My Dad Kept My Mom Out of the Workforce for Years. The “Opportunities” She’s Finding Now Are Bad News.

Protecting vulnerable relatives from crypto scams

Our advice columnists have heard it all over the years—so we’re diving into the Pay Dirt archives to share classic letters with our readers. Submit your own questions about money here.

Dear Pay Dirt, My mom has been out of work since she married my father. She went from having a good job in her country to being a stay-at-home mom. I am grateful she was there when we were growing up and I think my dad was until he decided to check out of the marriage; they divorced last year. She tried to go back to work multiple times throughout my childhood and adolescence, even when I was an emerging adult. But my dad dissuaded her most of the time or she felt guilty. It doesn’t help that she only has outdated qualifications from her home country and no records of her schooling.

This brings me to the problem. My mom has fallen victim to quite a few multi-level marketing/pyramid schemes over the years. She’s probably lost some thousands of dollars and has learned there are scams. She’s not one to be duped easily, but she would fall for a pitch made by a relative or close friend and invest in the “business” pitched and try to get friends and family to join. She thought of it as finally earning her own income and helping her children/family benefit, too.

She stayed away after one flopped badly, but a close friend has been trying to get her to invest in crypto and some other international investment ventures after my mom experienced financial problems in the divorce. The friend means well, but they have more financial and investment experience on top of their business ventures. If they lose money, they’re going to be in a better position to recoup it. My mom will not.

Lately, I’ve been hearing my mother joining Zooms and listening to videos about “lifestyle” changing technologies opportunities that will allow her to work from home or make passive income. The last one I overheard sounded suspicious. I looked up the company and yep, they’re being pegged as a crypto Ponzi scam. How do I explain this to my mother? After the divorce, she has very little money, receives a limited pension (which is another story itself), and has to find a new place to live. The idea that she might invest a few hundred or thousand dollars again is painful for me as her child. What can I do? —Trying to Avoid Another Pyramid

Dear Avoid Another Pyramid, I understand your concern for your mother. She’s precisely the kind of person that multi-level marketing scams target: immigrants, stay-at-home parents, and especially women with lower incomes. MLMs share many of the same psychological practices as cults, making it even harder to talk to people caught in MLM groupthink. Their uplines tell them not to listen to “negative” people, even family members. Even if you’re trying to share concerns with a loved one, many don’t want to hear that 99 percent of sellers lose money in an MLM venture because they are told not to think negatively. Much of cryptocurrency is having a considerable downturn, and I’d hoped that would scare off less sophisticated investors. Unfortunately, it has caused some crypto-focused pyramid schemes to double down harder on recruitment.

How you approach this with your mother depends on your relationship. If she’s generally appreciative of your input, you can express concern over her prospective ventures and ask if you can help her research them to ensure they are safe. Since she’d already sworn off multi-level marketing after a bad experience, you can express wanting to protect her from another blowout. You can even offer to help her look over the numbers—this is an opportunity to conduct some of your own research so you can show that it isn’t a good return. Generally, these are good ways to evaluate all business opportunities and investments.

Good starting points for these conversations are the official questions and warning signs from the Federal Trade Commission and Securities and Exchange Commission aimed to help identify an MLM scam. Unfortunately, I’ve seen first-hand the financial devastation from these crypto pyramid schemes. People could avoid so much economic harm if they just asked this simple question: Do I really understand this investment? If your mom is curious about protecting herself, you can watch some content about the dangers of multi-level marketing and crypto-based assets together. Best of luck keeping your mother off the bottom of the pyramid. —Lillian Karabaic

Navigating spending differences in relationships

Dear Pay Dirt, I’m having an issue with my boyfriend that I’m not really sure what to do with. We just moved in together, but we keep our finances separate. Each of us is responsible for an equal number of bills and we send each other the amount we owe. It is a little annoying, but we make it work. We generally pay for our own stuff, except for special occasions. We recently started talking about marriage and my boyfriend mentioned getting a joint account. I’m fine with that, in general, but when he mentioned that he wanted us to put enough money in the account to cover everything we spend in a month except savings and things we buy strictly for ourselves, I really don’t like this.

