Not to want to give my sister a penny...?

[MargaretElsie]

I have a sister who is five years younger than me.
She is shocking with money. Despite earning around £40k is always in the red, has borrowed (and not paid back) money off our mum, grandparents and brother along with my dad - this comes to over £15000, over a long period of time. During the time I have been living near her, she has had over seven new cars, lots of holidays and mini breaks and frequently 'treats' herself (expensive to maintain hairstyles, new outfits, beauty treatments etc.) Despite the impression I am probably giving, she is actually great in most ways but awful with money. Nobody can discuss it with her without tears and shouting and inevitable door slamming so it's now pretty much ignored.

She lives in a small rented house with her DH and twins (her credit rating is such than she was turned down for a mortgage on a £100k house and her husband is bankrupt) after being evicted from a large one she could not afford and is very resentful of the fact that me and DH have managed to buy two houses with the money we made from selling up in London.

We also (we moved back to Yorkshire) have quite a lot in the bank which we plan to use for any work we may need to do on the places we buy or just simply to keep in an account as a backup. My sister knows what we sold our house for, and what we have bought the two subsequent one's with and so know's roughly what we have in the bank.

Now she is dropping more and more hints about deposits and how they 'will never own our own home.' She appears to think that the house buying system is stacked against her rather than she is in the position she is in due to her awful spending (she is now 40, but has been like this ever since she turned 18.)

I don't want to get into a proper discussion with her about it as it will end in high drama (otherwise talking about it would sound the most sensible approach) but I do not think that she deserves yet another helping hand, even if we do have plenty of money in the bank (for the first time ever, I might add!)

She has had plenty of help, and never learns from her previous mistakes. She also earns enough, even without including her DH who also works albeit for less money, to surely be able to live well but also save for the future. I also think that she needs to learn herself and take responsibility.

AIBU?

Fuckwit by name, fuckwit by attitude!

Learn to read properly before calling people fuckwits corkied. Otherwise you just look like, well, a fuckwit.

Arfarfanarf I totally agree. If OP were saying I've made loads of money because I was in the property ponzi at the right time and my family work their guts out on NMW jobs, they're so frugal but they can never manage to save 10k to get a 100k place, should I help, it would be a totally different kettle of fish. But when people are completely self-destructive with money, giving them more is enabling.

They must surely earn in the region of 50k between them even if BIL only has a part time, work round the kids type job, so they're looking to borrow twice combined income at absolute worst. To not have a chance of that, they must have incredibly problematic credit records. And Dsis is of an age where she too could be sitting on a large pile of unearned, fortunate equity if she'd bought a home at a time when it was piss easy to do so. That says a lot.

Can you 'lend' me a tenner?

My friend was in virtually the same situation and her sister outright asked for a loan of £25k. Despite feeling awfully guilty, she told her no, she didn't want to mix money with family and friendships and that it would undoubtedly lead to problems. She also said with her plans to buy another house she could need to money at any time so no. I think it's awful when people put you in that position, but please don't feel you're responsible for her. Sometimes people need to learn the heard way.

YANBU

If she wants to be frivolous with her own money that's up to her.

However if you give her money what will she do with it? She can't get a mortgage so unless you buy her a house outright all that will happen is you will stand by watching her her piss away the cash you gave her.

She needs to get her act together before anyone considers helping her.

The inability to discuss it - tears and tantrums - shows she isn't in a position to be helped.

Or if she does outright ask just laugh it off and say 'what money?! Oh we've invested any left over in pensions and bonds for when we retire'

Very good point, even if I did give her a deposit she could not yet get a mortgage. I suppose it would take a while to get a decent credit rating.

Yeah the tears and tantrums almost reminds me of evasive behaviour from addicts. From the way OP describes things, she just doesn't sound like she's mentally in a place to purchase a house and spend her money on mortgage repayments instead of mini breaks. So help wouldn't actually be helping.

