One of my family members today was telling me how she felt bad that a person she knew was constantly struggling with money. Whenever possible, she offers to pay for one of the person’s small expenses. The conflict though is that she believes she should stop doing so since the person is well within a middle age range and is still reluctant to save or plan for the future.
That raises the question on just how far should you go before saying no more to a person? Should you just watch them continually destroy themselves financially or should you persist until something clicks? I am actually going through a similar type of circumstance in terms of trying to help a person I know with his finances.
It definitely is frustrating when you try to help someone and yet they are still reluctant to make the necessary changes in their lives. My situation is a little more interesting as the person specifically asked for help and as a result he began to show me items like his credit card bills. The crazy thing is whenever he knew he did something bad once we made a plan for him to follow, he would be reluctant to show what he spent his money on. It gets even more silly as when he does save money as a result of a change, he then spends what he saved on something else that he tries to pass off as an essential purchase.
Like with that, do you simply say forget it and let them possibly wreck their future since they are not taking it seriously? It’s like a choice between being a good person by persisting to help another despite their reluctance to change or allowing them to continually harm themselves with a good chance that the damage will be permanent. It can be a tricky thing when it comes to generosity.