My In-Laws Sabotaged Us Financially

Brought to you by CHM, a budget-friendly, faith-based alternative to health insurance. chministries.org/budget Do you have any advice for how my husband and I can kind of keep ourselves financially safe? We're in an uncomfortable, like intertwined financial situation with his parents. They continue to make just egregiously terrible decisions with their money which ends up affecting us um we're trying to rebuild and move forward and we're in financial peace with our church um but their bad decisions keep kind of affecting us and i'm just looking at yeah paint us a full picture yeah yeah so a couple years back um we co-signed their mortgage i know i know what in the world what in the world caused that chain of events that's crazy work i don't i don't know if you guys recall there a couple years back there was a really weird housing bubble that happened um our state was really severely affected and so overnight we had just hundreds of people coming in from california paying all cash for houses yeah that happened a lot of places it's not a housing bubble it's just a in fact it's the opposite it was it made the housing inventory was basically nil right but that doesn't explain you co-signing yeah my my in-laws were in a rental that they'd been in forever they got a 45-day notice on their door because they got sold to someone for okay um they couldn't afford and there were no rental homes available to get into okay and so we kind of exhausted every option we could see and the only other kind of thing that looked like that would work would be to get them into a mortgage and get them into a home how old are they uh they're in their late 50s early 60s okay so there's already a dynamic that i hear here that you you i think you're hip to this otherwise you wouldn't be calling there's a lot of we talking about them and their marriage and their situation and somehow you guys have like sucked that into your marriage in your life and it's a four it's a four-wheel we instead of them and you guys yeah so yeah or imagine imagine what would you trade to have had a really hard conversation two to three to four years ago when they had to move into a two bedroom apartment versus the conversation y'all gonna have to have now right yeah like a bad hard conversation was gonna happen but it's gonna get worse yeah yeah we've had some really bad conversations and they don't end productively well and i think the time for talking quite honestly is is over the only thing you and your and your husband can do is control what you're going to do next yeah and so have you gotten out of this situation have you said guys you've got to refinance and get us off this loan i don't i don't care that the interest rates are what they are if that means you have to rent you cannot keep us caught up in this yeah um we have had that conversation they are not able to refinance us off because their credit and right which means you guys have to sell this house you sell the house you gotta sell it why not they flat out will not. 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Um, and that's our, our issue. So we've, we've. So have you said to them, okay, let's take money out of it. I know it's very hard to take money out of this equation, but have you spoken to them on a relationship, father, daughter, in-law, just trying to do life together and said, hey, here's what I'm most afraid of. This has already changed our relationship. And I don't know if you've noticed it, but gosh, we don't interact the same. When we end up on calls, it ends up, we get belligerent. We don't want to spend Thanksgiving together anymore. That bothers me because when I think about a family, I want in-laws that I can talk to on the phone. I want my husband to feel like his mom and dad have a great, Right. Have you talked to them on that level and said, I just don't like what it's doing relationally. And can you truthfully say that you like what this is doing to us and it's worth staying in this house? Can you really say that? Because it's not worth it for me. Have you talked to them on that level? I don't think we've come at it from that kind of an angle. I can definitely, definitely try that. Because that's I don't have. That's the truth. I mean, obviously, I mean, we can name a million reasons why financially it's bad for for both parties. but what i'm really seeing is the deterioration of you guys's relationship and i don't know if you have kids yet but that's certainly gonna affect grandkids it's certainly a good do you see what i'm saying my guess the kids actually is a major factor for us because they help watch our children and um my oldest has really severe special needs and so they're the only people that we can trust um to take care of him we don't have anyone else so that's that was what prompted us to do it in the first place we were like okay well this is like an investment in child care these are the people that like you know when you have a special needs kid respite is like really important because you just it's really exhausting and they're the only people that we can trust like my family doesn't help um so are they are they um are they well and i guess i want to challenge you on the word trust because maybe maybe maybe they're really good caring for your, your child, which is amazing, but you don't trust them. No, we don't. And that's definitely affected my, I think it's, I mean, like you said, it's affected everything. So, um, so, so let's, let's get down to the brass tacks. Are they, are they making their mortgage note every month? No. Um, two years ago I came home to a wage garnishment notice for my husband, um, because they had not been paying. Yeah. That was very upsetting. We cleaned up the mess, said you absolutely cannot be doing this. Like if you're going to miss a payment, we need to know we will cover the payment. Like do not do this to us again. Are you guys homeowners? Do you and your husband own a home? We do. Yes. We own a home. And so we told them this, we were very, they're like, Oh, of course, of course, of course, whatever. And I, we ran my husband's credit last month and there's two more. So, um, they're going to keep doing it. How are you doing financially? Like what's your margin look like? What's your debt look like? We're doing okay. We have joined Financial Peace because we came to the epiphany of we're trying to save them and we can't keep burning ourselves out saving them. So we're doing okay. Tell me real numbers. What baby step are you on? We're on baby step two. So we're paying off debt. We're getting, we have a little bit of a car loan left. We've got some student loans we need to knock out and then we can move forward. Our mortgage is only, I think it's 23 and a half percent of our take home pay. Yeah, because that's so that's the main thing, Brooklyn. And you already know this, but I'm saying it for anybody listening to this. There is you're stuck. Right. You did this this act and you know what it is now. You're regretful of it. You're like, I've learned my lesson. But the hard part is now you're saying, yes, man, you can't get back in the time machine and now you're in it. And so you've got to be doing the baby steps, which you are doing, because your only hope in this is to hope for the day that they see the light. But until then, you've got to be able to reach over when they don't pay the note. You've got to be able to reach over to protect your own self. you do, you see what I'm saying and so by you, you're doing the right thing now walking the baby steps getting out of this car loan getting out of this student loan and just having three to six months if I was in your shoes I might have six to eight months knowing that they have a mortgage how much is their mortgage, their mortgage is about 1700 a month, their HOA payment is 315 so between the two they're two grand a month so if I were you I'd probably always keep $2,000 in an account somewhere that's just in-law mistakes. You know what I mean? In-law mistakes. I would probably put a $2,000. Again, I'm projecting onto you in your margin. Okay, thank you. But I would put $2,000 in an account every month, make it a recurring bill. Oh, no, that sounds like a lot, John. We probably can't do that. Yeah, that's too much. We got teacher income in here. They're going to keep doing it, right? Right, but what you can do is if you have it one time in that account, So let's say we're going into October. Let's say for October, you say, I'm going to put the line item there, $2,000 a month. It's sitting there, sitting there. Come February, if they don't pay, you can reach into that, pay the rent. And then the next month, now you got to put it back on the budget again, $2,000. So it's kind of like what we would say a peaks and valleys account. So you're funding it. Whenever you use it, you have to refund it right away. And that's how this works. And for anybody listening, gosh, just remember, co-signing, guys, it is only there because the bank knows that person cannot pay. They will not pay. They cannot afford it. 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