Good News!

Last week I was speaking to my mom and I mentioned that we were hoping for our tax money to be here in a few weeks. I then said that we would be making our final payment to them of $1300.00. This is one of the 2 personal family loans we have. One was to them for helping us cut a tree out of our yard a few years ago (it was a HUGE tree that required professionals). The roots were damaging our foundation. The other personal loan is to a set of grandparents. They gave us money when we first bought our house to replace all the windows. Both loans were with the agreement that we would pay them $1000 each year at tax time. We have faithfully done that.

But this year will be the last that I owe my mom and I was tickled to let her know that. Well, today my father phones me. He wants my husband to come over and help him with some computer stuff. Then he says "Hey, your mom said you were planning to pay us off this year...what do you think you still owe?"

I felt a little nervous. I thought maybe he was going to disagree to what our records show. There were a few minor things we added and took off. An example would be that for Christmas, my mother asked me to purchase our oldest son's gift for her. She told me what to buy and I did. But rather than have her pay me. I told her DH would deduct it from what we owe. So for that reason my first thought was that my dad was having a disagreement with the amount.

My husband keeps meticulous records on our quicken so I knew we had a way to verify this. But it did not matter, because that is not why he was asking.

He said "Well, how about we call it even at $700.00?" I was like "are you sure??!!!" I then assured him that we could pay it and he was like ..."no, you guys just pay us 700 and the loan is done."

Some of you might be saying this is no big deal, but with my family it is! My dad is the biggest tightwad I ever met, and he does not hand money out like that.

I think my parents were feeling guilty because of all the gifts and aid they have been giving my brother over the past years. Who totally deserves none of it.

My brother is a complete druggy, alcoholic, deadbeat type of dad. I know that sounds terrible, but it is the truth. He is nearly 30, but I don't think he will ever change his ways. We are completely opposite...as opposite as two siblings could ever be. I was the good girl growing up. Never did drugs, never got in trouble with the law, have always paid my own way kind of person.

My parents totally support him. They built him and his wife and kid a huge garage apartment on their property. There is no rent being paid, they have bought him about 12 cars since he was 16. He has wrecked or damaged all of them. Plus they have dropped a ton of money on his college bills (which he always dropped out of) and credit card bills for him as well. Now my mom also does free babysitting constantly.

As for me.. they bought me one car for a graduation gift a used one for around $3000. They never paid for any of my college and they have never given me money without expecting (as they should) repayment. I have always paid them whatever I borrowed back. Which has been very little over the years.

Because of the differences in how they have treated my brother and I over the years...I have vowed to always do my best to be fair with my kids. So them giving us a little of this borrowed money back as a gift seems fair considering all they have given my brother.

I told my dad over and over it wasn't necessary and he was like..."No, just consider it a gift and go on a vacation or something with the kids." Of course, that is not what we will do, but this will allow our tax money to stretch further on paying off more debt! I did update my debtometer to represent this deduction!

Another side note--they invited us over for dinner tonight too! There a savings in that as well!