOU are going to do to help them, tell them you are “praying” for them.
Having grown up watching the co-dependantness of older siblings taking advantage of my mother’s large irish-catholic guilt streak, I can easily say no to any one.
To quote Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, " I stick my neck out for no one. "
These leeches will *always * find some other host body to suck blood off of.
**If you say NO once firmly , you will never have to deal with these idiots again. ** ( Utilizing the answering machine or caller ID is also a gift from the Techno Gods, too.
**Father of Loki **
How did your wife react to her father’s behavior during all of this?
What did it do to your marriage while FIL took leave of his senses?
From start to finish of the whole mess, how long of a time frame was it?
Drinking, smoking and poodles. There should be Anti-Poodle Ad campaigns on TV. They are menaces.
BTW, Welcome to the boards!
After my insurance agent handed me 50k from my late husbands life insurance he told me"you are going to be asked from everyone to lend them money.Don’t do it,You feel you have to in order to keep their friendship but when they don’t pay you back you won’t ever see them again anyway" Words were never spoken so true.
Biggirl,
Assuming you actually wish to help someone, there is a method I use to help determine if helping is the best option.
I ask myself two questions:
The first question to ask is “If I help, will the bad situation go away permanently?” In this situation, the answer is no. The still will not have money to pay the rent and they still won’t get jobs. Nine months from now they will be in the same situation. Your money does no good.
The second question is “Will they appreciate what risk/sacrifice I am doing?”. If you are expected to do something then DON’T do it. In this case, they have a communistic mentality of you inherited money so you should ‘share’ it because that’s only fair. Since it’s not really your money (you inherited it) they would feel no obligation to pay it back even if, long shot, they could.
I have helped a BIL co-sign on an apartment because he moved to the area and had trouble finding one. He was thankful and had a job. We cosigned – problem went away permanently. It was still a risk but a good one.
Different relative wanted a cosign on an apartment he couldn’t afford. He should move into it because, if we cosigned it, still doesn’t change the fact he couldn’t afford it. Relative was really pissed at us because we cosigned BIL but tough.
Another relative wanted a loan and it filled the first condition – the problem would have gone away permanently. However, relative (of mine) was a teacher and felt he should be paid more and that I was ‘overpaid’ for what I did. Therefore, the ‘thankfulness’ wasn’t there and a real chance we wouldn’t get paid back because he would think I should be giving money to him because that would be fair. Nope.
All the spurned relatives will berate you to everyone who listens and that is hard but, oh well.
Biggirl: I don’t think you should give them even a couple of hundred dollars until they (1) sell the car and (2) learn how to manage their money. And even then, I’d advise you to consider it for a long time.
My father and younger sister have no concept of money at all. My mom used to be financially brainless, until she divorced my dad and realized a savings account was a good thing. My dad and my sister both work (my father could live on his pension alone if he knew how to budget) and still they are a step away from insolvency.
I have given them money. My dad’s brother has done the same. They throw the money at the immediate problem, breathe a sigh of relief and then go right back to acting irresponsibly. Helping them out of one crisis after another isn’t really helping them at all. It’s just throwing money into a big black hole.
Please reconsider giving them anything until you are sure they have straightened themselves out.
The thread title is kinda cold, though. I wonder if the OP feels that the kids deserve to live in a car with their parents. Hey. maybe you could go hit them and kick them for having such shiftless parents. They wouldn’t even know why you’re doing it.
I understand the anger that having to deal with someone else’s financial irresponsibility creates, but maybe you aren’t the only innocent in this situation.
Um, Evil Captor, you did see the part about both kids being in their 20s, didn’t you?
Um, you do realize that the “children” are in their 20s…
And the OP did express concer over the only genuine child – the grandkid.
I believe one of the kids has a small child. Do you think he or she will be living in Wonderful Magic Fairyland while everyone else is living in a car?
Left me say again, SIL does work. It’s her children that don’t.
The problem really does seem like SIL (and her kids) have their priorities all screwed up. And you would not believe the pure drama that they all seem to get off on. It’s almost as if they enjoy the crises.
And I am sticking to my guns. Houseman and I have told her she needs to get all her bills together and sell the car. All three of them need to sit with a budget counselor. I’m not sure if this is going to happen anytime soon, seeing as how some of his other siblings have put together some money to give to her.
Yea that’s me-- always the bitch.
Evil, they will not end up in their car, even though I think they deserve it. They have plenty of family (including my husband and I) who will put them up if they lose their place. Although I doubt very much that any of them will choose to stay with us. So there are some advantages to being a bitch.
What everybody else said.
My response, if I were in your situation and asked for this kind of money for these relatives:
“No, I will not give or lend them any money. To do so would not solve the problem. Indeed, to do so would quite actively contribute to perpetuating the problem, and in fact making it worse. When given a choice, I prefer not to do that. Only an idiot deliberately makes situations worse by getting involved, as would be the case were I to offer a bailout. I am not an idiot, and the solution to this problem does not involve my money. It makes me very sad that you are unable to understand that.”
They must have a really nice landlord for letting them live there for 9 months without paying any rent…!!!
The problem may also be that people have bailed them out before, so they are just expecting to get bailed out again. It’s time to break the cycle, I say…