How to 'let it go'?
Find a Conversation
| Fri, 07-10-2009 - 11:28pm |
I'm so upset tonight I could cry, go shopping and/or eat junk beyond belief. So, instead I'm posting here.
I think I've mentioned that in the past I loaned money to family and friends. I never charged any interest and they could pay it back however they needed to. It was usually fine. However, I tried to stop doing that in 2007 because a serious illness hospitalized my DS, expenses and bills went up, organization went out the window and all my zero/low interest cc's ended up going through the roof.
Last May my mother called me near hysterics because her last living brother's family called and said the hospice workers said "it's time to get here if you're coming." My mother had no other family left from the house she grew up in and she really wanted to go. The hitch she said was that she didn't have any cc's to charge plane tickets on and she needed a special oxygen machine to take with her on the plane. In the end, when I couldn't work out any other solutions, I ended up taking a card that I had paid off (with a limit of 7,800) and charging a $3,500 machine to convert regular air into her oxygen, plus the plane costs and some traveling items. The deal was that she'd make the payments out of her soc. sec. check every month and use my dad's bonus to pay off the balance. Since she was also worried about being thousands of miles away with nothing to fall back on, I called the automated system and requested a card in her name as an additional user. I was to wait for her card and mail it to my uncle's place when it came.
The day after she flew out I tried to use the card to prepay some cell minutes for her (we had forgotten that part) and it was denied. Turns out that my sudden use of the card that I had paid off almost a year earlier, for such a high amount, and the request to add a user, flagged a credit check and the company (that I'd never had any trouble with) decided to close my account completely - based on other info in my report.
Fine, there goes my debt to credit ratio that much further. I at least told myself it'd be ok because she was going to make the payments and pay it off around Jan when my dad got his bonus. Only she never did make a single payment. I had to come up with and make them all and then use my tax return and every spare cent to pay the card back off. She's never even offered and when I did start mentioning that the extra payment per month was hurting me and the kids she just blew me off. When I told her that I took all my tax return to pay it off instead of being able to pay it towards my debt or towards something fun for the kids and I, she had nothing to say then either. I've tried to chalk it up to her not being ABLE to pay it and not being able to talk about it.
TODAY she got a laptop - so much for not being able. I am working off an HP tower I bought 10 years ago. She knows that I'm dying for a laptop so that my DS in junior high can have the use of this dinosaur and I can use the laptop back and forth to work etc. I don't indulge in any luxury items so I can't have it. Honestly, lately some needed items aren't happening either without some really creative shuffling! I don't get how she can know that she owes me ~6K (original principal + the minimum payments I made at the cc's interest rate)and buy a laptop.
I'm tired, frustrated, and literally sick of this crushing debt (1/4 of which really belonged to her) while she seems fine. Oh, and while I was doing some chores today at her house I saw a folded piece of paper that said "401K as gifts to X and X". X and X are my older and younger sisters!!!!! The relationship between my mother and I has always been strained at best but at this point I wish it were nonexistent!
I know I'm going to have to let it go and once it was paid off in April I hadn't mentioned it again and had pretty much forced myself to quit thinking of it, but honestly when I saw her with that laptop it all came rushing back and who knows what the piece of paper means but it certainly didn't have all three of her daughters names on it!
So, who here has let a family member or close friend do something like this to them and gotten over it? How? Keep in mind that my ex royally screwed me out of tons more money than this and the years it'll take to pay it off (toward the end of our marriage and during the divorce), but I think that this hurts worse! (Something along the lines of 'you can't necessarily trust marital relationships once they tank but you outta be able to trust your mom forever'.
Lissa

Lissa
I am so sorry. How do you get over something like this happening to you. YOU DON"T I had a person not a family member but a person that I thought was a dear friend. She hurt me very deeply and it is now 10 years later and each time I pass her house the hurt comes back like it was yesterday.
Lissa I'm sorry this has turned out this way. I would say; since you never had a great relationship with her, sit down and come out and just tell her you are willing to work with her for payment and if she doesn't want to do that; then small claims court. I see it all the time. I know it is harsh but you have yourself and children to take care of (((HUGS)))
Colleen