My mum as well
The wife and I have a mortgage and credit cards but its not unmanagable, we're both working so we'll be OK in the long run. My mum's a bit different though.

Like scentless_apprentice, I too had a few afternoons hiding from knocks on the door in my youth and finding demands of payments in the washing pile, so I suppose I should have seen it coming.

My dad died suddenly 9 years ago when I was 24, and it hit us hard. As he was working, he had various pension schemes / trust funds etc. to provide for this eventuality. The mortgage on the house was paid off and we think my mum then got around £250,000 to set her up for life. She could have invested it, bought property, divided some between the kids (there were 5 of us) or just put it in a bank and lived off the interest for life. I don't know the full story as my mums unable to tell the truth, even to solicitors and advisors.

Basically the money pissed through her fingers. Spending on meals out became weekends out with 'friends'. Loans of £200 became £2000 and providing a new kitchen to a couple that we know of. Christmas for the 3 grandkids was like walking into a toystore and she'd spend her early days addicted to QVC and buying anything and everything from it. Some stuff is still stacked in boxes in the front room. We think most of the cash went when she was spending 4 years working for a one man applicance centre, when she wasn't taking any wages and supporting the business herself which was hemmoraging cash, which we only found out after it closed down because my mum had run out money.

I'm not upset that we didn't get any money (it would have been nice) but at the fact that she had no self control whatsoever, covered it with lies, pretended all was OK and more than happy to help out others rather than her family, or more specifically my dads children. My dad spent 30 years of his life working so hard, up at 6 and biking to work, where as my mum had part time jobs getting taxi's to and from work. When the money dried up, so did the friends, and genuine frieds that tried to talk to her about it got shut out.

Now she's broke on a state pension living out her twighlight years doing a few hours cleaning for a fiver an hour, providing her with enough money to buy 2 litre bottles of wine to numb the pain each night that she spends alone in front of the telly.
(wez, Fri 24 Nov 2006, 10:34, Reply)