My mom was recently widowed at age 70.
My first question immediately on hearing the news was asking where she was at financially, if that is a clue what mess she is in.
My stepdad was in poor health so it wasn't surprising when he passed. She has worked her whole life 40-60 hours a week in the nursing field and makes around 70k a year. They were also collecting his veteran benefits but since she is his second wife and was not married to him while he was in the service those are about to be cut sharply back. She can also collect around 2k a month in social security but that might mean cutting back her work hours.
She has no 401k or pension to speak of. They recently refinanced their house so might have 40-50k equity at most. In general they have lived a very expensive life style (expensive trips and toys, leasing cars etc) and now the that lifestyle is crashing down.
She was two credit cards at 11k that she is aware of, many other credit cards such as cosco etc of course all maxed out.
They had one pickup that they were paying $900 a month on that will go up for auction. Hopefully she only ends up owing 4-5k on that.
They had another car for her they paid $500 a month and owe 17-18k on still.
They had an RV they owed 68k and were making $700 dollar a month payments on. The dealership is just going to repose that.
They somehow had 3 phones and the monthly bill was around $800 (!) but she think that was to pay off one of the phones.
Selling his hobby cars and tools she is hoping to get around 10-12k.
In general she has a steady job and 7k in the bank at age 70 and we are estimating 50-60k in debt.
Since I feel most of these wounds are self inflicted I do want to help my mom out but not at the risk of bankrupting my family.
My sister had a good suggestion that my Mom contact a financial advisor or attorney to get everything straightened out and figure if debt consolidation was a good idea. I have no problem paying for such a service.
My question for you redditors is what type of financial advisor/attorney should I tell her to find near her? What would roughly the expected fees be and how can we verify we found a good one? I have no problem paying the fees but don't want to be milked or taken advantage of either.
Throw away account for obvious reasons!
Submitted February 28, 2021 at 05:08PM by throwawayhoney330330 https://ift.tt/2MB8Vuc