It's shocking, when you live in the sort of area where 100k buys even a modest family home, you should be very comfortably off on what sounds like a 50k+ income. Plenty of treat money. Actually for all that we've talked about OP having won in the property casino, DSis is in what should be a pretty fortunate position herself in respect of uneven regional house price increases. In quality of life terms, getting yourself on a national pay scale public sector job and living somewhere cheap is a pretty sweet gig. Ok it's not the jackpot, but it's like winning a few nice little prizes each week.

Well you'd be looking at having to buy the place outright for her OP, always assuming you have that much anyway. Then either signing it over to her and hoping she doesn't manage to lose it with a load of secured borrowing, or keeping it in your own name, renting it out and waiting for her not to pay you, and presumably being responsible for all costs in the meantime. Neither of which sound an attractive option.

If - if- you did want to help her then a PP's suggestion that if she saves up half then you'd give half seems the best. (If nothing else, it should be a safe bet for you)

But I think like other people that by bailing her out you're not actually helping her. It sounds to me like she'll never realise that though and that she'll start getting bitter. But that's -her- life-choice. She's her own person and an adult and should stand on her own two feet (unless there are extenuating circumstances like severe disability or something).

Is there someone in your family brave enough to do the thing that will actually help her most, and explain the root of her problems and direct her to some budgeting advice, even though she is likely to be angry?

It maybe that like an addict, she needs to hit rock bottom before she admits there is a problem and is willing to seek help which will allow her to change. Until then, giving money simply delays that day and makes the problem worse, like people giving alcoholics booze, because they beg for it.

Sorry to give such a stark comparison, but borrowing heaps of money from family and not repaying, being turned down for a mortgage when houses are affordable in your area, throwing tantrums if the problems are raised and hinting for more money are the signs of someone with significant financial weakness.

She may well have to remain in rented accommodation all of her life if she doesn't change. Lots of people live in rented all of their lives because they live in expensive areas. It's not the worst thing in the world at all. If her spending habits mean she gets evicted or taken to court for non payment of credit cards or other debt, she will start learning the hard way.....hope it doesn't come to that. For now, her spending means she's in not mortgaged accommodation and owes money to family who sound like they've lent to her and written it off rather than insisting on it back. It's not great, but she's not in a real crisis yet, so OP can rest easy that her refusal to pick on the hints isn going to make her sister homeless. That's the point when saying 'no' becomes more difficult...but is sometimes necessary.

No no no. Do not lend the money. She is funding a champagne lifestyle at the expense of others. Also maybe you do need to be blunt and tell her her problem.

Save your money for your family.

She needs help as she has a problem. You shouldn't have to bail her out

I wouldn't give her a bean. She will never repay it if she does put it on a house, but more likely she will book a holiday with it or buy another car.
She is not your responsibility, she is a big girl and made her own life choices, now she has to live with them.

Don't give her a penny! I'm 36 and people of our generation and slightly older I. E. your sister had it easy when it came to buying houses as we were going on to the job market when houses were relatively cheap. You've been sensible, she hasn't that's hard lines.

And don't ever, under any circumstances, sign as guarantor for any property she might rent.

However awkward hints/discussions about money are now, in the long run, it is almost certainly better for your relationship with your sister for you to ignore them and not lend money.
Knowing what you know, lending money which was not repaid would probably not be good for your marriage.

SooBee

About 15 years ago or so I worked with two women, one was being beaten & raped by her asylum seeker bf who was destroying her bc pills. The other got her a flat away from him and stood gaurantor.

I don't think she lasted a month before going back to him & not turning up for work. The second woman was being chased by the ll for the unpaid rent.

They were both under 21yo. Such a shame to see such kindness being abused like that.

I have a friend just like this. She moans about living in rented, that they are skint, that they will have to carry on working beyond the normal age for retirement and how we are SO lucky to be able to retire at sixty and have paid our mortgage off,

She is completely oblivious to the fact that whilst we were overpaying our mortgage and pensions she was swanning all over the world, posting FB pictures of the third long haul holiday that year and new BMW whilst living in a (massively) mortgaged five bed detached.

The reality was, it was all on credit, and she relied on the ever increasing house prices to keep remortgaging to pay off the credit cards until the GFC caught up with them and there was nothing left and house prices crashed.

