The School of Good Enough: "My Troubled Relative"

Monday, March 21, 2011

"My Troubled Relative"

Written by ChrisMartenson

"My Troubled Relative"

I need your advice. I have a relative who is in financial trouble. He makes $50,000 a year, but he spent $74,591 last year, and his prospects of making $50,000 this year look kind of bad. There's a good chance he will get a pay cut.

Unfortunately, he’s been overspending for quite a while and has charged $295,632 on credit cards. He’s been lucky enough to get low teaser rates, and when those have expired, he’s been able to transfer the balances to other low-rate cards. So he keeps charging $24,591 per year beyond his income. If he can’t keep rolling over his debt at super low rates, the interest will quickly eat him up.

But, that's not his worst problem. He convinced his family he was a great investor. His parents gave him a portion of their income for many years, and he promised he would make regular payments to them and cover their medical care when they got too old to work. The problem is, he spent all the money. He also has dependents who are poor, and he promised to help them out, too. To cover those promises, he should have $2,372,953 sitting in a bank account earning an interest rate that keeps up with inflation. But the money is all gone.

So what should he do? Well, his Republican friends, who say they are responsible with money, have decided he must really cut spending to get things under control. There are lots of things he can live without, so they say he should reduce spending by $1,292 per year. His Democrat friends say that’s too much. They feel it would be a great hardship for him to cut spending that drastically, so reducing it by $137 should be about right.

So here’s the picture: