Latest news with #moneyissues
Yahoo
01-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
After Years of Unpaid Loans, Woman Tells Sister 'No More Money Without a Written Agreement'
The woman wants to help — but not without a written agreement after years of lending money with little paybackNEED TO KNOW A woman says she'll only lend her sister more money if she signs a repayment plan The sister is offended and claims she's being treated like a stranger, not family Their parents say to let it go, but the woman is tired of being the fallback planA woman turns to the Reddit community for advice following an emotional clash with her older sister over a financial boundary she says she can no longer ignore. After years of lending money with little repayment, she's reached a breaking point. 'I have loaned my older sister money a few times over the past few years,' she explains, adding, 'Nothing huge, usually a few hundred here, maybe a thousand once, but it's added up.' Despite those repeated efforts to help, she says her sister has never really paid her back, only sending small amounts at random and offering ongoing excuses. From lost jobs to bad breakups and car trouble, the sister's reasons vary, but the result is the same: the money rarely comes back. 'I never made a big deal out of it,' she writes. 'She's my sister, I love her, and I know she's had a rough few years.' But this time, when her sister asked for $2,000 to help with rent after a roommate suddenly moved out, she felt something shift. 'And honestly I snapped a little,' she admits. Instead of just sending the money, she offered a compromise. 'I told her I could help but only if she signs a basic agreement this time saying she'll pay it back within a year.' She emphasizes it isn't anything formal or legal, just a simple document outlining a clear repayment timeline. But her sister doesn't take it well. 'She got super offended,' the poster reveals. 'Said I'm treating her like some random borrower, not family.' The older sister insists she would never take advantage of her, despite what the poster sees as a long history of exactly that. 'She would never screw me over,' the sister says, but the poster quickly adds, 'Even though... she kind of already has.' The tension rises as the poster stands firm, trying to explain that it's not about lacking trust but about needing boundaries. 'I told her this isn't about trust, it's about boundaries,' she shares. 'I'm not a bank.' She also points out the strain these loans place on her own finances, saying, 'I'm not exactly rich, I'm just better at budgeting and don't live paycheck to paycheck like she does.' But the disagreement soon expands beyond the two sisters. Now, their parents are involved, urging her to give in for the sake of family. 'They're telling me to just let it go, that family helps family,' she writes, clearly frustrated by the added pressure. Still, she stands by her conditions. 'I'm just tired of being the fallback plan with no accountability,' she says. Though willing to help if her sister agrees to the terms, she doesn't want to continue giving with no expectations. 'If she was just paying all the loans I gave to her, I would not mind giving it,' she adds. As she opens up to the Reddit community under the 'Advice Needed' tag, she's not just asking about the money. She's asking if setting limits makes her the bad guy. One commenter offers a validating response: 'You're not a bank. Setting limits doesn't make you the bad guy.' Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. In the end, she's left wondering if drawing a line with family is fair — or if it turns her into something she never wanted to be. Read the original article on People Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Dave Ramsey: What To Do If Someone Asks for Their Monetary Gift Back
Depending on the closeness of friends and family members, a financial gift can either come as a genuine support or it might come with invisible strings that prove to be more complicated than the money is worth. Only you can make that call. Find Out: Read Next: A young man called into finance expert Dave Ramsey's show, 'The Ramsey Show,' with a related problem: His grandmother had given him and his wife a gift of $9,000 to be used as they saw fit: for wedding planning, toward a home purchase or whatever they wanted, saying that she did not expect the money back. Over time, however, Grandma started fishing for personal financial information, such as how they were doing financially, which made the caller nervous. Soon, Grandma now not only wanted her money back, she wanted it back with interest, to the tune of around $12,000. With a household income, after taxes, of around $70,000, $12,000 is a lot of money for the caller and his wife to pay back. Here's what Dave Ramsey recommended they do (and what lessons can you take away from this story). Ramsey took the side of the caller, saying, 'You do not morally owe her a dime.' He suggested that the caller could just as easily take Grandma to task by reminding her that she had patently called the money a gift and was now reneging on that agreement. He told the caller he would be within his rights not to pay her back. However, Ramsey said he suspected the likely result of doing so was that Grandma would become 'Mt. Vesuvius, because she likes to pull people's strings, and when they don't dance at the end of her string, she has a little fit.' The caller agreed this was likely, given Grandma's history of doing similar things to his parents. Ramsey suggested that a person in this position has to make a choice between keeping the peace and doing what feels 'right' to them, which might include maintaining peace in family or being able to literally go home for the holidays. Learn More: Assuming correctly that the caller did not want to handle emotional upheaval or family drama, Ramsey suggested another alternative, a more practical, if