When Saying No Helps Your Family

Posted on October 28, 2007 by Eric
Filed Under Relationships, Retirement

How can I retire now? I’ve been pretty busy here the last couple of weeks. Between packing the old house up in anticipation of our move, I’ve also had to do some work-related travel. Needless to say I need to get some more time to catch up.

I multi-tasked today, and spent some time doing work around the house while I called some family and friends. Multi-tasking is great, and I always feel more productive when I find a way I can do it easily.

I had a quick chat with a good friend who told me a disturbing story. His wife’s grandparents have spent all of their retirement savings. They have many years left, and not a lot of money with which to live.

The problem on their part wasn’t poor planning. It has to do with some unscrupulous family members who have taken advantage of their elderly grandparents. This story really upset me.

For a little background, my friend’s aunt has had a history of living a hard-partying lifestyle. Her hard-partying ways have made it difficult for her to keep a job, and her children’s father has been in jail for some time. She has very little money, and is not doing much to improve her situation. She has been “borrowing money” from the grandparents to support her lifestyle. In essence, she’s been stealing their retirement funds.

It gets worse. When she decided that having her children live with her was too expensive, she dumped them on the grandparents. These children appear to have learned some bad habits from their mother as they have also been taking advantage of their grandparents. Even as they have grown into adulthood, they are still using their grandparents to support their lifestyles.

At this point, the grandparents’ savings have been depleted, and they have been forced to take out a mortgage on their home (which was paid off) in order to continue supporting their family. Why are they in this situation?

These poor folks just don’t have the courage/desire/ability to say “no”.

Normally I would wholeheartedly applaud them for helping their family. I think helping your family is of critical importance. At one point, this situation might have been about a family in need, but now it’s more about the family’s resistance to learn to live on their own. The grandparents are just funding their grown family’s lifestyles and they can’t afford this. In a misguided effort to help them, they are actually doing harm to their family and especially themselves.

The oldest child is old enough to get a job and move out on his own, but instead he prefers to mooch off of the grandparents and go party with his friends. I feel bad for the grandparents for being in this situation, but they’re the ones that have to stand up and put an end to it. Their daughter (the children’s mother) should also find a job and learn to live within her means instead of living her hard-partying, low responsibility lifestyle.

My friend is extremely angry about this and has been trying to help the grandparents. He has, for years, been warning them about what is going on and suggesting what they need to do to fix the situation. He’s confronted the kids and their mother about what they are doing to the family and to their grandparent’s future. Unfortunately, nothing has improved despite his best efforts and now the situation is serious.

In order to clean up this situation, I think the following things will have to happen:

The grandparents will have to stop supporting their adult family. They need to be taking care of their own financial situation right now.
The grandkids will have to leave the house and learn to be independent. This means getting jobs and paying their own bills.
Their daughter will have to find a new source of income, hopefully by going back to work. She needs to understand that her parents will no longer be able to support her lifestyle.
The grandparents will have to radically change the way they were intending to retire. The damage has been done and their savings is gone. Age-related health problems make going back to work out of the question. They are going to have to pinch their pennies now more than ever.

No doubt these changes are going to cause a lot of strife in the family. The greed and immoral behavior of a few is hurting many other family members who must now help the grandparents financially just to make ends meet. They are also going to have to find some way to ensure they are only helping the grandparents, and not continuing to fund the lifestyles of a few freeloading family members. If the grandparent’s would stand up and say “no”, the entire family would be better off.

Sometimes, when you think you are helping someone, you are really hurting them. This can extend beyond just you, and start to affect the others you love. In this case, we’ve got grandparents with no retirement, kids and grandchildren who don’t know how to support themselves, and now additional family members have to be involved in order to help pay for the grandparent’s retirement. It’s essential to know when to say “no”.

Photo by pedrosimoes

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, get the posts via email, read more about the blog in our about page, or browse our archives. Thanks for visiting!

Comments

14 Responses to “When Saying No Helps Your Family”

Jennifer on October 28th, 2007 9:02 pm

Thank you for posting this! My grandparents helped my aunt & her dead beat husband (who prefers being homeless to working, even though he has an MBA and a law degree) over & over & over through the years. Aunt would not work because “Moms should be home with their kids.” They (my grandparents) lived in a trailer that was a housefire waiting to happen, and depleted the equity in their home. When grandma died this past spring, she had no assets to leave behind, her home will be razed because it is of no value.
Anonymous because my idiot cousins do nothing all day but surf the net on October 28th, 2007 10:28 pm

This sounds exactly like what happened to my grandparents. My aunt and her kids have lived with them off an on for the past 20 years. Both cousins even moved boyfriends in, even while one was on house arrest. One cousin even stole their car in the middle of the night, wrecked it and left it on the side of the road. Surprise! One cousin was in jail for dealing crack and the other is currently a meth head.

