So this will be fairly personal so I'm keeping it semi-anonymous. Quick back story first so you understand our situation. I'm currently a sophomore in college and trying to figure out how to get my family back on track financially. Also within the next year I'm going to be working towards using my student loans and working a part-time job to become more independent from my family, that way I can make sure I get through my academics. So a few years ago my grandfather passed away and my grandmother became fairly ill and unable to take care of herself. My mother then quit her job and moved (across the country) to take care of her. Also around this time she started spending money on some mobile games. It wasn't terrible at first, like $20/month. Anyways, her quitting her job meant about $100,000 loss in income. Needless to say bills took a hit and some shit happened? I don't know the details because my parents try and let me focus on school rather than stress over money.
We are extremely broke today. The car payments apparently fell behind and we lost the vehicle, some days we go without power, food can be scarce at times. If I'm being honest, this could all be handled much much better if we just stopped being so careless with money.
In terms of wasted spending there are three big things in my opinion
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$150-200/month on microtransactions in games (on a good month. Most months its much more than that)
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$40-60/month wasted by not buying cheaper-brands (my father prefers to spend a little extra to get healthier products
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and maybe $80-100 on fastfood each month as a result of my younger sibbling pitching fits because she doesn't understand how broke we are compared to a few years ago.
The last two things on that list are easily fixable and dont make up enough income to worry too much about. It's the monthly spending in games that kills us most. It's such a random number each month. $100 here, $80 there. It's unpredictable and hurts us a lot. My father and I have brought it up time and time and time and time again but she doesn't stop. I think it's a depression-coping mechanism for her. Which I understand, but it's hurting us and I don't know what to do.
She has multiple avenues of paying for these things. Sometimes its through facebook, or Google Play, and other times its through paypal. She switches it up so that my father doesnt pick up on it as much.
Now, I love my mother and she has worked very hard in her life to get amazing careers and provide a lot for me and my sibblings. I think she deserves to just chill and play her game but reality says otherwise. I'll be visiting her over break and I'm hoping to figure something out once and for all to solve this. I might plea with her some more, but I don't think it'll do much. Are there any ways I can maybe.. block her from making payments? Like I could put parental restrictions or block domains on her machines so she cant access them. I know it's stupid and I shouldn't limit my mother, but there are months at a time where the mortgage isn't paid and we just lost the car because those payments weren't being made. I just see no other option. Could my dad maybe call the bank and block purchases from Facebook and Google?
Anyways, I'm pretty lost. I was hoping some people here might have some helpful information in regards to my situation.
Edit: Thanks so much for the thoughtful responses, everyone! I'm gonna check on this sometime tomorrow once I have time but it's past midnight and its finals week so I need to catch some rest. Thanks again!
Submitted December 05, 2017 at 10:12PM by TriskaidekaphobicDot http://ift.tt/2ipzujl