How to Handle a Mother's Dying Wishes
Dear Dave,
I need advice on how to handle things where my mom is concerned. She was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) a year ago, and now she wants our family to do things together that we cant afford. Last summer, we took a trip to Norway, and mom paid half, but it still made things hard on us financially. What can I do?
--Emily
Dear Emily,
Im really sorry to hear about your mom. I know thats tough on everyone in more than just a financial sense. What youre facing is very sad, and I understand that you want to spend as much time with her as possible. At the same time, though, you cant bankrupt your family, either.
I think you need to sit down with her and gently explain that while you love her and want to spend as much time with her as possible, you cant put your family in financial danger to help her with a bucket list. You have to balance your love for your mom and this awful situation with whats best for your own household.
Make reasonable decisions on what you can and cant do with her. Can you stretch yourself to do a few special things? Sure, but stretching is one thing; breaking is another. If shes leaving you insurance money, you could stretch a little bit, then put that back into your funds later. But dont go into debt to make these things happen. That will just start a cycle of borrowing that you cant afford and leave you with a pile of payments later on top of your grief.
Your family has enough to worry about right now. Dont put a bunch of debt on the list, too. Thats going too far.
God bless you, Emily.
--Dave
Dear Dave,
What exactly do you mean when you talk about diversifying your investments?
--Sharon
Dear Sharon,
When it comes to investing, diversification simply means spreading your money around. This helps reduce risk, because youre not putting all of your money into one company. This way, you wont lose everything if that one company goes broke. Its also why I tell people not to put all of their money into their own companys stock.
I have lots of mutual funds with one or two mutual fund companies. Within those two companies theyre called fund families. Think of it like a brand of soup. Campbells� is a brand, but they have all kinds of different soup. I also have money in different banks and in different money market accounts, and I have money in different types of real estate. So, Ive got several different kinds of investments, but not a million different things running around out there.
If I listed them all out they wouldnt even take up an entire page. I like to keep things fairly clean and simple, and I encourage you to do the same!
--Dave
Dear Dave,
Im saving up money to buy a house in the next couple of years. How should I invest this money before I actually buy something?
--Candace
Dear Candace,
The problem is that youre not really investing; youre just saving. Investing means you arent going to touch the money for five years or more. If you may use the cash to buy something within five years, youre really just kind of parking the money for a little while.
If it were me, Id put it in a money market account. Its basically just going to sit there and not earn much, but you wont lose anything, either. If youre lucky, you might see one percent interest in the short term, but thats about all you can expect considering the low-interest rate environment were in these days.
--Dave
* For more financial help visit daveramsey.com.