My Mom Keeps Bailing My Sister Out With My Inheritance

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. Yes, I'm in a situation where my sister is running without any financial conscience at all. She's running up her credit cards, and my mom is willing to bail her out, and it's at least into the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last five or ten years. And so that's really eating away at what should be coming to my inheritance, my kids' inheritance. It's the same thing I can do. I would love to know. So your mom is wealthy? Yeah, there's money coming in. Yeah, there's a real, real significant amount of wealth in the family, yes. So what is your mom? How much does she have? A million? 20 million? It probably could be. I don't know exactly. No, I mean, you have an idea. Give me a guess. It's probably a million. It could be two million. I don't know. Okay, but it's not a hundred million. And the problem is your sister's... It's just you and your sister are the only two siblings? That's right. There's still money coming into the estate. How old are you? I'm approaching 59. Okay, and what do you make a year, sir? Okay, I have a long career as a software developer. We're in a new career now. We're managing apartments, and we're in a basically low-income, low-expense mode here, and basically starting to get up in about $35,000 a year range. So is there a plan for that to be a good income later? It's building. We acquired a new property. We're trying to turn the corner and start getting some savings coming. We've got, you know, my retirement funds available, especially as it's a 59 and a half, so help us. And how much do you have saved in your retirement? It's in the neighborhood of $500,000. Okay, that's good. Good job on that. So the apartments, did you buy them? Yes, we own them free and clear. Haven't taken any loans. And what are they worth? It's three different properties together. There'd be probably about $800,000 or something like that. And you only make $35,000 on an $800,000 investment? That sucks. You know those free samples at the store that are up for grabs for anyone? Well, that's basically what's happening with your personal information online. Data broker sites collect stuff like your address, phone number, email, even your family's information, and just post it online for anyone to grab. And that's why I use Delete Me. They remove your personal info from hundreds of data broker websites and keep it gone. So stop letting random websites treat your data like it's free samples. Get 20% off your annual plan at joindeleteme.com slash Ramsey. And you only make $35,000 on an $800,000 investment? That sucks. Well, one of them is the one we live in, so we're, you know, I can't, I can't separate it exactly out because we have one apartment that we do in our building. And what does that work? I mean, if you took your home out of it, you still don't have a good rate of return. What's wrong with the rent roll on this? Okay, the new, the second property, so if we take mine out, then we've just got the two properties and then one is still just finishing. So we haven't really turned it around to start the Oh, it's being renovated. It's just almost finished being renovated. We got one. I say, so when it's renovated, what will your income be? Well, that's what I'm hoping is going to turn the corner into a more toward 40, 45,000. So you're going to be making a whole 45,000 on all of these apartments. That still sucks, man. Your rental rates are horrible for the money you've put into these things. So my reason for asking all of this, Keith is very simple. Your mother has some money. It's her money. She's allowed to do with her money, whatever she wants to, even if it's stupid and even if it's harmful to your sister. And I agree that what she's doing is harmful to your sister. But the basis for you having an argument here is not that you are entitled to this money. I would prefer you, sir, at 59 years old to go have a life and not be worried about your mama's income or your mother's inheritance to make your life good. I want you to go make your life good. And then we can look at this through eyes of strength and say, how can I lovingly help my sister get her act together? And my mom quit being a classic serial enabler. But instead, you're worried about you getting some money because you don't have any money other than you've done a good job saving for retirement, but your income sucks, especially if you've got $800,000 in paid for real estate and you're making a whole 45,000 bucks on it. This is horrendous. I mean, I love real estate. I own a bunch of real estate. I can't imagine how mad I would be at myself if I bought into something that paid no more than that as a rate of return. That's nothing horrible. So, um, you know, we've got some work to do to get our rates of return up on these rents and not $45,000 as your new career. After you've been a software engineer and we're going to go into retirement broke and wait on mom to die. This is not a good plan, not a good plan. So, you know, I want you to approach this subject of dysfunction in your family, not from your rights, because you don't have any, you're not entitled. Your mother could leave it all to your sister. She's allowed to do that. Would I agree with that? No. Do I agree with her paying bailer out on credit cards and continuing her overspending? No, I don't. But mainly because it's harmful to your sister and your mother, not because you are entitled to some of the money you, sir, need to go have a life and then not worry about it. And Rachel and I wrote about this and smart money, smart kids many years ago. And I was just talking about it with a content team this morning. I think I'm going to do a talk out of it. I haven't done it in a while. I'm doing it with a bunch of wealthy people. And they always ask me, how do I become wealthy and not ruin my kids? And I always tell them, well, you can't, uh, your, the wealth didn't ruin your kids. They were already ruined. The wealth exposed it that you sucked as a parent. That's what it was. And so, you know, but the wealth money doesn't ruin people. It exposes the fact that people suck. It makes you more of what you already are. It makes you more of what you are. So the way you break that is from the time they're, they can talk and walk. You, we start with gratitude, gratitude. Thank you. Please. In the South, we called it manners. I know that's yes. Thank you mom for dinner, for standing over that hot stove. Mom, I'm going to help with the dishes because if I don't, dad's going to hurt me because you're going to learn gratitude. You're going to be count your blessings, right? You're going to say, thank you, Lord, for bringing me this food. Thank you. The world doesn't revolve around you. And that leads to the next one, which is humility, but you can seldom be humble without first being grateful. And then if you're humble and you realize it's not all about you, the access to the world doesn't run through the top of your head after all, then the natural thing that happens is contentment. This is where contentment comes from. Contentment doesn't just evolve as lightning in a bottle. It's a series of events that comes through gratitude and humility that says, I'm not entitled. No, it's the antidote to entitlement is gratitude, humility, and contentment. And so, you know, I can remember one of my kids, we finally, we were driving this old piece of crap car and we were broke and finally scraped a little bit of money with things were starting to get a little better at the Ramsey's and we got the car. And you know, at our house, we always would, and especially when I was growing up, but even when our kids, we do it to get a new car, everybody gets in the car. It's not a new car, but it's just a slight upgrade, but we're all going to drive around the block in the new car. And one of them lays back in the back seat and says, we're doing pretty good. My favorite story. And I said, we aren't doing anything and you are broke. I am doing pretty good. You got nothing. You are a poor child that lives with me. That's what you are. We aren't doing anything. You got a mouse in your pocket. We, we hadn't done anything. All you do is consume. You are not a producer at this stage. Create your free every dollar budget today. The simplest way to budget for your life.