{"id":88445,"date":"2025-08-22T21:38:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T21:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/88445\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T21:38:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T21:38:08","slug":"my-sister-spend-her-inheritance-now-she-is-trying-to-spend-mine-one-iou-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/88445\/","title":{"rendered":"My sister spend her inheritance. Now she is trying to spend mine, one IOU at a time."},"content":{"rendered":"

Our advice columnists have heard it all over the years\u2014so we\u2019re diving into the Pay Dirt archives to share classic letters with our readers.\u00a0Submit your own questions about money here<\/a>. (It\u2019s anonymous!)\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dear Pay Dirt,<\/p>\n

My parents passed away when my sister and I were teenagers, and we are now both in our late 40s. They left us enough money to finish college plus about $100,000 each. I used those funds very frugally early in life and saved most of it for retirement. My sister burned through everything quickly and has repeatedly gone through boom\/bust cycles.<\/p>\n

We earn about the same amount, but my family is much more comfortable and has saved a lot more for retirement because of choices we each made. We like to vacation with her family, but inevitably I pay for things in the moment and she either never pays me back or short-changes me. She will also tell me she\u2019s going to send me money for my kids\u2019 birthdays, which I tell them, and then she never pays up\u2014so either they don\u2019t get a gift or I\u2019m on the hook. My husband and I generally do fine, but we are self-employed and are staring down the cost of college for two kids, so we\u2019re careful with our money. We\u2019ll survive if she never pays me back, but it\u2019s a bummer to feel like I\u2019m always on the hook because I\u2019m more careful with my money.
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My sister is sensitive about money and inevitably when I press her to pay me back it\u2019s a bad time for her and I end up feeling terrible. Should I just accept that she\u2019s never going to fully cover her share? I hate nickel-and-diming everything on vacation, but we have a family trip planned to Hawaii, and I simply can\u2019t afford to cover more than my family\u2019s share. How do I change this dynamic?<\/p>\n

\u2014Little Sister, Not the Bank<\/p>\n

Dear Not the Bank,<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll ask this as gently as possible: When is your sister going to ever\u00a0not\u00a0be sensitive about money? It sounds like she goes on these trips knowing she can\u2019t pay her share and won\u2019t have to if she plays her cards right. In order to change the dynamic, you need to put some boundaries in place,\u00a0stat.
From now on, you are no longer in charge of booking accommodations for everyone. If she wants a shared house rather than separate condos, she\u2019ll need to pay for it, and you\u2019ll send her your share. If she does not have money to book her own travel, she does not need to be going on vacation. If she asks why the sudden change, share that you have less cash flow due to upcoming expenses and can no longer spot her. She\u2019ll\u00a0probably be upset<\/a>\u00a0and try to manipulate you, since you\u2019re establishing a new dynamic, but hold your ground.
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Next, spend some time reflecting on why\u00a0you are enabling<\/a>\u00a0her in the first place. Is it guilt for doing so well and being smart with your money? Is it you wanting to look after her due to your parents dying young? We enable people when we have something to gain or lose. Start keeping track of feelings or thoughts you are having when it comes to this situation to see if there is a pattern or trigger. I hope it\u2019ll help you to see your role and find different ways to show support without emptying your pocketbook.<\/p>\n

\u2014Elizabeth Spiers<\/p>\n

From: My Partner\u2019s Food Addiction Is Breaking Our Budget<\/a>. (August 23rd 2021).<\/p>\n

\n Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don\u2018t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication.\n <\/p>\n

Dear Pay Dirt,<\/p>\n

My spouse intends to leave her half of our house and her savings to her older sisters who constantly take financial advantage of her. She feels sorry for them because they spend every penny on themselves and complain about having no money, so my spouse buys them things, dinners, takes them on vacation without me. One divorced sister makes a six-figure salary, and the other has no children and chooses not to work to serve her husband while shopping and sunbathing almost every day. When she told me of her intentions of not leaving anything to me, her spouse of over 20 years, I was crushed and tried to talk with her, but she becomes furious and ends the conversation. I do not want to leave a single penny to her because she will just give it to her sisters. Would this be wrong?<\/p>\n

\u2014I Deserve Better<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Ilyce Glink
\n We Invited Our Friends to Our Beach House. Then They Committed the Ultimate Money Faux Pas.
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Dear I Deserve Better,<\/p>\n

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Help! I Met Up With My Son-in-Law for \u201cCoffee.\u201d I\u2019m Shocked by What Actually Happened.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

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My Mom Is Offering Me a Free Place to Stay for College. But There\u2019s a Big Catch.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I Run a Daycare and Agreed to Do My Sister a Simple Favor. What She Did Next Has Ruined My Reputation.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I Thought My Colleague\u2019s Lies Were Harmless. Now He\u2019s Created a Monstrous Rumor Mill.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

I think you have to separate your feelings about your spouse and your feelings about her sisters. Your spouse has a right to spend her own money, however deserving you think her sisters may or may not be. But I understand your frustration that you\u2019re not being taken into consideration here. Your wife needs to understand why this feels hurtful to you, and it\u2019s the kind of thing you may want to take up in marital counseling if she\u2019s having trouble talking about it. It seems like there are some trust issues here that transcend the issue of your respective wills and feelings about your sisters-in-law.<\/p>\n

(As a side note, I\u2019m a little confused about the fact that your spouse intends to leave half of your house to her sisters, especially if you\u2019re still living there. How would that work?)<\/p>\n

That said, I don\u2019t think you can really predict what your wife would do with your money in the event of your passing, and it probably depends on what your financial situations are if that happens. You may think you\u2019re punishing her lazy, good-for-nothing sisters, but you may in fact be punishing your wife, and I doubt it will cause her to regret or reconsider her support for her sisters. So you should make sure you\u2019ve worked out your own motivations and that you\u2019re not just retaliating because you don\u2019t like her plans. I don\u2019t think you want that to be the last thing you leave your wife with if the worst happens.<\/p>\n

\u2014E.S.<\/p>\n

From: My Husband Is Using Me For Money, But I Don\u2019t Want To Divorce Him<\/a>. (August 25th, 2021). <\/p>\n

More Advice From Slate<\/p>\n

My husband and I live in the Pacific Northwest about 3.5 hours from his parents. I always knew his parents were somewhat challenging, but since we relocated slightly closer to them, it has become very clear that my father-in-law is a narcissist. He has been passive-aggressively belittling me for years, but I have coped with it by simply not engaging with him. My husband\u2019s home life when he was young was hard. My father-in-law was verbally and physically abusive,\u00a0but everyone in the family seems to excuse the behavior as \u201cin the past.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The latest sex, parenting, and money advice from our columnists delivered to your inbox three times a week.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our advice columnists have heard it all over the years\u2014so we\u2019re diving into the Pay Dirt archives to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[8786,64,63,99,2582,186,184,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-88445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-advice","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-family","13":"tag-finance","14":"tag-personal-finance","15":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}