I am highly familiar with elderly relatives who are hell bent on spending all their money (and then some) to ensure that they do not have a comfortable or stress-free last few years.
Some, like my mother-in-law, have never had a budget their entire life, and the concept of running out of money just doesn't compute. Her spending has been curtailed since May, when she broke her hip, but she spent more than $150,000 at the casino in the previous six years.
My wife would sit her down sometimes and show her the bank statement that says "On average, you spend $1200 a month more than you earn", and ask her what she was going to do when her savings ran out. She said "Oh, Dave (me) will give me money", which had my wife cracking up.
What the actual fuck??
My grandmother had a learning disability that caused her to drop out of school in 9th grade because she couldn't do math. She went bankrupt by ordering gazingus pins from qvc within a few years after grandpa died. Thankfully she owned her house outright and her necessary expenses were small so she was still able to live comfortably for many more years after her kids took over the finances. She never got around to opening all the boxes.
Lol, yeah, I have a mom like that, but what I was reacting to was the "Dave will give me money."
Who just assumes their son-in-law will give them $1200/mo to feed her raging gambling addiction??
How does an adult human come to that conclusion???
She's a dingbat, that's how :)
She grew up in a wealthy family, so basically got whatever she wanted there. My father-in-law made good money as a board certified ER surgeon, and my wife said she spent a lot of money as her 'reward' for being a stay at home mom.
She has absolutely no concept of budgeting. She gave us access to her accounts when my father-in-law died, and we found out he was pretty much following the 'die broke' methodology. After selling a rental property, she had around $160k in the bank plus a monthly SS payment of $3300, and $80k in (crappy) investments.
After seven years, she's down to <$10k in the bank, and around $60k in investments. Monthly expenses (maintenance fee, taxes, medical insurance, cable TV) run at around $1500, so she has $1800 of her Social Security check left over. That and more was going straight to the casino until she broke her hip and moved in with us while she recovers. At 94, she should have enough to make it to the end, especially since the casino spending has ended.
The "Dave will give me money" comment had my wife and me cracking up. My wife said "Do you realize that Dave and I give ourselves $100 a week to spend as we like? Meanwhile, you're taking out $200 a day to spend at the casino. In what world do you think we're giving you that kind of money?" Pretty much a ha-ha response from MIL.
Topic: Relatives who just don't get it (Read 3691847 times)
