Should some people live in Debt ?

[Sunset]

... When one person handles/controls all the finances the person left behind not only has to deal with the death of their spouse but also has to try to sort out everything. It must be devastating to learn that they're deeper in debt than thought and might lose the house.

Yes, happened to my BF's mother. His Dad died suddenly and then it came to light the big lavish spending meant there was a sizeable mortgage/debt on the house they had owned for 40 years. She ended up renting out rooms in the house to scrape by, quite a step down in lifestyle.

 

[Major Tom]

I have a SIL (might be a cousin of brett's SIL) who thinks "affordable" means "I can make the payments". I call her "Spendarina". The event that sticks in my mind is when she thought $250 for a brake job on her almost-paid-for car was too much. So she bought a new car. Because the payments were "only $15/month more".

Ya can't fix stupid.

Wow, that is truly some next-level financial ignorance. On the other hand, perhaps she was looking for the slightest excuse to get a new car. Some folk just love new things. I do too, but not if they don't make financial sense.

 

[TripleLindy]

Debt avoidance is the #1 financial tenet I’ve tried to instill in my kids. A house is the only purchase worth taking on debt for, and even that’s questionable when all expenses are accounted for, but you gotta live somewhere. We’ve paid cash for virtually everything else since our 20s and lived well below our means. That enabled us to pay off our mortgage long before early retirement.

There’s a relatively new financial challenge in today’s society: subscription fees. Seems like everything has a monthly fee attached to it now - cell phones, internet, apps, cable TV, streaming services (including music), etc. Before you know it, you’re spending $100s/month. It’s not debt, but it has the same effect.

 

[tmm99]

So true, and typically it's the woman left to sort it out. I've mentioned my step-Grandma, who found out after her first husband died that he'd elected a pension benefit with no survivor benefit, back when that didn't require spousal consent.

I'm concerned for a friend whose husband is very controlling with the finances. She's responsible paying for agreed-upon categories from her income (SS, which he told her to file for at 62 when he retired early so they could make the numbers work) but he has credit cards that he uses and won't share the details and they have bonds and he won't tell her how he spends the bond interest. He spends crazy amounts on hobbies.

One podcast on women and finances I watched noted that even younger, educated women are leaving the finances up to their husbands, but in my friend's case, her husband is just shutting her out.

When my dad died when I was 9, my mom was left with a debt. He had no life insurance policy for him as he considered it bad luck...

 

[Koolau]

When my dad died when I was 9, my mom was left with a debt. He had no life insurance policy for him as he considered it bad luck...

We never had any debt (other than mortgage.) As soon as we got kids, I carried all the insurance I could get - especially term. I thought of it as good luck that I could be insured to the extent I felt comfortable. YMMV