This isn't a pity party, I just wanna share my story so that hopefully others here won't make the same mistake I did.
I think most of us feel the urge to help when we see a family member in a bind, while I don't think it's wrong to help; experience has taught me that it's important to make sure you don't overextend yourself.
I realized too late that's exactly what I did.
My mother didn't have any credit, she'd never tried to apply for it because she thought they were bad news. Turns out she was right, they're bad news when it comes to her using them. Since she didn't have any but she wanted to finance a family vacation for everyone she asked if I'd be willing to let her use my cards, first mistake was saying yes to this.
Long story short she maxed out 2 of my cards rather quickly, my fault for believing her when she promised not to do this. She did attempt to pay most of it back, the problem is I said yes once so now the flood gates were open and she kept asking me to finance other things. I became her bank, second mistake.
Finally after seeing that everything was going downhill way too fast, she was charging things faster than she could pay them off, I decided maybe she'd be more responsible if I helped her get her own credit. Last and final mistake.
To be honest I really should've known this was gonna go bad because she hadn't been responsible with my credit and she ended up maxing out her own as well.
But to add further insult to injury she managed to convince my siblings to get credit cards and then maxed out theirs too.
I didn't set a very good example for the others, and at times I blame myself because I started this mess in the first place. Despite my warnings, my siblings had to find out the hard way instead of learning vicariously from my mistakes.
Once she maxed out her cards and the bills started to pile up things took a turn for the worse because she started asking me to use the available credit to help her pay the bills, I refused to do this and we made the decision to part ways but she refused to give back the cards I had given her, I had to report them all stolen and get new ones sent.
It's been a long road but I've managed to pay back all the credit she used, in the end once I put my foot down and refused to let her use the cards as a crutch she basically disowned me and told everyone else to do the same.