disappointing, choice: to pay Grandma back, even though that wasn't the original agreement. Even within this scenario he urged the caller to think through his options that included making a payment plan and staying tethered to a manipulative relative for a long stretch of time, paying off only exactly the amount 'gifted,' or paying off the total 'plus interest' as Grandma now claimed they owed. The choice was the caller's. If the caller opted to pay Grandma back, Ramsey recommended getting the money paid off as quickly as possible — saving it in an account until it was all there — and making a clean break. However, he did warn that Grandma's manipulations might not stop there. If they paid the extra interest she was now 'charging,' he suggested she might suddenly find a way to keep asking for more. Sometimes, a hard boundary is necessary. It was up to the caller to decide. To recap, Ramsey's suggestions for your choices in a situation where a gift has been given and then rescinded include: Tell the person sorry, you're keeping what was given freely and deal with the fallout. Pay the person back either all at once or set up a payment plan, but only the amount given and not a penny more. Pay back the full amount with interest to keep a complicated relationship from getting worse. If any of these options don't appeal, or don't apply, you can also: Look into mediation with a neutral third party to try to reach a peaceful resolution. Speak with a financial therapist to work out complicated emotions before making a decision. Seek legal advice if the person threatens court action. Write a formal letter clarifying the original terms of the gift and your intended course of action. Get documentation in writing to prevent future misunderstandings if you choose to repay. Establish a firm boundary and step back from communication for a period of time. Consult a consumer protection attorney if harassment or manipulation continues. No matter what option you choose, get it in writing and have it witnessed and notarized. Additionally, it's probably a good time to lean into very clear communication and get everything in writing when it comes to financial gifts. More From GOBankingRates 3 Luxury SUVs That Will Have Massive Price Drops in Summer 2025 How Far $750K Plus Social Security Goes in Retirement in Every US Region Clever Ways To Save Money That Actually Work in 2025 This article originally appeared on Dave Ramsey: What To Do If Someone Asks for Their Monetary Gift Back
The Guardian
12-07-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Money issues? The financial psychotherapist will see you now
I am surprised that Vicky Reynal, a financial psychotherapist, is soft and reaffirming when I meet her. Perhaps I shouldn't be – she is a therapist, after all. But something about her line of work, helping people untangle their issues with money, had primed me to expect someone more brisk, more clinical. I think of how many business executives she meets with, how prohibitively expensive her time must be, and how strong her boundaries probably are. I even panic at the thought of logging into our Zoom meeting one minute late, because time, after all, is money. Reynal, I'm sure, would find this compelling. She believes that we often have thoughts and feelings about money that actually have nothing to do with cold, hard cash, and everything to do with our earliest emotional experiences, deepest yearnings or misgivings. It can be frustrating, then, that Reynal won't talk much about herself. I'm genuinely curious – especially when I ask about her fascination with Warren Buffett, whom she has read extensively about and once met in person. She admits she was drawn to him growing up, but offers only vague hints as to why: references to formative financial experiences and the symbolic weight he held within her family, though she declines to elaborate. As a psychotherapist, she tries to obscure her own life from her clients, to prevent it obstructing their process. Anonymity, it turns out, is a very good therapeutic tool. 'People try to guess where I'm from, and their guesses tell me so much about their internal world. Some people who have very strict and ungiving parents guess that maybe I'm eastern European, because of how cold they perceive me to be. Others guess I am Mediterranean or South American – from a warm country – because of how loving and giving [they think] I am.' When Reynal was younger and went through therapy herself, she had a transformative experience working through some of the feelings about money. This, she thought, must be an area ripe for psychotherapeutic practice. But after nearly a decade studying psychology and psychotherapy, she was surprised to find that only a handful of research papers and textbooks directly focus on it. 'I thought, 'Wait a minute, we are talking about our relationship with food, with sex, with people, why aren't we talking about people's relationship with money?' It comes in the therapy room anyway, because it's part of leading a life and people get into all sorts of messes because of it – and as therapists we have the lens to understand that.' When Reynal began to explicitly market herself as a financial psychotherapist, she was suddenly overwhelmed by patients queueing up to talk to her. Her inbox was full of emails from would-be clients, telling her how relieved they were to find her. 