MMD: Should Jordan pay Peter to go away?

She should not give him the cash

However this is not just a question of spending time vs cash, the key is that she is being repeatedly asked to help, and just buying him a computer will probably only make this worse.

She needs to focus on the sort of help she is giving. Spending time with him helping him save money is one thing, but spending hours on her own doing the research and then giving him a 10 second summary is not quality family time.

She should get him access to the website and promise to help with anything he wants providing he sits with her while she looks into it. He will soon learn what questions take too long to answer, spend total quality time together, he will soon learn to do some of it himself, and she will get tea and refreshments while she researches. :beer:

Stripping out all the irrelevant issues, we get down to the nitty gritty ones. In monetary terms, these are the only issues which should be considered.

So...

1. In the time it takes Jordan to save Peter £100, she could have earned £500 for herself.

2. Peter doesn't appear to have access to the MSE web site for himself. However, he does seem to be interested in the type of financial information it produces.

Q. Should Jordan simply give him some cash instead?
A. Obviously, the answer has to be a 'Yes'.

I have thought of an additional question.

Q. What else could Jordan do for Peter?
A. Make a suggestion to Peter that he should get a computer and get himself 'online' and thus try out MSE for himself.

I'm sure this will undoubtedly create further questions such as

Q. Jordan is spending too much time helping Peter with his computer problems that it is costing her lots of money. What should she do?

Let's deal with the answer to that one when the problem actually happens. It's just possible Peter becomes so interested and motivated by his computer experiences on the Internet he learns and develops skills to sort out more of his problems for himself.

"Give a man a fish and he can eat for the day. Give him a rod and line and he'll eat for ever." This has to be the way.

One last thing....

Don't let's forget that helping Peter with his financial problems isn't the only way she can enjoy a relationship with him.

She should teach him what he needs to know....and then ask him for some advice on something that he knows a lot about (e.g. finding out about the family tree?...or questions about his area of expertise) older people love to feel they have something valuable to contribute too!