Help your mother say goodbye to her debt woes

While dealing with our parents’ debt and finances we often become more emotional and less rational. We should remember that money isn’t a taboo but neither is budgeting. Therefore, before you start thinking about ways of paying off your mother’s debts you should help her device a practical budget for her. You cannot really force an adult to live on a budget or stalk their expenses.

In most cases, adults are aware of their finance problems but they are afraid of facing their debts. They keep living their lives with their heads buried in sand. However, an intervention is rarely fruitful, as you need to consider the ramifications on your interpersonal relationships as well.

It might seem rather irresponsible to step away from ground zero and to keep your mouth closed. Here are a few things you can do instead –

1. Set examples before them –

While talking about finances is easy, it rarely does any real good. You can start by setting a budget for yourself. You should use apps like Walnut All Banks Money Manager to track your own spending habits and then let this casually slip into a conversation while you are with your mother. The idea is to incept the idea of financing and debt management to your mother and not to nudge her continuously.

2. What do you need to devise a plan for your mother?

This one can be a little tricky. Your mother may have more than just one creditor and paying them off on time may be a serious challenge for her. Now, if you do not know the details of the kind of loans, the terms and conditions and the rates of interest, you will find it impossible to create a financial plan for your mother.

Very similarly, you need to explain real meaning of debt to your parents. The easiest way for doing this is taking the help of the good ol’ excel sheets. Create columns for creditors, balance owed, payments, interest rate, due date and lapsed payments. Consolidating the details helps in creating a working financial plan for your mom.

3. Control the spending fever –

Spending is a habit. It is an itch most people feel when they have money in hand. More often than not, we end up buying completely random things in the first few days of the month until reality wakes us up.

Your parents have been a victim of this “habit” for quite a few decades now. It has knocked them into rolling debt that is now consuming their happiness. If you want your mom to spend healthily you can take help from finance apps like Expense Manager, Money View and Money Lover. They have reward systems, real-time analytics, graphical representations and real-time update of balance. They make budgeting really fun!

Saving up and managing debts for your mother is definitely not easy, but it is definitely worth it. You will need oodles of patience, tenacity and persistence to help them understand the gravitas of their financial crisis.