My sister in law is in severe financial trouble, how do I stop her spending?

[mummytoonetryingfortwo]

My sister in law has revealed to me last night that she’s in real difficulties and has asked me for help. She’s 23.

She works 25 hours a week for £12.60 an hour, so brings in £1,200 a month. She is studying for her masters, so cannot work more.

She has told me that she has nearly £5,000 in credit card debt, £1,500 in Klarna debt and, I believe, a personal loan around £7,500. She also has an interest free overdraft of £500.

She is spending the majority of her wages to pay off her debts, meaning she’s living in her overdraft. She just cannot stop herself spending. She’s almost addicted to it. She wants new things all the time, it spirals, and she gets into this mess. She’s now told me she’s felt suicidal over these debts.

I am able to clear these debts. I want to, but I want to do it on the condition that she breaks her spending habits and starts to get herself sorted. What can I do to help her on this path? What tactics can I use?

Do NOT bail her out. She will learn nothing! Do offer emotional and practical support, but NOT money.

She will thank you (eventually!).

and when she spends, spends, spends and all these deliveries get to your house, and she racks up more debt ... then what?

I'm sorry OP but clearing the debt is probably the least likely thing to help her.
You'd be better off sitting with her to go through a budget and a plan to sort out how she is going to tackle the debt. And helping her to access some therapy to understand why she compulsively overspends.
Seriously do not clear the debts for her it is not the answer

I would pay off her debts if you’re able to, but get her to pay you back a sum of money monthly. If you bail her out and she gets of scot-free it will just continue. She also needs professional help. Does she have ADHD? She sounds like she struggles with impulse control.

Well the idea is that she’s working more, is busier (I have a young daughter, who she adores) and her mental health gets a pick me up. I really believe she hasn’t gone to other members of the family, they’re quite cold when it comes to things like struggling emotionally and her parents would have told us all how much she has disappointed them. That’s part of the reason I want her away from them for some time, to see if that helps.

If she doesn't pay you back (and goes on to rack up more debt) this could end up ruining your relationship. How will you feel if you pay off her debt and she goes on to do the same thing again? I'm curious about you OP- are you a "fixer" by nature?

All of the above, but especially this:

she's getting you to collude in this narrative of shame and secrecy and it won't help unlike confronting that narrative and freeing herself from it, even realising that she's stronger for not living in this cycle of fear.

Please, @mummytoonetryingfortwo , pay heed.

It’s clear to me why she overspends - because her parents are horrible to her and she wants to appear successful like her older brothers who have lots of nice things

I just want to paint a picture of what you might be setting her up for here - someone close to me learnt at an early age that people who love them will bail them out if they give a good sob story (and that’s not to say the story re her mental health is false, but she will be well aware that you feel bad for her because of it).

They have their whole life spinning stories, going round everyone they know, getting them to bail them out.

You might not even be the first person to bail her out - five years after I bailed someone out, I found out that my brother had also done so six months before I did. Obviously we were both sworn to secrecy, as telling anyone would just be too stressful/embarrasing for them…

I’m aware I sound callous. The person I’m talking about in my life is a good person, as I’m sure your SIL is. I love them very much. But they have a huge problem that unfortunately has been enabled for decades. Now they have very few people left who want to know them, and it’s very sad. The ones who have stuck around feel like they barely know them due to the lies they’ve had to tell to get bailed out. HOW he’s still getting credit I truly do not know - I very strongly suspect there has been lots of fraud over the years, but I cannot prove it. There has definitely been loan sharks involved at various points.

How things might have been different if he’d had the issue dealt with properly when he was in his 20s…

You aren’t listening to the very good advice here because you are terrified that she will kill herself and you will have that guilt and be blamed by the family. I get that. But its part of the problem. She is pulling you into her secret and making you feel guilty and ashamed even as you feel pressured to “rescue” her. I put rescue in quotes because she is pushing you into the drama triangle: the three positions are rescuer, victim, and persecutor. She occupies the helpless, victim position so you must either rescue her or feel like her persecutor.

You absolutely can not fix this by paying off her debt—I mean you want to, but it won’t work. She will instantly begin running up debt again but to the extent she feels shame and regret towards you for having abused your trust she will become estranged from you and treat you as another persecutor (as she dies her family).

I suggest you get together the relevant information and sit down with her. Literally, physically, hold her hands and tell her “I can not pay off this debt until you have taken steps to help yourself get to a better place. I will go with you to your family, the GP, and these charities in any order you like. After you have met with two of them we can discuss a repayment plan to clear the balance of your debt. But it can’t be done in secret or without a plan to deal with the addiction issues.

You’re keeping this from your OH, and contemplating spending a good chunk of change bailing her out without telling him.

DO NOT DO THIS! You will break your OH trust and potentially damage your relationship.

Your SIL is not in a position to make demands on anyone, nor is she entitled to just being bailed out without any consequences or serious changes

youre being really stupid considering this. She absolutely will spend all the money again. She needs help from professionals and she’s not in a position to be picky or sniffy about getting that help

she’s in a mess of her own doing and she needs to admit that she has a problem before she will be able to fix it.

