There are times when I just want to scream. I don’t know what to say on the details, because it just makes me screamy thinking about it!

But to explain the context: we live in southeast Michigan.

Yeah, that’s why my frugal blog is so popular.

What a horrible topic to be such in demand!

It sounds like your parents and my in-laws have a lot in common. My in-laws’ debt is relatively limited, light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel. But we have no idea how much longer Tim’s dad will be able to work, at which point they’ll be in trouble.

Meanwhile, we’ve had to tell Tim’s mom — to her face — we’re not going to take Matt in. You need to let him grow up. We cannot support him and we will not. She rushed to assure us (you know that annoying/disturbing way that makes you realize they’re not really listening?) that she doesn’t expect us to.

They continue to make worrying decisions with finance. I will probably do a post about it at some point. But I don’t want to seem to be trashing them too much.

They’re very sweet people, who would do just about anything for us. But when it comes to money, I’m a little terrified about their decisions.

Honestly? My EF formula is: the more freaked out I get, the more cash I need.

And then when I reach any goal at all, I raise the bar. It’s perverse.

It’s also born of a desperate fear that this time, whatever the emergency is, it will be more than I’m able to bear, since the job market is so bad and my job’s about to end. (8 months into the job search, and nada.)

It seems irrational now because I have a positive NW, and through *ahem* interesting events earlier this year, we’ve eliminated almost every last bit of debt. Almost. It took selling a truck for way too little and then totaling the other one.

But, I’ve been there, balancing debt and saving. All through college, all my money was juggled between tuition fees, books, rent, my parents’ debts that seemed unending. Every time I squared away or BTed one debt, another would pop up. It seemed like I’d never get out from under their mistakes. Five years after graduation, I still haven’t.

Even though I’ve paid off tens of thousands of dollars of debt, there’s always the haunting despair of knowing that their health is rapidly declining, that my RA is getting worse, that I’m about to be out of a job and still can’t find another, that we’re all uninsurable and I “made too much” but still couldn’t afford proper health care for them. Oh, and my dad is the king of bad financial decisions. Seriously. So every time I make some progress, I cringe, knowing that he’s going to do some godawful stupid thing that’s going to waste my time, energy and money fixing.

And he’s got nothing on my idiot brother who still won’t make a living wage because he’s a selfish, self-centered, consumptionist loon who mooches off the family as best he can, and has to be policed within an inch of his life and human dignity just to force him to be tolerable.

So um, yeah. I can depend on my family to be there only to make really colorful messes for me to clean up. I … need to get away.

Of course, if anyone knows differently, please let me know.