'They were saying: 'I didn't know a money psychotherapist existed, and I need your help,'' she says. She sees some clients on a concession fee or a reduced rate, as they may be unemployed or struggling with debt. But others don't need it. These are patients who know what they need to do when it comes to money on a rational level, but they just can't bring themselves to do it: the client who obsessively buys shoes, or the one that can't bring himself to buy basic things like a coat in the winter, because he feels a deep and bewildering desire to deny himself nice things – despite having more than ample means to buy them. Others have more than enough cash, but can't find contentment. They come to her thinking: 'Maybe you won't judge me, for being wealthy and yet unhappy.' Finances are central to how we relate to the world. The way we deal with our income affects our families, shapes our conversations with partners, and can cast long shadows over our relationship to our parents. But as with so much in therapy, when people think they are coming to talk about money, it is actually not about the money at all. And beneath all that, it often reflects the lessons we absorbed growing up. 'It's just a language that we use, because I think it's easier to say: 'You are being stingy,' than to say: 'I wish you were more affectionate with me,' or 'I don't feel you love me enough,' or 'I love you more than you love me,'' says Reynal. She also meets clients who are struggling to make ends meet, who have the sense that they are being childish and impulsive with money – they feel belittled by the way that they spend. When Reynal raises this, I can't help but wonder whether her clients attach those negative descriptions to themselves because in the US and the UK, poverty is often described as being about bad choices rather than broader economic conditions. Most of us can point to relationships in our lives – certainly with ourselves – where the way in which we spend serves as a proxy for something deeper. The colleague who is a constant under-tipper, who feels hard done by despite always contributing least to the bill; the sibling who works like a dog but can never, ever ask for a raise; the friend who constantly feels on the edge of financial ruin, despite having more than enough. So what are the subconscious motivators beneath these interactions? Reynal will often see clients who come in to talk to her about one thing: for example, a recurring frustration that they are always too generous and give far beyond their means, even to the point that it leaves them feeling resentful and angry; which in turn leads to a conversation about people pleasing and where the urge to put others' needs first came from in their life. Those behaviours, it turns out – just like infidelity or drug use, or any of the more obvious topics that we associate with therapy – may originate from a time in our lives when we felt unsatisfied. An incredibly generous person might have struggled to fit in during their teenage years, while another's hunger for wealth might be due to an unmet need to be loved by their caregiver as a baby or feeling constantly rejected or dismissed as a child. 'They are non-obvious links on the surface … but they help us get to the real longing underneath, the real unmet desire.' Her practice has helped her understand broader shifts, too. She remains shocked at how social media use has led to an unprecedented level of lifestyle inflation. People are no longer comparing their lives with their neighbours, but to totally unattainable lifestyles displayed by people paid to look rich. 'There's this manic level of social comparison,' she says. 'People begin to believe that everyone has more money than they do. A lot of clients of mine are men who come under an enormous amount of pressure because they have taken on mortgages bigger than they could afford or cars that they couldn't afford. They have to accept that they have failed against their own standards, or the shame of not being able to provide what their family wanted or was hoping for.' In some ways, it's no surprise that many of her clients feel a sense of relief after finding her. These kinds of struggles aren't often met with much sympathy – especially in an economy where so many are simply trying to make ends meet. 'There's this idea that is quite common that money will fix everything. And of course, if you are struggling to pay your bills, money would make that better. But to make the leap that if people have money they must be happy, or they have no right to be unhappy – that's a big leap,' she says. She lists many of the ways that people struggle with wealth. Some clients have more than their families did, and self-sabotage as a result, perhaps believing they don't deserve it. They don't invoice clients properly for work, or feel guilty when there's a lot of money in their account. Others spend money extravagantly, almost to rid themselves of it. And in the therapy room she often learns about how the stories clients have heard growing up affect them: if their families thought of wealth as immoral or greedy, for example, what does that say about them if they become wealthy? But Reynal also stresses the many stabilizing and positive relationships people have with money – like feeling empowered after years of struggle, or wanting to be financially independent because it is freeing. 'It's not about stripping emotions out of financial decisions,' she says. 'It's about becoming aware of them.' In that sense, she invites readers to be inquisitive about their own attitudes towards money, how they spend it, and where their own beliefs about financial security come from. 'We can't all afford therapy. But opening up that curiosity can be enough: why am I buying this thing? Or why am I feeling guilty about spending money on that thing, if I have enough for it? What's the longing behind that?' she says. Some may think there are just a number of different ways to split the bill. But for those who look deeper, they may just find out something new about themselves.
Washington Post
20-06-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Is it okay to hide money from my spouse? Readers ask Michelle Singletary.
I frequently talk about my grandmother, Big Mama. She was my go-to for financial wisdom. When I'm faced with a money issue, I think about what she might say. Over the years, I've tried to be like my grandmother and become the person with the answers for a lot of readers.
