Posted 27 May 2019 - 08:16 AM
My Mother is financially Illiterate! Worse she seems to prefer wallowing in ignorance than doing anything to change it!
This weekend she mentioned moving houses after I moved to America, so the commute for her and my sister would be closer to my nephews school for the next twelve years. She also wants to move into a complex because she believes (incorrectly, I have shown her the data) that it would be safe. I told her that she and my sister need to seriously make plans to come to America as well. This then led to one of her favorite complaints, she is borderline destitute and further that she would be even poorer after converting her money to dollars.
My fathers entire estate was left to my mother on his passing. She is not billionaire rich, she is not multi-millionaire dollar rich but she is upper-middle class comfortable as far as South Africans go. Now the problem is that she is retired and it has to last her until she dies, so she needs to smart but she is not destitute.
My mother will buy a new shirt a week for 50$ and then buy the generic of Coca-Cola because she is too poor to afford the real one, saving $0.05 a bottle. That's fine, I cant even tell the difference but the mentality of it is what bothers me. I describe her as penny wise and pound foolish. 10% of my dads state is kept overseas and they wont release the money to her until she travels there in person, she keeps pushing it off. She complains she is poor but wont make the effort to go increase her net worth by 10%! She complains about the price of the plane ticket, I explain what does it matter to spend 1 plane ticker to earn 10 plane tickets back. She complains she would miss out on a few weeks of giving extra lessons (she is retired but works part time), I explain what does it matter to lose 1-2 weeks pay to earn a yearns worth.
Worse she tends to ignore any advice I give her, until someone else tells her the same thing and then she comes and tells me my own advice back to me and how smart it is. When I wound up my dads estate and she was finally in possession of the money I told her we needed to put it to work right away. Every month it wasn't invested properly she was losing a significant amount of money to lost interest and returns etc. She ignored me, ignored me and finally a financial manager told her the same thing and she was suddenly horrified she hadn't moved sooner.
Obviously when my dad was alive he handled these things and she finds herself in control in a lot of money and out of her depth. However surely she can make some effort to understand the money her future depends upon, or take advice from a few trustworthy people who do.
I'm seriously worried to leave her behind
Help
Tiste Simeon, on 21 May 2019 - 12:28 PM, said:
sounds like he had it coming but you'd always hope people would be at least civil about their departure if not graceful - that however is ridiculous. 