I’m a fairly frugal thing and while my boyfriend while not bad with his money, spends way more on things I consider frivolous. He goes to more expensive stores. He will buy multiple dishes when we go out, and take the extra dishes home to eat sometimes just for a snack, not even as a meal. Sometimes that food is stuff we can easily make at home or buy in the store for much cheaper. He buys a lot of things new, like his most recent car, that I would never consider buying new. I brought this up to him and he got kind of upset. He knows how I like to spend my money, but he is trying to sway me to spend like him. For example, if I go out to a restaurant and want two things, he tells me to get both of them, try each, and then take the one I like the least home for lunch the next day.

I’ve told him multiple times that I don’t spend my money like that. He says we can afford it, and technically that’s true, but I’d like to save my money to put a hefty down payment on a house or maybe take a lot of nice trips in the future. I don’t want to waste it on buying stuff I can make. I told him all of this and that I would consider the type of joint account he wants if he would cut back on spending his money so easily. Like maybe instead of getting a quesadilla to take home from a restaurant, he could get an extra side of meat to take home and make the quesadilla himself. He was not willing to budge on this and says I’m controlling how he spends and his plan would be far easier. I told him I don’t care how he spends, I just don’t want my money being spent in the same way. We are at an impasse. Do you think I’m overreacting? Am I asking for too much? Should I just accept that this is how most Americans with good incomes spend their money? —Frugal Fighter

Dear Frugal Fighter, I don’t think you’re being unreasonable. I’m not sure why your boyfriend is so insistent that you put everything you spend each month into a joint account. It makes sense to have one account for recurring expenses that are defined, but given your different spending styles, I think trying to put all of your expenses into one pool and assuming he’ll spend responsibly is asking a lot of you. You’re not controlling how he spends; you’re controlling how you spend.

You have a few options: One is that, should you choose a joint account for everything, you create a budget for things like food and eating out and stick to it. If your boyfriend views the joint account as a pile of money that can be spent however he likes, he’ll likely spend it down every month. If he has or can develop the discipline to stick to a pre-determined budget, a joint account for everything can work. Otherwise, you should use a joint account to split fixed expenses, and work out the variable expenses as they come. You both need to accept that you have different attitudes toward spending and saving and work out a compromise that does not involve policing each other’s behavior. —Elizabeth Spiers

Dealing with family disputes over inherited homes

Dear Pay Dirt, My husband and I inherited his grandmother’s house last year. She was elderly but healthy and the life of the party, and we kind of all thought she’d live forever. She took a sudden fall and passed way soon after. She had more assets than anyone knew and left money to his parents and the other grandkids in addition to leaving us her house. She was detailed and hilarious about leaving specific keepsakes and heirlooms to relatives. The house is a godsend: We could never afford to buy, and we have a child and are trying for another. Unfortunately, it has unexpected strings.

Everyone got the things they were left in the will, and we encouraged the family to take other things they wanted that weren’t listed. She had a lot of stuff, and her family didn’t want all of it. We don’t want it either! Everyone lives locally, so when we put up a giant 1990s dining table on a Buy Nothing group, or rented a dumpster to tear out the 1980s carpets covering beautiful wood floors, the entire family got upset about how we were dishonoring Grandma. The house has many wonderful memories, but we can’t freeze it in time.

I want my husband to handle it because it’s his family, but he’s just ignoring it and hoping it stops. It seems like the person who gets most upset is his sister, and then she riles up her parents and the other grandkids. At a recent family gathering, there were a lot of nasty comments and I was shocked. I reiterated that people were welcome to take stuff if they didn’t want it donated, but his sister especially wants the house to stay in a time capsule. We want to participate in our town’s big Halloween yard sale because our kid is starting to crawl and things aren’t toddler-proof. I’m worried it will send his sister off the handle, but I don’t know what to do. —We Can’t Even Use the Living Room

Dear We Can’t Even Use the Living Room, Your sister-in-law is being completely unreasonable. In an ideal world, your husband would speak to her about it because it’s his family, but your husband is also not the first person to deal with difficult siblings by just ignoring them. Go ahead and do what you’d do if your husband’s family wasn’t complaining, and if, or when they do, explain to them that your husband’s grandmother wanted you to live in the house, and have your kids make their own memories in it, not treat it like a museum.

Give them a heads-up about the Halloween sale and tell them this is the last opportunity to take anything they want to keep. They can’t demand that you keep things they don’t want themselves. You are not the custodian of The Grandma Museum, and you are not erasing her memory or disrespecting her by refusing to keep all of her things. If they continue to complain behind your back, ignore it. Regardless, you’ve been reasonable and respectful and you do not have to plan around what they may or may not approve of. Make the house a home that’s best for your family, and just wait it out.