Do not clear the debt.
You’ll teach her nothing and she will end up worse off.

Help her to access the support she needs to face up to her spending and get her to consolidate her debts with an adviser.

My dm paid my siblings debts all their life.
Dm is elderly, has no savings left and owes money on my siblings behalf whilst living on a small pension.
The stress is enormous. Almost 40 years my dm has been an unofficial bank.

I’d start by cutting up her credit cards.
An in law of dh (incidentally a high earner!) who was a serious spendaholic, had her own bank manager do this in front of her.

Whether it left our family short or not, I would be furious with my husband if he did something like without telling me.

The fact you and your SIL want to hide this tells me you both know this is not the right thing to do.

If you felt sure this was the right approach you could share with your husband knowing your approach is justified.

You need to encourage her to set herself a timeline to tell her husband, with a goal to have started to reduce the debt by then so that she can come clean but explain that she is on the path to paying off the debt.

You sound quite naive OP to be talking about bailing her out to the tune of thousands of pounds and hiding it from your spouse. This is not the way a healthy marriage works.

Hi OP if she hasn't already started watching him, videos by Dave Ramsey about the snowball method are available on youtube, they are an addictive watch and will help your sil change her mindset. See also Financial Audit on youtube. The trouble with bailing your sil out is that you are not fixing her problem with the spending itself. Shopping addiction is usually rooted in a psychological need (usually self-esteem problems / escapism / depression / anxiety etc). I speak from experience! It is an addiction like any other and it involves filling a void of sadness very often. Shopping can also be about treating yourself and a coping mechanism. Your sil has to pay off the debts to climb her way out of this. She needs to increase her income and go at the debt hard!

“we have joint accounts for all household spending and saving, and then our own money. I would never dream of using his money to do this - this would be my own money that I have worked for. I wouldn’t leave my own family short.”

But OP, you would be keeping a big secret from your own husband, and about his sister at that. I would certainly regard it as a betrayal of trust if my DH were to do something like that for one of my sisters. If you are foolish enough to bail out your SIL financially (and it would be foolishness indeed) then I guarantee that sooner or later, your DH will find out about it, and will reasonably wonder what else you are keeping from him. Your SIL has an addiction - you need to let your DH know, so that he can talk his sister into getting appropriate help.

Omfg. I will times my previous post by 1,000,000

shes suckering you in.
this family dynamic is fucked and she’ll drag you down with her.

Maybe, but also maybe not. You are not her mental health counsellor and nor are you responsible for her wellbeing or very clearly any of her decision making. You are also breaking trust with your own husband by doing all of this stuff behind his back.

If the family dynamic is really fucked up, you could be getting yourself sucked into a world of trouble here. Be helpful if you want to be but don't try and be a "saviour". No one can ever save another person. We can only save ourselves.

I know the tactic on here is to view all in laws as horrible, but I really believe her. She’s young (23 is young, even at 27 I can recognise how young I was back then), she’s scared, she’s been under a huge amount of pressure since age 5, in terms of academics. I think she just needs lifting out of this mess and to be with people who care about her, in order for this problem to be tackled.

GP asap and in the meantime, trash all the stuff she buys - 'nasty, cheap material, seams falling apart, threads hanging, slave labour used, google that Bangladesh factory, google that Chinese factory, looks cheap, how awful, what, plastic shoes aka shoes with no leather soles?' etc. etc. Condition her to sneer at High Street items (I know, I know, this is all not true, I have a Primark suede jacket from 10 years ago, still going strong). But if she is stupid to spend her hard-earned pennies like that, she is likely to be suggestible and you can 'reprogram' her with a bit of effort from you and those around you.

Only read OP's posts.

So you are only mid 20s yourself. You have done remarkably well to feel you are so financially secure to take this hit. I know you say it's your money, but as you are married, it's a little more complicated. How would you feel if your DH was spending thousands of £ w/o running it by you?

If your SIL is not ready to acknowledge she has a spending addiction then you risk getting in over your head. Please think carefully. People with addictions can bring people down with them.

This!

Three pages OP, telling you the same thing and you don't seem to be listening.

Im sure this young lady is mortified at the thought of owning up to the mess she has got herself into, but facing up to your problems and owning them is all part of the remedy. In fact it's the most important part because it's the most painful, you cannot skip it. Never wanting to suffer that pain and shame again, that's the lesson!

You are to be commended for wanting to help but you have to be cruel to be kind here. Help her all you like - encourage her to find help, go to help sessions with her if need be, be a mentor and sympathetic listener but do not bail her out.

Bailing her out with no conditions will delay not solve the problem. I would bail her out only if she got in touch with a debt management company, the GP and told her immediate family. Keeping this a secret will not solve anything. She needs to feel a bit of shame to stop her doing it again.

Please don't pay off her debts, for her sake, if not your own. If her behaviour is addictive, she will try for a few weeks, then revert to previous patterns. The best thing she could do is to admit that her spending is out of control and ask her family to help.