A bit of a car crash really.

TheBex

Not really sure why I'm writing this here. Don't think there's anything anyone can do, but I believe in the therapeutic properties of writing.

It's my parents.

My Dad is 64, forced by MOD rules to retire at 60 (They changed the rules 1 month after his birthday) and not worked a day since. Pension of around 20k. Kidney failure and chronic untreated depresion. From the generation who did not believe in mental health treatment - stiff upper lip and all that.

My Mum is 58, made redundant whhen her (lucrative) IT contract went out to India. She is a COBOL programmer - it's a 20yr old language which no-one uses, hence no jos. Going a bit mad herself.

Their problems are numerous so we'll do one at a time.

The house (maybe 400K on a good day) - built in 1960, extended in the 70s, bought by us in the 80s. The flat roof over the extension gave in years ago. It's currently covered by a bit of pond liner. The water is still oming through and it drips through the ceiling into a collection of buckets. It's not unusual to go in there and find another bit of ceiling has fallen down. The house has no insulation to speak of and is damp almost all the way to the rafters. Two weeks ago the boiler broke so we now have no heating or hot water. We can't afford to replace it.

Daddy's hoarding is at "how clean is your house" levels. There's not a flat surface you can see. The drive houses 7 cars that don't work and you can barely fit a person in our triple garage. The loft is filled with baby clothes and old ski kit that's technnically rubbish and occasionally ihabited y squirrels, which is nice. The box room is so full of important paperwork that you can't get in there.

There is no filing system in this house except that "this pile is the post I opened this month..."

The capital of the mortgage (£150K) is due in March 2012. My Mother's tax bill (£100K) is due about two years ago. My brother owes them upwards of £20K. They are 8K overdrawn.

There are other assets. The other house (300k ish) owned outright needs total re-wiring and sadly comes with a huge barn, totally full of things, including but not limited to a steam loco in pieces, a tractor and my brother's furniture.

The flats, in Manchester and Liverpool mostly pay for themselves but there is no equity, and my parents own half of my house in Cardiff. It is paying for itself but hadn't for a while so we're not seeing an income at the moment. (about 25k equity and 150k mortgage there)

Three endowment policies exist, each worth about £20K.

The savings (about £150K) all went to a boiler room scam about 5 years ago. A further 20K would have gone a month ago had I not begged them to call the police for their advice.

My parents aren't stupid - an engineer and a compuer programmer, and they aren't stupid with money (My Dad used to run projects worth millions for the MOD) but they are behaving as though they are and I don't really know what to do. I've tried everthing I can think of, including a chat with our doctor about my Dad's state of mind, but nothing seems to make any difference.

My Dad just sits and plays computer games all day and says he's to depressed/ old to cope. My Mum is on the edge of a breakdown no idea what to do about him and the rest of it all.

So, that's the beginning of the story. If anyone has any ideas, please send them my way. Alternatively if you like looking at car crashes, keep reading!

Chillimonster

Hi Bex,

Quite a lot to take in in that opening post.

I wish io could offer advice, but feel way too 'under qualified' to offer anything constructive (i didn't just want to read, and run)

I'm sure someone will be along shortly to offer advice - hang in there.

In the meantime have a hug :grouphug:

Chilli :-)

dancingfairy

Hi - is it possible to clear some stuff to pay for the rewiring of the second house - is this something your family could do? I'm just wondering if your dad needs to have stuff or can't cope with trying to sort stuff out?
What you really need to do is get to the bottom of how much your parents own and how much they owe if possible - get it all out on the table so to speak. Will they let you help them?
df

jwil

Hi Bex,

I don't have much in the way of practical advice to offer. Could you post up an SOA so people can see the real situation? It's hard to gather from your post exactly what they've got and what they owe and when.

I can fully sympathise with the cluttered house - we have spent the last 2 1/2 years clearing a house and still haven't got there. It was packed to the rafters. I would suggest that the cluttered house is possibly adding to the depression. It can be overwhelming and you don't know where to start. What are your parents feelings about clearing some of it?

Do they need 'the other house' - is anyone living there? Is it standing empty much of the time? Does the £300k value stand as it is - i.e needing complete rewire? Could they sell that house and pretty much clear all their debts?

RAS

Hi

I suspect they need help from one of the debt charities https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2077631

CAP do home visits.

have you also considered any of the forces charities?

beanielou

Yes the forces benevolent funds are second to none.

katsu

Bex,

As your dad is an ex civil servant perhaps you could contact the Civil Service Benevolent Fund? They might be able to send someone out to meet with your parents and see if they can offer some advice on sorting things out?

I don't know how the fund works but it must be worth getting in touch to see how they can help?

TheBex

Firstly thanks to you all. It feels less awful while someone else is having ideas!

What an busy day. Was off sick Monday and Tuesday and back to work today, but I achieved about 40minutes work all day. Mare. Anyway, it was nice to be in a building with heating! Also the fever has subsided, which is lovely. And work has a shower so I can get clean in the warm. Yaysies!

When I got home we had a visit from another boiler man. He told us that if Da was on JSA we could get a £3500 warm front grant towards the cost of the heating system. This is MEGA news, if I can get Ol' Da to go for it.... Hmm. He also told us that our heating system was one of the worst he's ever seen - he can't find the pipes connecting the boiler to the upstairs heating loop, reckons it shouldn't work! (It worked really well before. Odd) He spent about 2 hours trying to work out where he could safely install a new style boiler in the house, because we have an open flue something something I gave up because it was all a bit jargony, but it's written down so I can have another look later, and he took about a zillion measurements and will get back to us with the best option. He did that teeth sucking thing though.

