My MIL is a sweet person but she has the financial wherewithal of a 3 year old. She has a decent paying full time job, no mortgage payments (inherited a house), her house/everything in it is falling apart, she doesn't buy anything, doesn't go anywhere, is a real bible thumper who doesn't drink, smoke or gamble, lives super frugally and hasn't had kids at home to support in years. Where her money goes is a mystery.

When my husband and I were just starting out (living super frugally in a rathole studio apartment saving every penny we could to buy a house), she consistently asked to borrow money, mostly for car payments (and it wasn't a fancy car either!). She would 'pay us back' $5 or $10 every so often. We ended up "lending" her (i.e. giving, we knew we would never get it back) close to $1000 for that car because she lived in an area with no public transport and bad weather most of the year.

She actually seemed to be pulling it together financially for a while and hadn't asked for a loan for some time. What we DIDN'T know is that was because she had been confronted by family about filing for bankruptcy and got all offended. She decided a better solution was to just stop paying all her bills except electric and water! She called crying one afternoon because her car got repossessed and she was being taken to court over her other debts (from what exactly, nobody knows). Come to find out, most of the money had been spent 'elsewhere' (on what, no one knows) AND she didn't have close to enough to pay the paltry sum for taxes on the house for the year. Not sure who lent her the money for the taxes to keep the house, but we haven't given her a dime since. It's been many years since she lost the car and has not managed to save up enough for even a couple thousand dollar older car, her house is still in a state of utter disrepair, she still complains about never having enough money... It's incomprehensible to me how a woman of her age is unable to stick to a budget and take care of her s***!