by Tricia
Back in April, I asked who knows about your debt?. Today, I received a comment from Susan that said
“I have mixed feelings about rather you should share your debt problems with family members or not. I have a sister and brother-in-law who filed bankruptcy after a two year long battle of trying to stay afloat with their finances. They lost two homes they own. It was a tremendous burden on the whole entire family not just THEM going through it. We all gave money to them and I loaned them one of my cars hoping my sister would go to work and bring more of an income in to help her husband because she wasn’t working when he lost his job. However, my sister’s health was too poor and her husband had triple bypass surgery and he wasn’t able to work. This whole incident caused my bipolar to go out of control and I was hospitalized twice in that two year time. It hurt me financially and now I am in debt. So I ask you does having a family member sharing their debt burden with the family help? It takes a toll on everyone. Every family member in OUR family suffered because of it.”
As of right now, the only family members that know about our debt are our parents. It felt good to finally let go of our little debt secret and tell them. So far it has gone well and has brought about some interesting conversations. Who better to swap financial tidbits with than your family? (That’s as long as you get along with them, of course.)
To bring more persective to this, there is a blogger that is facing something similar to this. JW Thornhill at Need to Be Debt Free found out in February that his daughter’s house was in foreclosure. In his words,
“I’m additionally upset because they waited so long (9 months) before saying anything.”
Here we have a man who is trying to do the best for his family and pay off their outstanding debts. Now he has a grown daughter (and her family) in financial trouble and he is putting his debt reduction on hold to help her. In fact, they are letting them move in with them for a while.
I’ve been thinking about Susan’s comment all day and thinking about JW’s situation. I can definitely understand how Susan feels because I have had problems develop for myself as a result of other’s problems. But I keep thinking of JW’s words about how it took so long before his daughter said anything.
I think that’s a key point. My idea about discussing debt is to not wait until after it gets so bad. If you waited, everyone in the family would then be in “reactive” mode and yes, the stress would probably spread through the family. I think we should be talking about it before the debt situation gets to that point. But I know how difficult it is to even start the discussion. I didn’t even bring up our debt to our parents until we started making progress with paying it off and turning things around.
Being in debt and admitting your financial mistakes to family and friends is definitely not an easy thing to do.
We’ve been pretty open (probably more than some would like) about our get-out-of-debt plan with our closest family and friends, but we definitely don’t discuss numbers with them. We’ve never been to the point of disaster, though, so I’m not sure at what point we’d ask for help if we truly needed it. My in-laws recently let me know they’d be willing to give us a hand if ever we needed it (they were feeling guilty about the constant financial help they’ve given to my husband’s brothers over the years, while my husband and his other brother have managed well on their own), and I know my parents would too. But again, we’ve never been in a position of losing our home or starving, so this is tough. Among the reasons we decided to get with the program and get smarter about our money, was so that we wouldn’t have to be the ones in our family who constantly need a hand. We work hard, earning a modest household income, but having recently finished paying off all our $40K in debt, we’re managing great and hope one day to be able to help others, rather than need help ourselves.
people are talking about two different things here. first, do you share your financial situation with others for the sake of sharing?, or, second, do you share your financial situation with others in expectation that others are going to provide assistance?
just because someone shared their financial situation doesn’t automatically entail helping share the burden of the financial situation does it? I guess we are programed somehow into thinking that when someone says they are in a financial mess, that we are somehow obligated to help out.
perhaps if people were more open with finances in the first place, there wouldn’t be this guilt to help out.
I felt SO much better after confessing to my Mom and signing up for Consumer Credit Counseling. She made the first payment for me. It’s like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders, and I can finally see the end.
I guess the biggest problem I had with telling my family I was in debt or more specifically how much debt I was in was the fact that it made me look like a failure. Yes we all make mistakes but admitting to it doesn’t feel good at all.
I told my fiance about my finances but other than that I keep it to myself and I’m trying to get out of the hole on my own. Though I have to say if it ever started getting really bad then i would tell people; I wouldn’t wait till our house was in foreclosure – I’d be telling them the moment I knew I was going to miss a payment and couldn’t do anything about it
My In Laws have always had money problems, we don’t discuss finances of any kind with them. My parents are funny about it, they know we have debt, but not how much.
I think it sharing you are on a major debt reduction helps others choose their form of socializing with you.
For instance, my SIL is always planning HUGE catered family events and expecting us all to split the cost. My family doesn’t drink, so why should I split the bill for an open bar? (I paid the $50 per person she asked for last time and ended up ostracized because we didn’t kick in extra.)
We can afford that, but only because we always choose not to waste our money on things that don’t bring us pleasure.
