Debt crisis with girlfriend

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

12 minutes ago, genericptr said:

If I give her the benefit of the doubt then she made one incredibly stupid mistake with her first boyfriend and she's not recovered from it since then. She's not been smart about it though by doing things like buying new cars but she absolutely insists on the car. It's 10k/month for that payment alone.

 

I think that's your answer!!!

 

Maybe because I grew up as a Catholic kid, I have this odd belief that people who do wrong or make bad choices ought to somehow/someway have to atone for their wrongdoing, and not just get a free pass and no consequences for their actions. But in your case, that would only apply if you decided to step in and help bail her out.

 

I personally would not reward financial incompetence with a new car.

 

 

Edited January 30, 2020 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

8 minutes ago, khunpa said:

Farang women can be just as bad. My ex-wife basically ruined me with her spending. My Thai wife on the other hand works 6 days per week / 12-14 hours per day and pays her own way. (never been in debt too)

 

There's a keeper!  

[khunpa]

I think the biggest question is... Do you love her or not? 

 

If you love her, then help her out and make a plan for the future. Of course based on her being 100% open and following the plan.

[tomazbodner]

1 hour ago, genericptr said:

My questions:

 

1) Does this sound like total nonsense? She's never had a history of lying but this is so insane/stupid and I just can't accept it.

Seen that from a couple of Thai girls who had a con master farang boyfriend in the past. They'd make credit cards etc. for them, and then the guys found another one to scam and ran away without paying the bills. Some I've seen in more debt than that. And talking about it is losing face so unless they are facing a firing squad they won't tell you about it.

 

So it's possible.

 

1 hour ago, genericptr said:

2) What do Thais do in this situation? They already take payments directly out of her paycheck but will they reposes the car or something? My instinct is file for bankruptcy since she has assets besides a car but can you even do that in Thailand? It's so sad but the first 15 years of her working career has resulted in 0 savings, 0 money earning assets and debt. What a shame.

Can't talk about declaring bankruptcy as I don't know about it (not in Thailand anyway) but if she did, it is likely going to cost her her job, according to a friend of mine who also works for government.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

3 minutes ago, khunpa said:

I think the biggest question is... Do you love her or not? 

 

If you love her, then help her out and make a plan for the future. Of course based on her being 100% open and following the plan.

 

In my book, not a smart move to love someone / enter into a relationship with someone who you know or believe has the inclination to ruin your future financial well-being.

[khunpa]

9 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

In my book, not a smart move to love someone / enter into a relationship with someone who you know or believe has the inclination to ruin your future financial well-being.

Considering they have been together for 7 years and she has not had "strange" behaviour before, she might be telling the truth. But for sure she must have some kind of spending problem and that has to stop. If me (and I loved her.... and she was super hot and crazy in bed), I would properly help her this one time and then make a plan to get out of the debt as fast as possible. If she could not stick to the plan, I would RUN! ????

 

Just strange a huge debt like that can go unnoticed for years.

Edited January 30, 2020 by khunpa

[NorthernRyland]

7 minutes ago, khunpa said:

Just strange a huge debt like that can go unnoticed for years.

I knew she had debt but I assumed it was under control. She was using her bonus to keep afloat and she assumed it would always be there I guess.

[khunpa]

15 minutes ago, genericptr said:

I knew she had debt but I assumed it was under control. She was using her bonus to keep afloat and she assumed it would always be there I guess.

She must have some serious bad spending habits with her salary and benefits, if the bonus has been needed to keep afloat. Thats going to be up-hill for sure.

Edited January 30, 2020 by khunpa

[talahtnut]

4 minutes ago, genericptr said:

I knew she had debt but I assumed it was under control. She was using her bonus to keep afloat and she assumed it would always be there I guess.

If I was confronted with your situation, I would

let her deal with it herself. its a learning process.

 

[ChakaKhan]

Trust--But verify.....

[RichardColeman]

 

 

2 hours ago, genericptr said:

The pressing issue is they've made an offer that if she pays 55k by tomorrow they will reduce the principle by 55k which means she still has to pay 120k by next month. She of course needs the 55k from me.

Looks like the man in the mirror is up for another 120k next month then.  If your girl cannot live a life on 50000 a month (38 salary 41 say with previous bonuses AND your 6,000 making it near 50,000) AND has free housing then I suggest walking away ! I suggest you look at her phone - if its the latest one its quite clear where her priorities lay

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

27 minutes ago, genericptr said:

I knew she had debt but I assumed it was under control. She was using her bonus to keep afloat and she assumed it would always be there I guess.

