I have a friend named L. who met last year. We both have daughters who are the same age, and our daughters are best friends.
L. is a great person...warm and funny, and we always have a good time together. She was in an industrial accident a few years ago and her left leg was mangled. She sued her former employer and late last fall the case finally settled and she got a lump settlement.
After she got the settlement, our relationship changed a bit...every time we went places together she spent money conspicuously and lavishly, and if we took our girls out to someplace she had planned, it invariably turned out to be a bit of a financial hardship for us to afford it (we would have to subsequently cut back on something else for the rest of the month). I still always enjoy her company though, but I was more comfortable hanging around with her before she got the settlement.
After receiving the settlement she took her girls on two recent trips to Disneyworld, bought big screen TV's for all of them and all new furniture, and they lived a lavish and glittery lifestyle over the past 9 months that has (very unfortunately) been the envy of our eldest daughter. I've had to have a couple of conversations with our eldest daughter about the fact that we simply can't afford to join L. on trips to Disneyworld, and we can't afford things like constantly buying her new clothes all the time, or buying things like even one big screen TV, let alone one in the living room and others in every single bedroom (we don't even have regular TV's in our bedrooms).
Anyway, today I got a phone call from L...she is distraught because she is in severe financial hardship. The lump settlement (that was meant to last her the rest of her life) has now all been spent. She told me the only food she currently has in the house is half a gallon of milk and half a loaf of bread, and she doesn't know where next month's rent is coming from.
Mr.Absinthe and I had a long talk about it. We won't loan her money, because we really don't have money to loan right now and in any case she has no way to pay back a loan. Besides which, I hate loaning money...I've always gifted money instead, with no expectation of ever seeing it back (and I tell people I don't want the money back on the occasions that I've helped people out). But we simply don't have money to gift right now, especially in the amounts needed to feed three people and house them for an indefinite period.
L thinks she may end up homeless again (she told me that several years ago right after the accident she and her daughters spent several months living in her car until family members finally took them in....up until she told me that, I had no idea she had once been homeless, but I did know she was living with her family when I first met her and only moved out to her own place after she got the settlement).
Ay yi yi...this is another WWBD? day. I'm not coming up with any answers though. I don't even know how to begin to help someone who is so financially clueless that they ended up putting themselves (and their kids...their poor kids) in such a situation.
And what am I going to tell my eldest daughter if her best friend ends up homeless?
Crap.
