Slate Pay Dirt: Lillian's Money Advice Column

Pop Culture + Media
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Today’s column. This is the question that was the toughest to unpack. There’s a lot going on here.

Dear Pay Dirt,

My husband, teenager, and I live in Seattle in a cramped two-bedroom, one-bath house that needs substantial repairs and is on a large lot. My husband is a professional carpenter with the skills to remodel/expand the house and add a DADU.

However, my husband and I have serious mental health issues: anxiety, depression, and severe ADHD which make budgeting and managing daily life tasks quite difficult. He has always earned below market rate and for several years has worked only about 20 hours per week. I earn the low end of a middle-class income and provide our healthcare benefits, paid sick time, and vacation time. I was my mom’s primary caregiver for the last 10 years (she has since passed away). We have two mortgages with high-interest rates, poor to so-so credit, no college fund, and very little retirement savings. I’m frustrated, yet hopeful that it’s not too late to build a more stable life.

My husband’s parents are quite wealthy. I’d like to ask them to buy our house or finance a remodel and DADU addition, and then either sell it for a substantial profit or buy it back from them and move back in. We could then use the rental income to repay them, help our daughter with college costs, and pay off the mortgage. Despite the issues above, my husband is capable of working full-time to complete a remodel, and I think taking steps to improve our situation could build confidence and motivation. We would need to move out during the remodel, but if this plan includes paying my husband a monthly salary at the going rate for carpenters, along with my income, we can afford to do that.

Is there a way we can do this that would benefit everyone? For instance, maybe my in-laws would recoup the purchase price and costs to remodel, and we split the remaining profit at whatever rate makes sense (Maybe 50/50? Or maybe a higher rate going to my in-laws for fronting the money, taking the risk, and helping us to get back to financial stability, with a lower percentage of the profit going to us?). I’ve also considered selling our house, buying a bigger but more affordable condo, and asking my in-laws if they would help finance flipping a house or two and sharing the profits. I’m so tired of this situation where my husband has the skills to remodel or build high-quality and beautiful houses, but we don’t have the financial savvy to leverage those skills to earn a good living.

—The Carpenter’s Family Needs a New Home

Read my answer to this over on slate, and three more questions.

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Wow, that is a complex question. Great job with the answers!

I know you are overly busy right now but if you have a calmer time in the future I am curious how long it takes you to answer a typical question or any other behind the scenes details you would be willing to share.

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Ohh but I am currently procrastinating on my two other jobs

It really depends on the question and how hard it is to answer it in a way that’s interesting. Some take me like 15 minutes, some take me like 2+ hours. I do a fact check for any legal questions, once or twice I’ve called a lawyer or tax preparer friend for a quick gut-check on a legal answer.

The final polish is then going through and making sure all the questions make sense and flow, and I have all appropriate links. Generally, to do all 5 questions (4 regular, 1 slate plus), it takes me about 3-5 hours to write them and I do it over the course of a week. My editor gets them back to me with a fact check the next business day and language/style guide edits. I back-and-forth with her edits for about ~30 minutes usually, then she posts the same day.

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To further help you procrastinate: do you talk with the other columnists at all before any answers are finalized and posted to the site? Do y’all gossip about any wild questions you get?

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Nope, not at all! I’m twitter mutuals with them, but i don’t see their questions at all, and I don’t get to pick which questions I get. But sometimes my editor and I have some (occasionally judgemental) back and forth in the google doc about some of the wild questions.

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Thank you! I don’t know why this is so interesting to me but it really is. Probably because I’ve loved advice columns for so long and always wondered what the process was.

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Can you veto answering a question? The one about ghosts in dear prudence it was pretty obvious the author just couldn’t engage and I thought they should have refused to answer

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Haven’t tried yet!

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My favorite aunt died, leaving a semi-substantial estate to be split between eight people, one of whom is her daughter (adopted as an adult). Two senior members of the family were in charge of executing the will (or at least were trustees?). The daughter had a private talk with the two senior members and argued that she should have a larger share because she is the daughter. The two seniors then decided to approach some of the heirs with the following proposal: Give the daughter two shares with a little coming from each of us. This was presented to us sort of as a done deal. The daughter knows that we’ve been approached with this plan.

I am really devastated that she would actually ask for more money. For context, my aunt was VERY generous in life and the daughter was a large recipient of financial help (as was I, as were many of us). I have so many feelings, including sadness (I genuinely wish she had just left all the money to charity because now it feels gross), anger, and I’m appalled that the daughter would basically attempt a cash grab. I should say that I haven’t spoken with the daughter yet and, honestly, I do not recognize this as the cousin I have loved. I can only imagine that she was grieving and hurt that she didn’t get a bigger share, but this is still EXTRA money. And giving her more money doesn’t change the fact that her feelings were hurt by the will. I’m really too overwhelmed to think clearly.

