Originally posted by: CZroeAs Ichinisan's twin brother, I'm 12K of this and I just wanted to point out that:
#1: The debt referred to is our combined debt, most of which was accrued when taking care of our mother for years with promises (from her) that it would all be taken care of.
#2: The debt in Ichininsan's name is primarily student loans and zero-interest credit card balances. The debt in my name is more pressing, but much less.
#3: I've read in business magazines and other publications that you DO NOT pay off low-interest student loans at once. "Stupid, stupid, stupid." I assume the 0% interest with negligible (no?) payments follows the same logic. [he is not required to pay anything monthly on the 0% transferred balance and only has to pay the $2 monthly minimum charges he is required to make in two transactions - this does not expire and he has maintained it for years]
We got in our "situation" because our mother throws money, both hers and ours, at our fleet of ancient cars instead of the debts she promised to take care of once she got her lump-sums of owed money from Social Security... she got them and blew it on the cars and now get's about $80 a month. Of course, she thinks it is "necessary" and believes that everyone else who refuses to spend thousands maintaining a $600 car is an idiot who doesn't know how much it costs to properly maintain a vehicle. She's never going to use anything but full synthetic oil and she's never going to admit that these old, falling-apart junk cars aren't worth maintaining.
She has paid $2,500 to have the engine rebuilt on a "totaled" 1993 Nissan that cost us $600 and never ran properly in the first place (bent axel, electrical problems). She continued to drive and maintain a 2000 Hyundai Elantra that was wrecked over a year ago because she is too stubborn to accept what the insurance company will give her for it just because they don't value the over-the-top maintenance costs she has invested in it. The driver door is smashed closed and the driver's seat has been broken from climbing over from the passenger side (as has the cup hold, center-console storage, etc). What does she do? She goes and pays someone to replace the drivers seat from a spare non-functional Hyundai that she also purchased for spare parts. It's down-right HILARIOUS to see her driving around town in that smashed undrivable car, but she not only does so, she takes it in for regular maintenance! The mechanics would laugh at her if it wasn't clear that she just throws money at them... they are they ones that told her the other car was totaled... see if they ever tell her THAT again! That $2,500 engine rebuild comes from a period when she spent over $9K on the cars over the summer and early fall. The third car is a '92 Oldsmobile with no radio, no seals on the windows, worn out motors in the door, blown fuel indicator, broken cruise control, and sputters out routinely after a cold start despite all the maintenance... IOW, the best car we have!
When we push back and try to stop her, we get an earful of how we and everyone else are irresponsible with their vehicle maintenance so, either way, we're either going to hear it from her or you guys. She long ago realized that she can't get away with it if we know first, so she does this stuff in secret. The Nissan broke down on me at work. The next day, I flew to San Diego to visit my sister and I heard by phone that the problem was not worth fixing ("totaled"). When I returned nearly two months later (I am considering a move to San Siego), she asked me to go pick it up. "I thought it was totaled?! How much did you spend on it?!" She was evasive and would only answer "it was worth it." I had to get sneaky to find out that she had received the second portion of her SS lump sum (~$9K) and decided to hide it from me by wasting it on the older cars. It's easier to lie about the maintenance costs of "totaled" older cars than it is to explain where the money came from for replacement vehicles.
Why would she do this? To keep me financially tied in supporting her so that I could not move to San Diego. Every scrap of it was supposed to be used to pay the debts we, as a family, have built up while supporting her exclusively over the last 8-years.