How do you handle supporting in-laws?

[PhiloMed]

If your in-laws are paying tax on their Social Security, they need a financial planner to tell them how to cut that down. I mean, they must be bringing in a decent income, unless all of it is going to rent. Ugh, we lived in the NY metro area. Tax on city wages is brutal…like in Philly. However, I think a family meeting with the sons and a financial planner is in order.

Because of the language and cultural barriers, they would never meet with anyone. But yes, there are ways to shelter more of what they get so as not to pay so much. Unfortunately, they chose not to take my husband’s advice and now they owe a bit. Essentially everything they make goes to rent, utilities Etc.

Funny you mention the philly area. My company has an enormous office in Upper Gwynned, PA and while I work in a different office in a different state my co-workers often comment that even though we are all paid a similar salary they “make” more because their cost of living is so much less than what it is where I am.

 

[PhiloMed]

UPDATE:

Houses are much like chain-smoking in-laws. You never know when the big one will hit.

I came home from work tonight to find that rain water was pouring (yes, pouring) through the vent hood over the stove. The babysitter was trying to dry up the water around the gas burners, but none of them would light because they had become waterlogged.

Awesome.

We live in a small enough town that you have a “guy” for everything and usually know them by name. I texted my carpentry and electrical “guy” with the crisis and he came over in 30 minutes. He jumped out one of the upstairs Windows onto the roof and put a big tarp over the spot and seemed to stop or at least slow the leak. Promised to call the roofer “guy” tonight and be back in the AM. The stove hood vents to the roof and the cap as well as a chunk of the roof is loose. He seemed perplexed because the roof was inspected last spring and was fine. True. But someone can have a normal EKG and drop dead of a heart attack the next day. An intact roof one year ago is not a promise of no leaks after 12 months, a blizzard, an ice storm, and now more rain.

Did I mention DH isn’t home tonight because he’s teaching? Doesn’t matter much because what he teaches at the business school has nothing to do with how to fix a leaking roof in a rain storm.

The kids were troopers and earned some delivery food. More importantly, I wasn’t going to turn the stove on.

DH was updated accordingly and since he functions best under a crisis he said we need to re-evaluate where we put our funds since we now have bigger problems than an incontinent fridge. He’s also going to have a chat with his brother about a long term plan for the in-laws and maybe they can split the contribution. Otherwise, he will tell them he can give what he can give which may not be the same every month (like when a chunk of roof comes loose) and they need to plan accordingly.

We’re also going to work on building the emergency fund. The good news is that a roof and a stove hood are fixable and we can manage it. We just have money scattered in different places and it looks like we don’t.

I didn’t tell him i also had take-out tonight, but he’ll figure it out when he scavenges the fridge at 11pm after getting home from class.