Normally, Thursday is my favorite day of the week. Its the day that I go over to my parents house after work, have a good dinner and watch Survivor with Mom and Dad – yes, its sort of silly and repetitive, but its our little bonding moment. Then, I head out to the local bar we go to every Thursday night for karaoke – I love to sing, and so do most of my friends, including BF. So, needless to say, I was in a pretty good mood most of yesterday at work, thinking about the enjoyable evening to come. Until …I get the phone call from my Mom.
Now, 5 plus years ago, my Mom did me a huge favor and let me transfer the balance on one of my high interest credit cards to one of her credit cards. She then created a system where my checking account would transfer out a fixed amount of money every week into her checking account, and she would pay what she could on the bill. As time went by, I took advantage of this opportunity, and transferred more balances and did more things to try and dig myself out of my self-created hole. Finally, about 6 months ago, I had somewhere around $12,000 that I owed that was on a credit card in her name. The current 0% was expiring, and I proposed that, in order to eventually make it easier for me to transfer the balance back to a card solely in my name, we open the next account as a joint account. This is what happened, though she still wanted to keep the current system of me paying her, and her paying the card.
I recently got notice that Bank of America jacked up the interest rate on one of my other cards to 29.99%, and was frantically looking for a way to get that lowered. I mentioned this to my mother, and, since the card that has the $12,000 on it has a $25,000 credit limit, she said it would be ok to transfer the Bank of America balance over to that card. I mentioned that I had a few smaller balances that I wanted to transfer over as well, and that I wanted to take over the responsibility for paying the card myself, and she agreed. I made the transfers, and thought everything was fine, until last night.
I walk in the door, and she starts screaming at me that I lied to her, because when she asked me the total amount that I was transferring, I said that it was somewhere around $8,000. In reality, it was closer to $10,000, but I didn’t have the figures in front of me at the time. It wasn’t an attempt at deception at all, merely a mistake in speaking. I apologized, but she is still intensely angry with me, upset that I am somehow abusing her trust and her credit.
I am now trying to figure out the fastest way possible to free up some space on the cards that are only in my name, so I can transfer the balance back and have her out of my financial life. My mother likes to say that she is the family financial manager, but I think she makes it too easy to be lackadaisical about financial matters, both for me, and for my 26 year old sister.
