Me and the missus just bought a house, and her parents are going to be moving in with us. They are going through a bit of a financial meltdown, and this is a way of helping them out until they can get back on their feet. I get along fine with them when I only see them once a week, but I’m a little leery of living with them. Any advice from those of you who have done this before?
Learn tolerance. If you think you already have it? You don’t. Not in the quantities required. Be Buddha. And do your ranting here, not there. Good luck.
Holy crap. Good luck, DA.
Mark your territory.
If they are humble, things shouldbe ok. If they have chips on theirs shoulders, could be rough.
Be compassionate. I’m sure they don’t want to be there either.
I feel with you
[quote=“jdsmith”]Mark your territory.
If they are humble, things shouldbe ok. If they have chips on theirs shoulders, could be rough.
Be compassionate. I’m sure they don’t want to be there either.[/quote]
Good, no, great, advice. When they move in, you might want to take them out for dinner than night to celebrate. Of course you will want to cry but make them feel you are happy to have them, and expect this to be a wonderful time of joy. They will hopefully appreciate you taking their minds off their financial problems and may even be persuaded to think of this in positive terms; ie. how to make the best of it. Lead, don’t follow. Your rules are that this is a happy house, a cooperative house, and it’s so great to have likeminded people come to stay.
And as Sandman says, rant here.
And as I said to a newbie a few days ago, in taiwan you want to be seen as the righteous man, not the man who is right. No one cares if you are right.
tell them to get a house down the street. there is no reason for in laws to be living with you unless they invalids or in a vegetive state.
One of them is an invalid, due to a recent car accident, which caused the financial meltdown. This is definitely not a case of people taking advantage of us, but a response to a bad situation. My father-in law is going to need a year before he can really get back into the workforce, so the option was either to let mom work herself to death in order to make their mortgage payments, or have them sell the house and move in with us for a year or so, until they can get back on their feet.
This is definitely the right thing to do, so no opinions from people who have never done this before, please. I just want to make sure we don’t end up killing each other.
Love your avatar, Dangerousapple. Too bad about your situation. I think there are a lot of helpful hints here. If I were you, I would also try to set some ground rules regarding your privacy/office/desk/bathroom / TV time. Or figure out how to adjust schedules accordingly. Try to set some boundaries (nicely) so you don’t feel trampled on later. You’re a foreigner (right?) so you shouldn’t have to explain yourself too much.
Good luck!
An important factor will be your wife’s attitude. Will she side with them or with you if any frictions arise? If it’s the latter and you know you have a dependable ally, you should be able to survive it with your sanity and marriage intact.
The size of your home will also make a huge difference as to how easy or hard it will be to manage this situation. If you have at least a couple of floors and a couple of bathrooms, so that you and they have plenty of space of your own and can retain a decent amount of privacy, then that’ll be ten times better than if you’re all crowded together in 20 pings where you’re never out of each other’s sight and hearing.
Anyway, it’ll be a truly noble thing for you to do, and I hope it will all turn out well and you’ll be justly rewarded for it.
Does your father-in-law need a lot of looking after? More than your mother-in-law could provide by herself? Will you and your wife be expected to help your father-in-law a lot?
If it weren’t for the invalidity issue, would it not be better to lend them money to keep up the mortgage payments until your father-in-law is ready to work again? Selling a house and then buying another one a year later wastes a chunk of cash in fees and taxes…
I’d be worried about them getting too comfortable (and your wife getting too comfortable with her parents so close) and wanting to stay beyond the year…
Read: Mothers ‘sales business’ has gone tits up and Dad has beaten up his last taxi passenger.
Dude. Only you know if these people are wasters or not.
TomHill, damn I wish it were as easy as that. No, unfortunately they are decent people, but poor. They have been just barely getting by for years, and can’t do it on one salary alone. We’ve also been trying to get them to sell their house for years, but they never wanted to do it. Now they have no choice but to sell it, as there is no way I am going to pay their mortgage for them.
chinese people always have money.
We had a similar situation - no job, NTD 6000/month in retirement grants, and a houseloan to pay.
Why not take over the ownership of the house and let the in-laws live there? We did that, even if weare renting our own place.
Don’t know if it will be a good investment or not, but the in-laws are at least not living with us, but still available for looking after our kids when needed.
Good luck with whatever decision you make.