How shoud I process this and what is the best thing to do? Should I just give her the money? How can I repair what feels to me like this horrible breach of trust from the two seniors as well as the daughter? Confounding factor: The daughter has a degenerative condition that will make her more disabled as she ages (she currently intermittently uses crutches and has complex medical needs). She’s also incredibly smart, resourceful, and independent (she has a high-powered job and a large community of loved ones, and a life partner). What is the ethical thing to do here?

Read my answer and the other 3 on Slate >>

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Your advice is so good! I’d be at a total loss for how to respond.

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Tomorrow’s Slate Plus question is gonna be really interesting!

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Today’s slate plus question. answering this questions about egalitarian economic structures brought up a lot of feelings from my time in nonprofits and egalitarian intentional communities.

I have a question about sharing. I grew up in a communal religious group that insisted on constant sharing and deprivation for the group, particularly if you were female (which I am) as serving others is the highest calling. I fell out of that community for a number of reasons but I still feel very much that I owe service and resources, particularly to those with less.

I have a side project that I do in addition to my day job, and I keep thinking I could maybe make this side project my day job if I invest 30 percent of my monthly salary for about a year. However, I also contribute to income sharing with two families who make significantly less than me and could definitely use the income. Alternatively, I could add a third family to my income-sharing group. Or I could keep quiet and invest in my project. I have been struggling with this decision for a year now. Ethically, I feel like I am a bad person for even struggling with this decision, but I really like my side project and selfishly want to see what I could do. Is there an agnostic formula for this sort of thing?

—Ethically Selfish

My answer over at Slate

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paywall for me now…

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Yea, I’m not allowed to post my answers elsewhere online. It’s a slate plus question.

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two of this week’s questions

Dear Pay Dirt,

I’ve had a chronic illness for years that has caused me to jump around from temporary job to temporary job. I can only work about 20 hours a week. But because of this, I’ve gained a very unique set of skills that it seems might enable me to be a consultant. Last month, I started networking and found a few small jobs. After talking with a friend who does similar work, I had hoped to be able to fully support myself in the next two-three years with just part-time projects. The projects will mostly be one-two weeks in duration and I will probably only be able to work about 40 weeks a year (which is fine with me). This week an amazing project fell into my lap. This company wants to hire me as a consultant for an incredibly high weekly rate over a long period of time. I’m currently living with my sister and this money would allow me to move out and start supporting myself with my work right away.

There are two problems. The first is that I get the feeling some of the higher-ups don’t like that I can’t work full-time hours. I can work full-time hours over a short period of time, although it’s not good for my health. Over a long period of time, my body becomes too tired to work and I have to take weeks off.

My second issue is that I am really close to qualifying for student loan forgiveness due to disability. I have incredibly high student loan debts, partially because my disability started in grad school. I resigned myself to the fact that I would never be able to pay them off and would have to wait anywhere from 10-25 years for forgiveness, depending on my job. You have to prove that the disability caused significant difficulty in your ability to make money. I’m worried this project, which will most likely be a one-time thing, will make it look like I can support myself financially. The job could possibly be enough to pay off my student loans completely depending on the amount of time I will work with them, which won’t be decided until after the first three months. This job may also help me develop skills to broaden the types of jobs I can get and increase my pay, although that is not guaranteed. I’m about five months away from the 60-month cutoff for loan forgiveness due to disability. What do you think?

—Student Loan or Financial Stability

Dear Pay Dirt,

I graduated college in the spring and have started my first “real job,” at a small library. The director and I are the only two full-time employees, and until next week we will have another co-worker who works a (very helpful) 12 hours per week. However, this coworker is retiring, and the hiring process for another part-time worker may take months, so for the next while it’s just going to be me and the director. I make $18/hr, which is sufficient considering I’m living with my parents, but given that I’m now going to be handling most of the work my part-time coworker was doing plus what I was doing before, it would be nice for my pay to reflect that. Would it be appropriate to ask for a small raise in light of this (say, $20/hr), even if I’ve only worked here for five months? For what it’s worth, my boss is very chill and the person who advocated posting the position at $18/hr instead of $15/hr, but I don’t want to seem like I’m getting ahead of myself.

—I Became a Librarian for the Money, Obviously

Thank you @RamonaQ for helping with my answer to the second!

Here’s my answers to these and two others on slate

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Two of this week’s questions. Is the first one plotting to kill her husband?

