Dad's girlfriend is bleeding him dry
Q: My parents were always careful with money. But since Mom died, Dad has taken up with a much wealthier widow and is blowing through his savings entertaining her. Isn't she wrong to let him undermine his financial security like that?
A: Maybe. The key question: Is your dad's lady friend in the dark as to his resources or is she just uncaring? If your father has been pretending to be her financial peer, you can't blame the woman he's squiring around for his extravagance. If not, though, she — like every adult — has an obligation not to allow someone to spend more money on her than the person can afford.
But unless the merry widow has been holding a gun to his head, it's your dad who's responsible for jeopardizing his financial security. While he has a right to spend his money as he chooses, he also has an obligation to see that he doesn't run out of dough and leave others – you, for one, us taxpayers, for another – stuck with his support.
Questions? Email Money Magazine’s ethicists – authors of “Isn’t It Their Turn to Pick Up the Check?” (Free Press) – at FlemingandSchwarz@right-thing.net.
Mike #2, Mile #1 was referring to the fact that IBM didn't set up its contract with Microsoft as "Work for hire", instead of just paying him to develop the system he later used to become a monopoly. Do a little research before you criticized. While it's someone's (technically) legal right to blow through their money, it's their moral obligation to not leave loved ones with the gut-wrenching choice of keeping food on their table and a roof over their head or providing for their own family.
I'm a former IBMer, and they teach you in onboarding just why they make you sign away all of your intellectual property to them before coming into the company–the Microsoft mistake! (Ranks right up there with the SAP blunder.)
IBM a monopoly? Come on man, at least get the company right in your rant. Gates didnt turn "microsoft" into a successful company because his parents were rich. He was crazy smart. Also, if someone wants to blow through money, it's their right. They earned it, they can spend it how they please. It's not my fault if they have to go back to work at Walmart
50 years ago, instead of a gang rape, it was a lynching. Your generation is not so superior, gramps.
There was a time when being poor WAS an incentive to do better. Many companies founded, fortunes built (and lost) and civilization advanced by those who started off poor. While the "Horatio Alger" model was rare even in his day, the U.S. is one of the few places it has been possible and applauded, and the U. S. has not historically been the nexus of class warfare.
If the kids today are a sampling of "a better start", woe is society. When a group of 20 high school kids can watch & participate in (in one fashion or another) a gang rape and not one of them has compassion to intervene or even just call the police, then I suggest no one is better off today than in times past.
I hear of so many people like this person who work their butts off for 50 years to become financially independent by retirement age … and then blow all of their money in a very short time, sometimes in as little as 1 year ! Whether it's on day-trading, excessive health insurance, or partying, it's such a shame to watch. And then their offspring repeat the whole process because they start off broke.
A better way would be to balance work, spending, and saving so that your family would be out of debt when you pass on. For example, Bill Gates had rich parents, so he could do whatever he wanted. While we won't all be as lucky as him (IBM handing us a monopoly), we could do a lot better as individuals and society if we got off to a better start.
Money Magazine's ethicists, Jeanne Fleming, Ph.D., and Leonard Schwarz, are the authors of "Isn't It Their Turn to Pick Up the Check?" (Free Press, 2008).
I agree with Fleming and Schwarz. As long as the dad is fulfilling his obligations (aka. has enough money to support himself in retirement and provide for any non-adult kids), then he can do whatever he wants with his money. That doesn't mean his children shouldn't talk to him just to make sure everything's okay, but other than that, the dad is doing nothing wrong.