Well, I have tried to help her financially many times with things like budgets, etc. After my grandfather died, she put the house in West End up for sale and we moved to a really nice, expensive house in Center Point. The house in West End wasn't selling because the neighborhood was pretty bad by then, and my Mother didn't want to pay the $165 a month mortgage (yes, that's all it was and this was the early 80s - 30 year mortgage with about 10 years left on it at the time, taken out by her 20 years before) so she *gave the house to her realtor*. She literally signed away the house! She didn't want it anymore, so she "threw it away". I knew people who would have gladly taken over that mortgage and needed that house. But, she gave it away. She got every credit card she could possibly get. She had a wallet full of them. I was in my late teens, and she bought me a Mustang GT and gave me a gas card, a Yeildings card, a Texaco card and an American Express card. Told me to get what I wanted. My mom was Director of Nursing for a large for profit hospital at the time, and was making about 60k a year, which at the time, in Alabama, was really good money. She didn't save anything. I didn't know about budgeting, and so I did what teenagers do and bought what I wanted. then came the bankruptcy. She lost the house, moved into a rental house with her dog and cats, I got married (by then I was 21) and moved out. She was still working, but still spending more than she made.
About 10 years passed and she was starting to have problems with bills, etc. She stopped filing taxes because she always owed money. (she still hasnt filed taxes). Her car was about to be repo'd, she went to a lawyer who filed another bankruptcy. She still couldn't pay her bills. By this time, my husband and I lived in our home, which my in laws bought us for a 10th anniversary gift (they have lots of money - we don't, but they do). I also knew how to budget though because my husband is an electrician and doesn't make much and I'm mainly a housewife but have had jobs occasionally. So, I took over her finances. I got her bills and all the checks and the debit card. I gave her food and gas and cigarette money and paid the bills. She didn't have anything left over, but things were paid and she had food. She did fine with this for about three or four months and then she called me and told me that she had bought a dog carrier and some things for the dog and some clothes for herself. She said it was a reward for "doing so good". I asked how she did that, since I had the check books and she said she had kept one for emergencies. Well, I told her how she doesn't have the money in the bank for that, and she said yes she does, she had called. That money had already been spent on bills, that were in the mail! So, I didn't put my money in her account and I let her stuff bounce and I gave her stuff back and told her she was on her own. She got really mad but struggled and called me every day to b*tch about not having this or that or other things, yaddah yaddah, yaddah. She never got caught back up.
After she retired,and moved in with us (we had moved to the country, sold the Bham house and bought this one here) and she was having serious problems so I tried once again. I opened a joint account with her. My husband, me, and her. She had no checks or debit cards. She was ahead this time. We were fine. My husband and I went out of town for a week and while we were gone, we had left her the debit card but told her not to use it. Again, she went out and spent everything, even money that had already been earmarked for other things. That threw us into debt.
We got out of debt, she didn't. She moved across the road. She still bounced checks all over town, but usually nobody did anything to her because of her age. She was 70 by then, and in bad health, so she didn't think they would arrest her. She was surprised when they came out and took her to jail. She had known that she had the checks and had the money to pay them, but she bought other things instead. She said "I don't have it". I let her stay in overnight. She had never been arrested before and she was taken to Perry County and put in one of those little horrible, nasty, country jails. Well, she didn't learn anything. I went to visit the judge and made up some stuff about how bad her mental state was and health, etc, and promised him she would pay on the checks monthly. She did that for about 5 months then stopped. They have just now sent her something telling her she has to pay, and she's upset again, but I'm not getting invovled this time. This was five years ago that it started and they just now figured out that she stopped paying.
When she broke her hip, I did her grocery shopping and bill paying for her. Because I bought generic stuff, she got upset, but that was all the money she had. She refused to eat. She lost weight and got sick, even though I was cooking for her. She was so depressed because she had no money. However, her bills were paid and she had a fridge and cabinet full of food! Her dog had food, she had cigarettes. She bounced checks on the Home Shopping Network. She still hasn't filed taxes. She didn't notify GMC credit where she was living so they couldn't repo her car. She was stealing her car!
! Her car finally died though. So, because she couldn't eat generic food (I suppose she must have a very sophisticated and delicate palate) she called my MIL, told her that we had spent all her money, but didn't tell her that we spent it on her bills and food, and borrowed money from her (which she never did or will pay back) and had my son cash the check and go to the store and buy all the name brands. After that she sent him shopping for her every month and to pay the few bills that she pays. She gave him $100 every month for doing that. That completely undermined everything we were trying to do for him, because he had quit school (she was on his checkout list in high school and he would call her to come check him out at least three times a week because he just wanted to come home, and she would do it because she knew we wouldnt) after the third time in 9th grade, due to absences, and he wouldn't find a job or do anything but lay on the couch. He was 17 or 18 at the time, and on probation for smoking pot. We didn't give him any money because he would spend it all on weed! We told her not to give him any money, but she did, simply because we said not to. Even knowing what he would spend it on, she gave it to him because we said not to. (He has turned his life around completely now though and I'm very proud of him, that was just a rough patch, and luckily it was only pot that he got into and nothing worse and nothing really bad like stealing or vandalism).
