Coming clean on credit card debt
DEAR ELLIE: Following a final PhD semester and seven months of unemployment, I’ve now been happily employed for three months.
However, my mother’s asking for repayment of loans, including personal insurance premiums, moving costs, student loans, and some months of rent. Total: More than $25,000. I plan to repay her. However, during my unemployment, I’d accrued about $5000 in credit card debt that I’m repaying.
My mother doesn’t know about this debt, because I’m avoiding her additional lecturing and stress.
She’s now thinking I have an excess of disposable income, and has asked for monthly payments of $500 — $700 (of which $200 will be her allowance and therefore not paid towards my debt to her).
This would be reasonable if I were free from credit card debt.
I’ve asked to delay these payments until January under the guise of “wanting to accumulate some savings.”
However, the $2000 bill for my personal insurance premium arrived this week, and she expects me to pay it.
I cannot. Not even in January, when I can meagerly afford monthly repayments to her.
Should I tell her about my credit card debt? Should I charge the premium onto the “Credit Card of Mom” with an infinite grace period and continue with the monthly repayment plan? Are there other options?
ANSWER: You owe your mother more than money. Only the truth can help her accept that you cannot repay her now that you’re working.
Your delay based on deceit will cause warranted resentment.
Speak up. Ask her to accompany you to a bank advisor to work out the repayment plan.
Talk to the insurance company. They want your continued involvement so may also offer a plan that delays payment.
Do NOT think you can or should avoid your mother’s “lecture.” She’s done and given more than many parents could or would do.
You’ve achieved what you set out to do. Give back as soon as possible.
DEAR ELLIE: My sister and I haven’t gotten along since birth. I’m 42, she’s 37.
We were raised in a good home by loving parents.
I’m an introvert, organized, welleducated, responsible, with a successful career.
She’s an extrovert, popular, party animal, high-spender, messy, procrastinator.
When something positive happens to me she says, “you just want drama but the world isn’t about you!”
When my boyfriend and I broke up, she invited him to join her group and introduced her single girlfriends to him.
She never invited me to join her group nor allowed me to hang out with them when she invites them to our home.
Yesterday, we celebrated my dad’s birthday at a restaurant. She made sure I sat isolated in a corner.
When will this behaviour end? How long will I suffer?
ANSWER: You can stop suffering by no longer expecting this long-established dynamic to change.
You’re sisters butvery different individuals — a fact which holds true in many families.
It’s easy to assume that she’s jealous of your accomplishments.That would be her problem to resolve.
Yet she may prefer her own personality style — fun-loving, lots of friends, etc. You may even envy some of her traits.
Meanwhile, this “behaviour” rests on your both taking part.
Back out. Don’t expect big changes. If there’s a family event, check on details yourself rather than be surprised by how she’s handled things. Rely on your own friends, not hers. If you remain very troubled by this divide, talk to a counsellor to help you separate from taking part in it. TIP OF THE DAY Accepting a parent’s financial support calls for honesty and respect from the adult child. Ellie Tesher was born in Toronto and has been working as a journalist for 25 years. She studied sociology at the University of Toronto before landing her first job at Children’s Aid as a case worker with foster children. Email ellie@thestar.ca. Follow @ellieadvice.