codyg1985’s Think Tank

I will be the first to say that I would help my mother out when she needs help with something.  If she needs some money, I would lend it to her without asking any questions.  She rarely does ask me for money, but her financial siltation is very grim.  Quite a while back her and her now-deceased husband amassed a large amount of debt, ruining both his and my mother’s credit.  That cloud still lingers over her today, and astonishingly enough, her spending habits don’t seem to reflect her financial situation at all.  No longer can she borrow from the bank; she is forced to borrow from finance companies and pay the minimum payments to them.  She almost went to a car title place to borrow money from there, but I managed to convince her not to do that.  I have no idea whatsoever as to how she manages her money, but she ends up short after every pay day, and she has to borrow more money to make ends meet.  It’s a vicious cycle that perpetuates itself to no end.

My grandmother has been bailing my mother out for quite a while now.  When my mother needs money, my grandmother is the first person she usually turns to. As I said, she rarely asks me for money because she realizes that I need to save the money that I have (another topic of discussion).  I got a phone call just a while ago from my grandmother.  She told me that the gas company was about to cut my mother’s gas off and that I needed to write a check for $300 to help cover the expenses or else she will be without heat.

Again, I don’t have a problem helping my mother out, but when does it come to a point to where this form of help isn’t helping at all?  Will bailing my mother out time and time again help her to better control her money?  It hasn’t worked so far, and I don’t see it working in the future either.  My grandmother told me that this was the last time she was going to bail my mother out.  My grandmother isn’t the type to just stop helping someone, and as such, she has been saying that she was going to stop helping my mother for months now and yet she gives in every time she needs money.  I hate to say it, but I think the only thing that is going to teach her to better manage her money (budget) is to stop helping her financially.  If my mother knows that she will not receive any handouts from either me or my grandmother, then she would hopefully be more inclined to figure out how to manage her money better.

I wished I knew how to approach my mother about this problem, and even better, figure out how to teach her to manage her money.  She lives in a two-bedroom apartment with cheaper rent than I pay and she works at Wal-Mart in the grocery department.  IMO she needs to cut off some of her cable (she has EVERYTHING for her cable: internet, HD, DVR, HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, everything).  I think she knows what she needs to do, but she does not want to do it.  I am just fed up with worrying about it.