They ended up losing their home, and are now in a nursing home being paid for by Medicare. My aunt and her kids continue to borrow money from them.
Roundup for week of 21 October 2007: Early Morning edition at Mighty Bargain Hunter on October 29th, 2007 2:28 am

[...] A Penny Closer talks about the times when it’s better to say no to a family member’s requests. [...]
BuildAndSucceed on October 29th, 2007 6:26 am

How sad… and it happens all the time. Unfortunately sometimes you have to learn to say no to those you might care about the most. That’s really hard.

Bas
BuildAndSucceed.com
plonkee on October 29th, 2007 7:01 am

Although these are the things that should happen, I’m not sure that they will. I don’t think that they will stop supporting the adult family members, I think it’s quite likely to go on until there is literally no money left. People that haven’t learnt to say no already are unlikely to do so in old age and poor health.
Eric on October 29th, 2007 5:53 pm

@Jennifer - I’m so sorry to hear about your grandparents. It’s been surprising to me to hear how many folks seem to be seeing this situation.

@Anonymous - can’t blame you for being anonymous then! I’m sorry to hear about your family. That sounds awful! I don’t know how people can live that way.

@Bas - I’ve been surprised how often it does seem to happen. This is the closest to home it’s hit for me. I can’t imagine any of my family doing this to my grandparents or parents, but you can never tell I guess.

@Plonkee - you are probably right and those suggested things *won’t* happen, which is incredibly sad to me! I fear nothing will change unless one of the family members steps up and takes over the finances in a legal manner (something like power of attorney). I still have hope the situation is salvageable.
Carnival of Money Stories #32 — True Financial Horror Stories — The Baglady on October 30th, 2007 12:04 am

[...] presents When Saying No Helps Your Family posted at A Penny Closer. This is a well written story about a truly horrible situation. You have [...]
wealthy_1 on October 30th, 2007 7:21 am

I have a brother like this. My dad has helped him out of situation after situation over the years. He shows no gratitude and seems to think that it’s our dad’s responsibility to bail him out of any situation.
Kyle on October 30th, 2007 12:57 pm

Wow, that is a sad story at a couple different levels. My grandparents supported a cousin of mine who had parents that did not step up to the plate. But it was different becuase my cousin was young. I totally agree with you that they need to do some tough love and make the grandkids, who are old enough to support themselves, do just that. Lets hope it happens.
Eric on October 30th, 2007 5:10 pm

@wealthy_1 - I’m sorry to hear about your father. I don’t understand where this sense of entitlement comes from for some people. To me, it’s a source of pride that I am able to take care of myself and my family. It’s certainly one thing to help people out, and it’s another to have to support them through bad decision after bad decision.

@Kyle - There is definitely a place to help family out. I fully support the grandparents in helping the cousins when they were young, but as they grow up they need to at least get a job and help out and not just continue to be fully supported by family (especially when the end result is the complete depletion of the grandparent’s retirement fund).
brip blap » spooky links, 10-31-07 on October 31st, 2007 7:28 am

[...] When Saying No Helps Your Family: A cautionary tale about the abuse that gets heaped on people who just can’t say no. (@ A Penny Closer) [...]
Carnival of Money Stories #32 « Carnival of Money Stories - Read About Personal Finance on November 4th, 2007 1:17 pm

[...] When Saying No Helps your Family posted by Eric from A Penny Closer. [...]
msminiducky on November 9th, 2007 1:01 pm

Sadly, this happens fairly frequently, and I think it’s because the lenders in question don’t stop to think that they’re establishing a pattern every time they make a handout.

For the longest time, I kept rescuing my odler brother until I realized that it wasn’t just “this one time” or anything at all - it was going to be until I put my foot down and refused. Many mistakes later, the tap has been turned off, and that he’s going to learn responsibility by paying me back, no matter how long it takes. I can only imagine how horrible a drain he’ll become on my parents if I don’t break him of this behavior.

Tough love is still love, and is often more effective than enabling.
Eric on November 15th, 2007 7:39 pm

@msminiducky - I think you are absolutely correct. If the lenders understood they were establishing a pattern, one would hope they would stop lending. In the case I’m talking about here, I don’t know if that would help, but I think it definitely would in other situations.

Great job with the tough love with your brother. Luckily we haven’t been approached by family for anything like this yet, but if we do, we’ll have to really think things through and make sure we aren’t enabling a habit.