Now, if we don't give her money, she calls my oldest son and gets money from him. He's got a gf and a baby to support and makes $17 an hour as superintendant of the job at the VA hospital (construction) but she calls him several times a week for cigarettes, or cat food, or McDonalds and he drives to town to get it for her!
She used to have really nice things, but has given them away. She didn't want them, or she wanted to give them to somebody else so they would be grateful, and now she has nothing but an old torn up (cat) couch and an old torn up (dog) chair and the leather recliner she's renting to own, a tv that she did rent to own, a card table for the old 15 year old slow computer (which she actually bought broadband for, and you can't even tell a difference between broadband and dialup on this, but she had to have it because we got it), an old kitchen table that we gave her, her really nice queen size bed from when she had the good furniture (she gave most of it away to friends) and a pressed wood chest of drawers from Wal Mart.
This is not something that someone who had her job and made the kind of money and inherited the kind of money that she did should have! She refused to listen to me, and she actually did the opposite of whatever I would ask her/tell her to do. She even did this with my kids. When my oldest son was little, the doctor had advised that we take him off all processed sugar. At that time, we didn't have much money and had food stamps and I shopped once a month. All the food we had was cheap and did have the processed sugar in it, and she was working and had money at the time, so I asked her if she would go to the store for me and get me some things without the sugar in them and I gave her a list of what we needed. I told her we were taking Eric off sugar. She said sure she would, and would go after work. That afternoon she came over with bags and bags of groceries. Every last thing was full of sugar, plus she had bought two bags of things like cookies, ice cream, candy, yogurt etc. My husband and I both said "We said no sugar! We have all this already!" She said "you cant take that baby off sugar!" My husband said "the doctor said to!" she said "Well you didnt tell me THE DOCTOR said to!". It shouldn't matter who said to, we are his parents. So, we had to borrow money from my in laws to get the food, and I gave all that stuff to a neighbor with little kids. We did pay my MIL back though, unlike her. Another time, when we had gotten him off the bottle (I nursed the other kids, but I worked when he was a baby) she kept him over the weekend and got him right back on the bottle. She undermines and goes behind us and does the opposite of anything we tell her.
She has helped us out a whole lot when we first got married, and sometimes when she gets her check and we have no cash, she lets us have 40 or 50 dollars, but we give it right back that Friday (her check comes on Wednesdays). I just don't know what to do anymore. Her health is really bad, and on Thanksgiving of 08, she had told me that she had a vision that told her she was going to die in April of 09. (My family believes in that and also Hoodoo, which is what I do for side money - readings, oils, candles, spells etc). So, I did a spell for her. She asked me to and gave me some hair. The spell I did was where I gave up four years of my own life to allow her to live two more years. I told her this and she didn't even say "thank you" she said "well, lets hope it works!" This coming April will be the end of the two years and she's already started on trying to get me to do another one. I'm not so sure that I want to give up four more years of my life, and she's already saying that I'm just selfish and don't care about her.
She is honestly the most ungrateful and wasteful person on the planet. She will go along with anything that anybody else says if it makes her look good. She has lied about me, my husband, her friends, her ex co-workers, etc, everybody. Serious lies that have gotten people in trouble, simply because she gets praise and attention from others for doing it. She has offered to lie for me about my husband when I've been mad at him! I told her no thank you, Ill handle it. If she gets attention or money for it, she's all for it. She went to court and lied for a crazy friend of hers who was trying to get custody of her grandson from her daughter in law when the DIL left the woman's junkie son because of the drugs. My mother lied on the stand, because her friend Betty asked her to and gave her attention for it! I asked her how she could do that and she said "I went to confession Mary, calm down!"
She's freakin' crazy. But, she's my Mother and the only one I have and I have to do what I can for her, but we do argue and I don't take crap from her. She's not helpless and sweet, so if I fuss back at her, it's not some kind of being mean to the elderly. She's also as mean as a snake and sneaky as a cat.
Maybe that's why I'm insane
. Heredity.
Mary
(Sorry for the venting, but my life couldn't get any more Southern Gothic if Faulkner wrote about me. My Mother is only one of the cazy people in my life, and to be honest, I'm not so sane myself!)
