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.

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

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 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

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.

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

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.