How do spendthrifts *survive*?

[disneysteve]

Re: How do spendthrifts *survive*?

On the other hand if I sold my house outright for $200k and put it in one of those fancy CDs at 5.25% I would earn only $10,500/yr or an additional $3804/yr for life and still have my $200k in principal.

But where would you live? That extra $3,804/year isn't enough to pay rent or mortgage payments.

By no means am I defending reverse mortgages. I think they are a lousy deal, but I also think we will be seeing more and more of them due to all the people that reach retirement without adequate savings.

[Ima saver]

Re: How do spendthrifts *survive*?

I don't like them either! My girlfriend's mother who is 85, lives in one of those low rent housing places for senior citizens.

[kealina]

Re: How do spendthrifts *survive*?

sorry for the coming rant but i worry too... mostly about MIL right now and SIL in the future... MIL is in her 50's and despite having a pretty good job (federal which has good benefits and ok pay) is still always paying off debt only to charge some more and then complaining that she doesn't have any savings and can't afford her rent going up...

then she goes out and spends on stuff like
$60 for something for some co-worker who isn't a friend
$15, at least, a day on fast food
$100 on dinner out with some family members (we refused to let her pay for us and chipped in $20, which covered our $10 entree and more...so $80)
$200 each on matching D & B purses for me and SIL that i didn't even want for christmas...

SIL kept hers (and barely uses it, doh) and i returned mine for credit...
DH returned the shirts she bought him (he doesn't want more clothes until he reaches his weight goal and she ignored that) for another $100... we had $300 credit from her x-mas presents alone... we used some of the credit for things like make-up (for our wedding), a dress (80% clearance) that i wore to a dress function i was in charge of, a small gift for her, and then ended up giving the rest of the credit back to her since we knew she would keep shopping there anyways...

*sigh* and no, these aren't isolated examples. she is always spending like that... it's crazy...
she doesn't have much of savings or an IRA that i know of. i have no idea what's going to happen when she gets older and retires but you know for sure that we won't be funding any spendthrift behavior.

DH and i have talked about it and we think we may help but we'd insist on some control because we don't think it's fair to spend while we save and then expect us to shell out so she can keep spending...

worse, we're pretty sure in predicting that everybody is going to expect us to shoulder any burdens as there is basically only DH and SIL... MIL's other family are all passed away or undependable... and SIL, following in MIL's footsteps, is a major spendthrift although neither will admit it... they are "living life"...

sorry guys... i think this is one of my sore points as we don't ask for money, paid for our own college, our own wedding, etc... we work hard to make sure we aren't a burden to anybody and go out of our way to help with whatever they need and still this stuff happens... I've been forced to repeat "you can only control yourself" and "you can't change them, it's their choice"...