But us, living in our modest semi, with one holiday a year have been charmed, despite DH working sixty hour weeks and frequently being away. Yes, we have had it handed to us on a plate and it is so not fair

Just to add, your DS wont change, my friend hasn't, she has booked Thailand next year, but she doesn't have a pension and now rents, but that's OK because on FB she is living the life. Why face up to the problem today when you can bury your head in the sand for another ten years.

I wouldn't give her any money. It wouldn't be a loan, she wouldn't pay it back. I also don't think she'd be able to get a mortgage now anyway, so you wouldn't even be gifting a deposit, you'd just be giving her money to spend.

My DB does this kind of thing to me. I am now very good at selective deafness. I just don't take on hints and just politely say that I don't want to lend money if asked. He get angry as he compares our standard of living to theirs and tries to make me feel guilty that my DD has opportunities and luxuries that his DCs don't have but I don't feel guilty about it as the disparity is not my fault and it's not my job to financially support him and his family.

Thefuckit I think we may be related by marriage!

DH'S family are horrendous scroungers, he used to have a job which paid a bonus on April 1st every year.

MIL would be on the phone on April 2nd with some sob story, begging for money to pay for another massive TV or to pay off SIL's payday loan debts.

It doesn't matter where op's money comes from, it's her money and she doesn't have to justify not handing it over to get pissed away.

It sounds as though she probably has an unrealistic idea of what it's normal to have or afford on that income. Easy to do for someone who reads a lot of magazines and so on and hasn't really thought about it hard. The journalists, who may earn less than she does, get freebies of stuff that would only be affordable regularly to hedge funders and successful business owners; people on TV typically have lifestyles that don't fit financially with their earnings (Friends and SATC were famous for that, but it's many others). People post their holidays and stuff on social media, but much less often that it's all funded by debt.

Maybe she feels like she should have a fancy lifestyle because she earns more than average - and a lot more than average for the area, presumably, if you can get a family house for 100k, as a PP said. Or she feels that she is no worse than lots of other people who have all these things therefore she should have the things too. Maybe she has friends who earn more, or who are in just as much debt as she is, so it feels normal to her.

There's a fundamental disconnection between "ooh, I could do with one of those" and thinking about what's in the bank. Not having realised that she needs to choose between those haircuts or the holidays or those clothes, not have all of them. The title of the book "Dreamworld of a shopaholic" was really well chosen; spending can take place in a dreamlike state separate from the reality of bills and balances, sometimes an escape from that reality (like people who comfort eat because they are miserable about being overweight - a person can surive without booze in their life, but food and spending money can be even more complicated because you always need some) but the bills need to be in mind all the time when spending.

As a general attitude, I disagree with PPs who imply that people who earn well have don't have a social responsibility to share. (Particularly disappointed by the person who had no understanding of the dynamic of abusive relationships, that they generally take several attempts to leave.) However, that opinon of mine isn't relevant here because the OP's sister earns well above average herself. and doesn't appear to have any draining justifiable expenses such as a disabled child. It should be perfectly possible to manage and pay off debts and later save on that salary, especially in a cheaper area of the country. She just needs to learn how. There is a lot of psychology involved in spending and unfortunately a lot of debt advice places only concentrate on the numbers, there isn't necessarily enough done to look at the underlying attitudes and social context, whereas with people who have substance addictions, it is standard that they are made to examine those.

It's quite interesting how she and the OP have such different attitudes to money and a lot of posters seem to have sibling with different spending habits; most sets of siblings I can think of have really similar spending patterns that seem obviously related to their parents'.

I have a family member like this, and I honestly don't think she knows she is being unreasonable. I eventually realised that she seems to see no connection between how much she earns, how much she spends, and how much money she has in the bank. So while I might think 'I would like X, but if I spend the money on X I won't be able to afford Y', that thought never crosses her mind. I reckoned she was only going to make this connection between spending and not having any money if people stopped bailing her out at the point where she has no money.

I realise this sounds very hard, but it's a bottomless pit unless she starts managing her finances better, so I could end up with no savings at all and she'd be no better off.