Before I begin, I need to state that he's not my step-father, legally, as they never married. However, he has helped raise me and has lived with me and my mother since I was about 7 to 8. I'm 24 now.
pre-note: when I use "the past x years", I simply mean thats how long I know or believe it has been going on for.
My mother has always been awful and budgeting and finances. She doesn't save and immediately increases her spending after getting additional income, even if her spending habits had already put her into debt. My step-father (who was thirty when they met) was not well off when they met and my mother helped him get on his feet early in the relationship when they moved in together.
Since living together, as far as I know, they quickly moved towards joint accounts and leaving finances to my mother as my step-father is a bit ignorant of finances. He worked as a contractor most of his life and now works in heating and cooling making ~60k per year with good union benefits. My mother has been an insurance underwriter most of her life and currently makes around ~120k per year, up from ~90k last year. Recently (past 5+ years, from my knowledge, though it may be more), she has been taking advantage of him financially and in my opinion has been keeping him around for his income. She co-signed for one of my student loans in his name without his knowledge at the time. As far as I know, she has been accruing debt in his name and opening accounts in his name without his knowledge. She has three cars, two of which she is leasing. Essentially, he doesn't see his income at all and feels trapped.
Now, over the past 3 - 4 years, she has gotten into a serious gambling problem. This sprouted after a time of depression as she didn't like where she was in life. She saw a therapist, got on medication, and seemingly recovered.
After that is when the gambling began as she tried to fill a void in her life. She doesn't have any friends or hobbies. She buries herself in work. This was all while I was away at college. Originally, I tried being supportive, tried getting her to support groups, tried getting her to go out and find hobbies and friends, helped her pay her mortgage to make sure she didnt default, etc. Eventually, I put my foot down and told her that she needed to be responsible for her own actions and that I was jeopardizing my future going into so much debt personally for this. She accepted that, declared chapter 7 bankruptcy around the beginning of 2016, and seemingly recovered. I now found out that it has gotten much worse to the point that she sleeps in her car or spends entire nights or weekends at casinos spending the entirety of her money. Barring the new cars she just started leasing (she now has 3), she has a $1250 per month mortgage that I believe is in her name but they split, about 400 - 500 monthly food bill, and 200 monthly on cigarettes. They don't vacation much at all.
It went into overdrive this past year as she was diagnosed with breast cancer about one month after I moved to another state for work in June of 2016. She went through surgery, did some chemo, and finished up her treatments this past month. Now, she might have lung cancer. My step-father has been constantly and consistently supportive the entire time, but is frustrated by the fact that he can never talk about financials with her without her fighting and deflecting. She has been manipulating him and lying to him for years to control his finances.
Now, here's the financial question: My step-father is a simple man without much knowledge on finances or technology. Until an hour ago, he didn't know he could pull a credit report on himself to find out what debt he has as he has always left it in her hands and was frustrated about not knowing what is even in his name. I need advice on how to get him out of this mess. He has no savings besides his 401k, and I believe he has no personal checking account (only a joint with my mother). I know the first step is to help him find out what debt is in his name from his yearly credit report, but I have no idea where to go from there. I apologize if the back-story was too personal, but I feel that I need to get across that I've spoken to her many times about finances and how she treats my step-father.
Submitted August 13, 2017 at 01:23PM by kadaeux http://ift.tt/2uD4YHj