I always am trying to find ways to socialize that minimize costs because you can never tell what others can afford to do. Movies cost over $10 each even before snacks. So I’ve always encouraged my teenage kids to have ‘movie nights’ at home and rent a series of movies (i.e. all three Back to the Future) and have friends in. Our local video store will rent 5 movies for 5 days for $5 so its a great way of having a ‘theme’ party without spending big bucks. Throw in a box of frozen wings and a few bags of chips and a case of coke and you can entertain a group for less than 2 tickets to a movie.
It also helps teach delayed gratification (wait for the movie to be on video rather than see it in the theatre.)
But these kinds of money saving tips only work if everyone agrees to it, and in the case of families, sharing your situation encourage everyone to seek less expensive family events.
Good point, Kate. That’s one major reason we share our plan, so our loved ones will understand and won’t take it personally when we can’t participate in expensive trips and events.
Thank you for your encouraging words. Bob and I are making some progress now in repairing their trailer and hopefully they will be able to move back in by the end of this month and we will be able to refocus on our debt reduction plans. Thanks again.
Woah, I can’t believe I missed this one.
I would really think carefully before sharing my finances with the parents. Of course, it depends hugely on your relationship with them.
If you are someone who relied on the “bank of mom and dad” or if money was a hot topic growing up sharing your financial information could really come back to haunt you.
I’m NOT saying this is true for everyone.
I highly recommend a book by Cloe Madanes, an eminent family therapist. Here’s the link. You can get it on Amazon for 3 cents (plus postage)!
http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Meaning-Money-Cloe-Madanes/dp/1555427014/ref=sr_1_1/102-5770788-3475359?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1183823711&sr=8-1
Staying out of debt is the one thing that my parents have always preached to us, so much so that they paid for our college, so that we would enter ‘the real world’ debt free and good to go.
If only life actually worked out like that.
For me, this actually taught me nothing about financial skills and how to manage money, because I knew that my parents had my back entirely through college. After I graduated, I was paycheck to paycheck, but always had enough because I was married and we had two incomes, even though we also had a baby.
Fast forward a few years and add a divorce in there and, well, problems occurred. I was living entirely beyond my means, because any cash I had was going towards, rent, bills, and daycare. My ex- hardly paid any child support because of his low income, and I was not making a ton of money myself.
Somehow, I dug myself into a $12,000 hole and every time I would make progress on it, something would happen, and I just couldn’t get out (note the importance of an emergency fund!), which would cause me to spend more and more on the credit cards, because I ceased caring.
Over Christmas of 2006, I cracked. I was completely depressed about this and had been for most of 2006. Somehow, it spilled out to my mom that I was in debt, and she talked it over with my dad and they lent me the money to get out of it.
If I had talked to them before it got so bad, I think that I could easily have fallen into the exact same trap that I got myself into. By struggling with it for years, I learned my lesson. Does this make me spoiled? Lucky? I don’t know. All I know is that I would rather have a 0.1% interest loan with my dad than interest rates ranging from 4.0% – 30%.
And, no, I have not gotten myself back into credit card debt.
I do think that it depends on the family, the situation, everything. I always knew that my parents would help, but I wanted to *try* to do it myself. That was definitely my last resort.
[…]I saw that Blogging Away Debt had an interesting post about whether or not you should[…]
I think that admitting you have a debt problem is just as hard as admitting you have a drinking or drug problem, especially because you can hide it for longer by going further into debt!
Once you know what your circumstances are and can face up to them, you can move forward and work towards getting out of debt.
In my opinion your family is going to give you more support than anyone else, and may well be willing to help you get out of debt by provide an interest-free loan. Certainly taking to the about it is hard, but not talking to them could be worse.
The Debt Weblog
Everyone handles their problem differently. It sounds like your commenter’s family has a lot of issues in their relationships to one another that effects their debt and health. I sense some resentment in her words, but I’m not sure if she means it.
I know my parents have said to me,”Don’t tell your sibling this or that [about money].” I know my sibling and I have both tapped the bank of mom and dad after college for substantial sums. Lately the tables are turned and my parents come to us kids for help. Maybe it’s because I’ve been intimately aware of my parents business affairs since I was 12 but I guess we don’t have many secrets about money in our family, just a few here and there.
Mental health is just as important as physical health and debt can eat at a person as much as a cancer can. So I suppose being able to tell your family about your debt and help you live a better financial life is the thing. I mean, if it was cancer, wouldn’t you tell them?
How long you wait before telling them is another discussion topic I suppose. I think I now see a difference between JW and his daughter versus Susan and her sister. Parents will do a lot for their kids, but YMMV with siblings.