Personal Finance: The Cautionary Tale of My Mother-in-Law \ stacker news ~econ

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Personal Finance: The Cautionary Tale of My Mother-in-Law

813 sats \ 34 comments \ @Undisciplined 21h econ

A self help book with a dumb title arrived at our house. It was about making more money for people who are terrible at personal finance. I suspect the author is pretty good at making money, though.

It turned out to be my mother-in-law's book that she sent to the wrong address. So, now even more money needs to be spent on getting this stupid book to her house.

Why does a woman who should be retired need such a book, anyway? Only because she and her husband, despite having both worked long semi-prestigious careers, have no assets between them and they live so far beyond their means (retirement accounts and pensions worth about 2x the median family income) that she needs to continue earning greater and greater income.

In her 70's, she embarked on a new career and is attempting to build up her own business around it. However, being terrible at managing finances has led her to reading dumb generic self help books in a hopeless attempt to make her business profitable before she is no longer able to work. It's a ridiculous situation.

Stay humble and stack sats, so you aren't reading dumb self help books about earning more money when you should be long retired.

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34 sats \ 1 reply \ @guerratotal 3h

Brutal reminder that high income ≠ wealth. Lifestyle inflation destroys more futures than bad luck ever will. Stay humble, stay simple… and stack sats. Freedom isn’t about earning more, it’s about needing less.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 3h

Well put

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @Signal312 5h

I definitely understand the frustration, in terms of close family members being really bad with money. And then, after a long chain of horrible decisions, asking for financial help.

But if it weren't for the whole "didn't save anything, spent way beyond my means, and MUST scramble for money now", I'd really admire the initiative someone in their 70's starting a business, or staying active and making money some other way.

So many people in their 70's (and 60's) are sitting around, not doing much, watching a lot of videos, or taking cruise after cruise (if they have money to spare). As for me, I want to be as busy as is compatible with happiness when I hit that age.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 5h

I agree. I actually doubt she's the kind of person who would ever fully retire, but she could be working a manageable part-time schedule doing work she finds fulfilling. Instead, we're pretty concerned that she's just going to work herself to death.

103 sats \ 4 replies \ @grayruby 21h

Some people will go to great lengths to avoid simply living within their means and saving in Bitcoin.

271 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 21h

If they had saved in anything it would have been better. Somehow, they never accumulated any home equity, even though they were "homeowners" for decades.

The part I find most annoying is that they feel like they can't retire even though they'd have double the median household income and no dependents. There's absolutely no reason to be stressing about earning money.

94 sats \ 2 replies \ @grayruby 21h

My father in law is doing quite well with the portfolio I had my wife build for him. We ended up doing 15% Bitcoin which was heavier than planned but he wanted us to buy more when Bitcoin dropped into the 70s. His average cost is around 90k.

50 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined OP 21h

Wow! Good instincts.

111 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 20h

It's good because since I didn't want to manage the portfolio just advise, my wife manages it, so she is learning to. She never really had an investment account before. She just let me deal with all of that.

257 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 21h

It's really startling to me how many successful people are nevertheless quite clueless when it comes to money management. So much so that an entire industry is built around helping people manage their money better, even though most people could do it themselves if they were just willing to learn.

But, going back to our previous discussion (#989851), part of problem is that it's hard to discover high quality sources to learn from. So much of the money management industry is also "self help", but they don't always give good advice, and some self help gurus are outright scammers.

130 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 21h

Yeah, I've noticed way more ads for services like that in the past few weeks. Maybe that's a recession indicator.

I think there was a generational thing about not wanting to think about money. Ironically, feeling that it's materialistic to think about money leads to unsustainable consumption.

50 sats \ 5 replies \ @BlokchainB 20h

I have sympathy for people such as this. Wall Street and Big Retirement sucker people into thinking we need these massive retirement portfolios to live a simple life. So now this woman is 70 and still on the hamster wheel when she should be living everyday to the fullest as her time on this earth is short.

62 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 20h

It's really a refusal to live a simple life.

40 sats \ 3 replies \ @BlokchainB 20h

Sad! That’s my retirement plan. Pay off a home just worry about food and taxes unfortunately.

149 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 20h

We're trying to figure out if there's some way to sufficiently scale down our expenses to basically do that now. Probably not, but we bought a bigger home than we need before interest rates started rising and before prices finished rising, so we have some excess equity to throw at a project like that if we move.

36 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 20h

House inflation might derail my plans as well but in the next 5-10 years hopefully I have that figured out completely

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 19h

House price inflation relative to fiat is a thing of the past. The price of money declined more or less steadily from the late 1980s until after Covid. Now it cannot decline further and is likely to rise or stay around where it is for the foreseeable. House price increases are thus not likely in the future...more probable - a gradual decline.

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37 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 10h

What was her semi prestigious career? I ask to tell people what to avoid

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 6h

I don't want to divulge that. She had a "professional" job that most people respect.

The job itself wasn't the bulk of the problem. The problem was completely squandering their wealth, by living beyond their ample means.

40 sats \ 5 replies \ @Coinsreporter 15h

My grandpa and granny have gone long before. They were farmers. They had good amount of land but now when distributed among us all, my father is four bothers, it is not much money. But it's still satisfactory to have some to practice sovereignty.

To my mother astrology is all that matters in her 60s. My father helps in our logistics business but I doubt he wishes to work for money. Our culture just makes people non-wishful for riches ans money when they turn around 50.

I'm glad to know your grandma still has some wishes left for life.

17 sats \ 4 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 6h

If she enjoyed what she was doing, I would feel entirely differently. However, she's very stressed about making ends meet and seems to be doing this primarily out of necessity.

26 sats \ 3 replies \ @Coinsreporter 5h

Well I guess the difference in our culture is so big that I can't understand the depth. Here we all live together. Especially we don't leave our elders on their own.

Don't mean to criticize here but if our parents or grandparents ever have to work out of necessity, we won't let them.

17 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 5h

It is a big difference. My wife has tried to help them with their finances, but they won't listen.

As I mentioned in the post, she only has to work because their spending is out of control. They have a guaranteed income, from retirement accounts and pensions, of two median American families.

24 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinsreporter 4h

Then it's upto them. If anyone is in the habit of overspending, noone can save him from misery.

Because we take family as an institution and a necessary way of life, our elders start listening to the kids once they grow up. We have a tradition of keeping one as 'Head man' of the family who just decides in family matters and others oblige.

17 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 4h

Yeah, Americans don't really listen to anyone, regardless of stage of life.

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36 sats \ 2 replies \ @realBitcoinDog 14h

Your MIL isn’t asking you for money? win

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined OP 6h

They have before, but aren't currently. One of their other daughters married someone who makes a lot more money than I do and lives closer to them, so they're his problem now.

38 sats \ 0 replies \ @realBitcoinDog 4h

Mwahahaha

35 sats \ 0 replies \ @398ja 12h

Stay humble and stack sats, so you aren't reading dumb self help books about earning more money when you should be long retired.

Amen!

44 sats \ 2 replies \ @Aardvark 20h

Sounds like my dad. He's in his 70's and pushing a broom for extra money.

52 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 19h

The contrast with my parents is really dramatic, even though they stink at managing money too

My parents just stayed in the same house for over 30 years and had chosen to live in a beautiful place. The house appreciated like crazy, in nominal terms, so they have plenty of money now that they sold it.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 19h

Some people struggle to cope with a life without work. They lose sense of purpose and order. The fiat debt slavery financial system farms them to the end.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @3a42879d5f 18h

What part of humility is making assumptions and passing judgement?

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 18h

You tell me. I'm talking about someone I know very well personally. Are you?