Dear Pay Dirt,

My husband (42) and I (female, 49) need some advice about life insurance. We’ve been married for 15 years and don’t have kids. He makes great money, and I’m in a PhD program, so I only make a small stipend, but we have about $50,000 in savings, plus money in retirement accounts, etc. We rent in a luxury building (primarily because we hate the upkeep of a house) but own a small home that my parents live in and we pay the mortgage on. We’re doing great financially.

The issue is that, because my husband is diabetic and takes mood disorder medications, we cannot get more life insurance for him. We each have $100,000 term policies that we started at the beginning of our relationship (before either of his diagnoses), and he has $100,000 through his job. But this isn’t enough if something were to happen to him. I could pay off my parents’ house, but then what? I still have several more years left in my program. I have obviously worked before and made good money, but I don’t want to do that. He is only denied insurance because of these diagnoses—it doesn’t matter that he’s in good health, that both of his conditions are managed with medication, that he’s never been suicidal, etc. I am frustrated that the insurance industry (even companies that say they cover anyone!) denies people based on these arbitrary criteria. I’m not worried about him harming himself or dying from diabetic complications. I’m worried I’ll be left destitute if he’s killed in a car accident on the way to work. We would like to get a policy of at least $500,000, but this seems impossible. I guess my questions are, why is it OK for life insurance companies to deny coverage like this, and is there any way to get coverage? I really don’t want to write my dissertation on the inequities in the insurance system.

—Tired of Mental Health Discrimination

Dear Pay Dirt,

Last summer, my family (married couple, three kids) moved after 11 years in our home and 20-plus years in our former community. The move was precipitated by a job offer and we only had a month to decide on a slew of things, including uprooting our children from the only home they have known. We made the move but decided to rent instead of sell for emotional reasons (it was obviously a hot time to sell and we likely should have, but here we are). We are now trying to decide on the best course of action when the current tenants’ lease is up next summer.

The house is on a 30-year mortgage. We have about $175, 000 in equity in the home at its current market value. The job offer included housing, so we are currently living rent-free and will be for about two more years. We are in our mid-40s and financially stable but have only been that way for about five years—due to childcare costs, student loan debt, high cost of living area, the usual suspects. We have never been landlords and never intended to be, so we did not consider the tax implications of renting amid the general moving chaos.

What should we do with the house next summer? If we continue to rent it out, are we going to take a big hit on taxes when we do sell it (it is unlikely we will ever live in it again)? I am struggling to find information on selling after only one year of renting versus selling after five years of renting, for instance. If we sell but aren’t rolling the money into a new house immediately, how do we protect that money? This is our only major investment and I’m scared of making a decision that could haunt us and impact our financial future because we don’t understand all the factors in play.

—Not a Landlord

My Answers over at slate:

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This week’s lead question is immediately generating a lot of discussion

My 16-year-old daughter was promised her adult stepsister’s old car if she babysat all summer since her child care fell through. The plan was the husband would keep his work truck, she would get the newer model, and the car would go to my daughter. Neither my ex nor I could afford (or even find) a car for our daughter in our area. Between rent increases and higher gas prices, everyone’s budget is bursting.

Now, the husband lost his new job so according to my ex’s new wife and her daughter, they can’t possibly keep up their end of the bargain. They need both vehicles now and they can’t pay my daughter the thousands of dollars they owe her for babysitting. My daughter is devastated. I am furious and at a loss for what to do.

My daughter was getting up at 6:00 a.m. during her summer vacation in order to take care of a fussy toddler so her stepsister could work. She turned down other jobs because she thought she was getting a car at the end of August. My ex claims there is nothing he can do and it isn’t the end of the world if our daughter has to ride the bus. We have always had our differences but we always put our daughter first.

—Not a Caregiving ATM

Answers over here:

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I love that the question is generating discussion— it’s a doozy…

I also love that you plugged your day job in your response to the last question!

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One of the biggest lessons I learned in my legal class is there are only four types of contracts that legally need to be in writing (Contracts governing the purchase or transfer of land. Contracts relating to activities that will extend beyond one year. Prenups. A contract of an executor or administrator to answer for a decedent’s debt). Everything else can be a verbal contract as long as there is consideration and acceptance. You have to be careful with what you agree to verbally it could be a binding contract. And this can also vary by state.

Yes you have to prove that the contract exists and these can be difficult to enforce but it doesn’t make it any less valid.

Such a sad situation, I hate when money ruins family relationships (just read the inheritance drama, stories wanted over on MMM), and this sounds complex with the people involved.

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I thought my editor would cut it, but she didn’t! And she left in my wanderings about forwards contracts.

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