haha
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
This is a problem area that I have always avoided, OPP-other people's problems. But this involves my dance partner of 3 years, and I care about her and her wellbeing. I like her husband too. I only have partial knowledge- she shares whatever she knows with me, but her husband is quite secretive with her about financial matters, although he doesn't seem at all controlling or overbearing in other ways. Trying to help her understand personal finance would be like trying to teach accounting to someone who couldn't yet count.
My goal is to get some information to them that might help.
My constraint is that DH does not get pissed at me or at her, because she is an excellent dancer and a very pleasant person, and good partners who have the time and the wood floor space to dance 6-8 hours a week do not come along every day. If I found a single woman, I might run into trouble with my romantic relationship. If I found another married woman, the chances that her husband would be as non-possessive as this guy are remote I believe.
She is 64 going on 65, he 62. She is retired, with a small pension from her citizenship country. She doesn't know if it has COLA. In fact, she may not even understand what COLA is. She also is qualified for some unknown amount of government retirement payments from her home country, to begin in a year at most. She also has worked enough in the US to get SS, and he will get what has to be a pretty good SS but she has no idea what it might be as he has never told her. He recently retired, and has a pension that is enough for them to pay their mortgage and live fine, though they have never lived on this little since their marriage. So with all these pensions it seems to me that they actually have plenty of immediate monthly cash flow for him to put off taking his SS until age 70.
One day we were having coffee on the deck when I told them about my payback SS strategy, and I mentioned that there were also clever strategies especially for married people. I should add that his mother is still in good health in her late 90s, though she has gone into assisted living. So even if he were single it seems that it might make sense for him to delay taking SS until age 70. He spoke up to say that they could not afford to wait, that they would be cash flow constrained.
A week or so later my partner was tired and we quit dancing early and she and I were having coffee together. She told me that in addition to these non-SS pensions they had $several hundred in cash.
So I said to her that I should be so lucky to have their cash flow problems. Then she showed me a joint account checkbook showing a large monthly payment being paid on his mother's house, and another payment to her assisted living. My partner says that her MIL's investments other than this vacation house are all used up. DH has been trying to sell this place for over a year, in the $mm range. Understandably IMO, it has not sold, and it is in the north so the season for getting rid of vacation property is over.
None of this makes any sense to me. The last time I ran across something that smelled this bad the DH was siphoning funds to keep his Honey in comfort. The only other one I know about is the daughter of my brother's GF, and her husband managed to absolutely impoverish them, whereupon he died from a brain tumor. What money was left he conveyed directly to a daughter by beneficiary designation, thus leaving his wife high and dry and with bills to boot.
If my dance partner were my daughter I would ask her to demand that they take all the documents- the loan documents on his mother's house, the pension and SS documents, everything, and take them to an accountant and she should not leave until she absolutely understood everything. Then I would suggest contacting an eldercare attorney in MIL's state, and finding out if she would qualify for Medicaid. He already has information or suggestion that her assisted living place would not kick her out if she went on Medicaid. Then if they could not sell it immediately, give the house back to the bank. $60,000 annual payments on an interest only loan suggests one hell of a loan, so if this information is accurate there is negative equity. It appears that they took this loan or loans to pay her A.L. bills.
But my partner is intimidated, and afraid of making DH angry, so this course may be beyond her will to attempt. And anyway, I really do not want him to suspect that I gave her these uppity ideas.
This sounds hopeless, but I would really appreciate some outside the box ideas from the forum.
Ha
My goal is to get some information to them that might help.
My constraint is that DH does not get pissed at me or at her, because she is an excellent dancer and a very pleasant person, and good partners who have the time and the wood floor space to dance 6-8 hours a week do not come along every day. If I found a single woman, I might run into trouble with my romantic relationship. If I found another married woman, the chances that her husband would be as non-possessive as this guy are remote I believe.
She is 64 going on 65, he 62. She is retired, with a small pension from her citizenship country. She doesn't know if it has COLA. In fact, she may not even understand what COLA is. She also is qualified for some unknown amount of government retirement payments from her home country, to begin in a year at most. She also has worked enough in the US to get SS, and he will get what has to be a pretty good SS but she has no idea what it might be as he has never told her. He recently retired, and has a pension that is enough for them to pay their mortgage and live fine, though they have never lived on this little since their marriage. So with all these pensions it seems to me that they actually have plenty of immediate monthly cash flow for him to put off taking his SS until age 70.
One day we were having coffee on the deck when I told them about my payback SS strategy, and I mentioned that there were also clever strategies especially for married people. I should add that his mother is still in good health in her late 90s, though she has gone into assisted living. So even if he were single it seems that it might make sense for him to delay taking SS until age 70. He spoke up to say that they could not afford to wait, that they would be cash flow constrained.
A week or so later my partner was tired and we quit dancing early and she and I were having coffee together. She told me that in addition to these non-SS pensions they had $several hundred in cash.
So I said to her that I should be so lucky to have their cash flow problems. Then she showed me a joint account checkbook showing a large monthly payment being paid on his mother's house, and another payment to her assisted living. My partner says that her MIL's investments other than this vacation house are all used up. DH has been trying to sell this place for over a year, in the $mm range. Understandably IMO, it has not sold, and it is in the north so the season for getting rid of vacation property is over.
None of this makes any sense to me. The last time I ran across something that smelled this bad the DH was siphoning funds to keep his Honey in comfort. The only other one I know about is the daughter of my brother's GF, and her husband managed to absolutely impoverish them, whereupon he died from a brain tumor. What money was left he conveyed directly to a daughter by beneficiary designation, thus leaving his wife high and dry and with bills to boot.
If my dance partner were my daughter I would ask her to demand that they take all the documents- the loan documents on his mother's house, the pension and SS documents, everything, and take them to an accountant and she should not leave until she absolutely understood everything. Then I would suggest contacting an eldercare attorney in MIL's state, and finding out if she would qualify for Medicaid. He already has information or suggestion that her assisted living place would not kick her out if she went on Medicaid. Then if they could not sell it immediately, give the house back to the bank. $60,000 annual payments on an interest only loan suggests one hell of a loan, so if this information is accurate there is negative equity. It appears that they took this loan or loans to pay her A.L. bills.
But my partner is intimidated, and afraid of making DH angry, so this course may be beyond her will to attempt. And anyway, I really do not want him to suspect that I gave her these uppity ideas.
This sounds hopeless, but I would really appreciate some outside the box ideas from the forum.
Ha