In order for him to get access to the pipes at the back of the water tank (which is leaking, suprise) Ma had to shift a HUGE pile of assorted junk onto her bed, and she promised me she'd go through it this evening... Baby steps Bex, and you'll get there in the end.

Then I went on my Tesco date with my friend - it's a gossip about boys while we buy work lunch food and odds and sods. Are duracell ultra better value for money than cheap batteries? Does them being on BOGOF help? Who really knows, but I know they work, and well. Anyway, smidgen off topic. (also got one of those Pain de Champagne loaves for 26p. Win.)


Back from Tescos and Da's gone out. Ma tells me she answered the phone earlier to the lady who runs the dialysis course Da's about to go on. He was asleep so she dobbed him in to Kidney Lady (KL) and KL was all "Oh, he shouldn't be, it's not normal for Kidney issues to make people sleep all the time. Might he be depressed?" And Ma was all "Erm, you think?" So KL said she'd try to talk to him about it during the dialysis course, which is on Monday morning. So we will see if she can get anywhere. Fingers crossed, but not much hope on it - he rarely listens to anyone younger than he is and if they're girls they've got a double prejudice to work against. Bless him and his casual sexism. (He's odd like that, judged my cousins new bloke on his Mohawk on Saturday, even though his own daughter has had pink hair for ten years...)

Part of the main story I forgot is that My only surviving grandparent, my Ma's Ma has offered to lend us "two-ish thousand pounds" for building materials to replace the roof. We can't access the roof at the moment because the old boy has started a private scrapyard in the way. We've told him the value of scrap and he reckons the cars have "an intrinsic value higher than that of the scrap price" *grumble grumble*

Right, am not mega savvy with this forum ma-jiggery so will answer Qs in a tick, one at a time.

If you're still with me then thank you and sorry for my disordered scribbles!

TheBex

dancingfairy wrote: »

Hi - is it possible to clear some stuff to pay for the rewiring of the second house - is this something your family could do? I'm just wondering if your dad needs to have stuff or can't cope with trying to sort stuff out?
What you really need to do is get to the bottom of how much your parents own and how much they owe if possible - get it all out on the table so to speak. Will they let you help them?
df

Most of it is utter rubbish worth nothing, but there are a few items of value remaining. It might work.

Da always had stuff, but it used to be anally organised, all his nuts and bolts in little tins with dymo labels. When he got sick (testicular cancer, 1987) he stopped. I don't know which of the two things it is to be honest. He likes to keep things if they might be useful in the future but that means things like the 137th plug in the plug box. He also can't say no to anything that's free, even if we have no conceivable use for it. So I think some of it is the wartime spirit that he learned from his parents... Also anything either of them ever owned must be kept...

I am trying hard to get to the root of things, but with all the relevant paperwork buried under piles of March's newspapers and broken coathangers, it's really slow going.

And I don't know if they will let me help them.

TheBex

jwil wrote: »

Hi Bex,

I don't have much in the way of practical advice to offer. Could you post up an SOA so people can see the real situation? It's hard to gather from your post exactly what they've got and what they owe and when.

I can fully sympathise with the cluttered house - we have spent the last 2 1/2 years clearing a house and still haven't got there. It was packed to the rafters. I would suggest that the cluttered house is possibly adding to the depression. It can be overwhelming and you don't know where to start. What are your parents feelings about clearing some of it?

Do they need 'the other house' - is anyone living there? Is it standing empty much of the time? Does the £300k value stand as it is - i.e needing complete rewire? Could they sell that house and pretty much clear all their debts?

I can't do the SOA because I don't have all the figures, just the general gist: money to pay 250k, assets 800k, monthly overspend £200-400. Sorry, I know that's really annoying because I'm annoyed by it too, but I am working on persuading my Ma to do it, even if she keeps it to herself. (she'll give it to me eventually I hope)

It's funny, I don't know if the clutter is a symptom or a cause anymore. It's a nightmare is all I know. 2.5 years to clear one house? Wowzer, my sympathies are with you. One of my greatest fears is that they'll leave this mess for us to sort out when they're incapable. I think they both want it sorted but neither especially wants to get rid of things and Da doesn't want to physically do it (nothing would please Ma more!)

The other house is empty in the winter. They're there a lot in the summer - Da's steam railway is there see and he works on that a lot. the 300 is a very guestimate figure. No-one knows what it's worth because it's an unusually large house for the area. Zoopla estimate something like 450 so I thought a conservative estimate better. TBF it should make 300 without the re-wire, but you never know. They could indeed sell it and solve all their problems (except the stuff) but this a total emergency last resort option in parent land. Selling this house would also attract CGT of around £30k which they want to avoid at all costs... I am with you, sell it and move forwards.

TheBex

RAS wrote: »

Hi

I suspect they need help from one of the debt charities https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2077631

CAP do home visits.

have you also considered any of the forces charities?

Ta, I expect they might do.

I don't know if the forces stuff would apply by the CS benevolent people may well be able to help, thank you to the person who suggested that.

Is there a "bang-their-heads-together" charity anywhere?