 

I don't think the difference between getting or not getting a 6.3% annual bonus on a 38,000 baht salary is going to be the make vs break difference in the kind of financial problems you described. That amount works out to about 29,000 baht extra per year, or 2,400b per month equiv., assuming you mean the bonus was going to be applied against her total annual salary.

 

Quote

My girlfriend of 7 years has good government job in Chiang Mai (in my opinion) which pays 38,000/month and provides free housing. She's had this job since being out of university and she's 40 now. Since last year the yearly bonus they receive has been cut from 7% to about 0.7%

 

[ChouDoufu]

i went thru a similar (not as bad though!) situation a couple years ago.  gf had a nice office job she'd had for 20 years.  decent salary plus one month bonus.  unfortunately, she'd never learned about finances, and was in credit card debt, about three year's total salary.

 

collected all the bills and statements, drew up a payment plan, and started teaching her about how to handle money.  we contacted some of the creditors and got reductions in the total amount owed, or changes to the interest rate and minimum payments.  those that didn't agree or make adjustments took her to court, and wound up doing much the same.

 

i cut up her cards, and we closed most of the accounts that the creditors didn't close themselves, leaving just one card for emergencies.  she had been using some cards (and a friend's card!) to take cash advances to pay the others.

 

i gave her 50k (one time only) she could draw on to pay off cards in entirety when she got a reduction offer.  she'd then have to replace that amount from her salary to pay the next card offer.

 

took her a couple years, but she managed to pay off all the cards, and the 50k i gave her.  since then, she's continued to follow the budget, save her salary, invest, and is now shopping to buy some land, maybe a small house.

 

you're gonna have to go through her shoebox filing cabinet, find out what she really owes and plan from there.  bankruptcy is not an option for the little people.  that's only allowed under thai law if your debt is at least one million.

 

ask to see all the 'lawyer letters.'  if they've gotten to the point where they're making offers before a possibly scheduled court appearance, there should be some more background.  have some of the debts already been sold to collection agencies?

[englishoak]

3 hours ago, genericptr said:

No way can she be trusted with money. That much is clear.

Then you have no future, once trust is gone its over. 

 

Shes your GF not your wife, 7 years and last min.dom she wants bailing out ? id bail alright, out the door and not look back. Plenty of keepers out there shes 40, getting older and will only depend on you more... free accommodation ? wheres the money coming from when that ends ? .. savings for a house ? your her savings plan as others have said lad wake up.

 

You know why you came here to ask for advice, you already know inside its broke. even if it takes years its done. 

Edited January 30, 2020 by englishoak

[Gecko123]

8 hours ago, genericptr said:

Do you think we should cut them [Thais] some slack because of how fast their world has been changing?

No. Starting to make cultural allowances for this type of behavior is a very slippery slope. I would view this as an individual behavior rather than a cultural one. Plenty of Thais know how to manage their personal finances.

 

Sounds like you have enough to go on to determine whether or not you're being deceived. If you determine you're not, you still need to evaluate whether you are compatible in terms of setting long term financial goals and your ability to manage money. Some studies suggest that money problems are the number one reason for divorce. Best relationship advice I've ever read on TVF: focus on whether you are compatible.

 

compatible: able to exist or occur together without conflict.

 

 

Edited January 30, 2020 by Gecko123

[Gecko123]

posting snafu

Edited January 30, 2020 by Gecko123

[PatOngo]

Run Forrest Run! The fact that she bought a new car when she was already in debt says it all. Sometimes/ most times, buying FACE is beyond their means, but being Thai, face is all important. I would seriously give her a wide berth and don't waste your money on her greed for face!  

[Assurancetourix]

8 hours ago, CharlieH said:

All that means is she chose to keep it from you until she thought you were ready to "help" ?

Or more prosaically, it is on you that it fell because you are still there ...

 

My older daughter-in-law ( 33 years old ) who is a doctor and a public servant also has an incredible collection of credit cards.
At the moment it seems to be working; she never asked me for a baht; to her mother maybe but she never told me.
Anyway her mother who is a farmer and can only live on my pension has a monthly budget and this budget cannot be increased (thank you Hollande and Macron who have frozen my pension for ten years plus the vertiginous fall of the euro against baht);
 A few years ago her mother, my wife therefore, tried and failed.
On 20/22 of a month, she asked me a few thousand baht to "finish the month";
I gave them to her, specifying that they would be withdrawn from the budget for the following month and when she saw that it was really happening like that, she immediately understood.

Debt stories in Thailand, you should never enter it especially if you are not married.

 

Take your clicks and your slaps and disappears from her life.

Her money stories are hers, not yours.
Let her manage ...

[Assurancetourix]

9 hours ago, genericptr said:

If I give her the benefit of the doubt then she made one incredibly stupid mistake with her first boyfriend and she's not recovered from it since then. She's not been smart about it though by doing things like buying new cars but she absolutely insists on the car. It's 10k/month for that payment alone.

The immense problem of the men and in particular of the farang with respect to the Thai women is that they think with their balls instead of using their brains;
(unless the said brain is placed in this place and in this case there, a passage in surgery is essential ) 

[luckyluke]

9 hours ago, BritManToo said:

There's no shortage of potential gfs with less financial baggage.

I know what I'd do.

I suppose paying 100000 for your girlfriend is different.

 

Or than that was maybe the less expensive of potential gfs at the time. 

[BritManToo]

9 hours ago, genericptr said:

I actually can read Thai (slowly and big words are going to be a problem) and she has the document so I'll have to look it over.

Looks like you've decided to keep her no matter what.

Have you done the 'facebook' test yet?

Grab her phone, open her facebook page, see how much you feature on it.

 

1. Has to be her phone as some ladies have multiple facebook accounts.

2. How much you appear (or don't appear) on it, shows your importance to her.

[transam]

She has big financial probs but must keep the nice car......Hmmmmmm, sounds a bit fishy to me.

She knew about her debts yet bought a nice car....Hmmmmmmmm....????

[NorthernRyland]

13 minutes ago, transam said:

She has big financial probs but must keep the nice car......Hmmmmmm, sounds a bit fishy to me.

She knew about her debts yet bought a nice car....Hmmmmmmmm....????

Yeah that really pisses me off and she absolutely insists there is no other way whatsoever she can get around for her job. I feel like I should have just stayed in the US and let her sort this out on her own because she's making my life miserable staying here.

[emptypockets]

11 hours ago, genericptr said:

Exactly! It's so sad a person at 40 who's been working for 15 years has zero assets. She could have a house paid for in full by now if she was smart about things.

No worse than an old bloke who has worked for 45 plus years and now living in Thailand at subsistence level and relying on a pension from a far away country to feed and clothe him.

[NorthernRyland]

Lots of good advice here, thanks guys.

 

I didn't get much sleep last night but this incident has really put the fear of the God into me. ???? Right now it doesn't matter if she's going to pay me back or if this is the last time etc... because for all I know this is going to happen again next month when the next crisis hits (car tires explode, 75 year old Dad goes to the hospital). She's made it clear she has no money whatsoever for anything and she's going to harass me over it (there's a pattern that's formed in the last 8 months). 

 

I should probably try to make it back home (or escape the toxic garbage fire that is Chiang Mai) and wait to see if she handles her problems on her own or just keeps begging for money. I don't have any place to go so if I stay with her she's going to make me miserable and bleed me dry of the little bit of money I was fortune enough to save up.

 

All the posters that offer sane financial advice are correct  but I don't know how to convince her of this so she's on her own. She does say she'll refinance her debt this month and I'll get my 55k back but I don't plan on that of course.

[NorthernRyland]

8 minutes ago, emptypockets said:

No worse than an old bloke who has worked for 45 plus years and now living in Thailand at subsistence level and relying on a pension from a far away country to feed and clothe him.

I've met them. It's sad. I don't want to end up like them because of her. ????

[BritManToo]

10 minutes ago, genericptr said:

All the posters that offer sane financial advice are correct  but I don't know how to convince her of this so she's on her own. She does say she'll refinance her debt this month and I'll get my 55k back but I don't plan on that of course.

Apartments and houses are cheap to rent in Chiang Mai.

Emporium Residence in Santhitham Road has nice rooms for 5k/month (+5k deposit)

No need for you to put up with this nonsense, a new apartment will cost you a lot less than the 55k she wants.

Don't tell her your new address if you do move, you can still meet her for coffee, and go to her place.

Also don't give her any hint you're thinking of going, best done when she's at work, your passport may be at risk.

 

I still enjoy Chiang Mai, despite the burning (cough, cough).

Edited January 31, 2020 by BritManToo

[PatOngo]

27 minutes ago, genericptr said:

Yeah that really pisses me off and she absolutely insists there is no other way whatsoever she can get around for her job. I feel like I should have just stayed in the US and let her sort this out on her own because she's making my life miserable staying here.

Leave!

[PatOngo]

15 minutes ago, genericptr said:

I've met them. It's sad. I don't want to end up like them because of her. ????

Then don't! She's not worth a life of misery....just go!

[Vascoda]

12 hours ago, genericptr said:

they reposes the car or something?

They can repose the car for car loan only. They reposed my gf's car and I paid to get it back from auction lot. She is also my daughter's mother so I had to get it and she knows I am loaded. What would my daughter say if I don't pay her mother? "Papa mai me tang"

Edited January 31, 2020 by Vascoda