Everyone loves their family and relatives and endeavor to effectuate their requirements and necessities. There are people who live abroad and are far away from their family members and relatives. However, blood relations can never be broken no matter how far distances may separate them.
Following are a few ways in which you can help your family members when they are in financial trouble, whatever may be the reason.
1. Offer a Cash Gift
If your family member is troubled by a short-term cash problem, one way to help ease the financial burden is to give them an outright cash gift. You can effectively decide how much you can give at once or maybe give cash gifts periodically until the situation gets better. However, the essence of this method is to make it obvious that this good-will is a gift, not a debt that is supposed to be paid back.
2. Personal Loan
A family member who’s in financial trouble may come to you to ask for personal loans. This is a good way to help your family member because you will be able to set out the terms and conditions for the loan and it will be easier to make the terms as lenient as possible for example having no interest rate. For this, the terms of the loans should be written down clearly on a paper to which both the parties will sign for the financial agreement they will be entering.
3. Co-Sign a Loan
Your family member may consider taking out loans to help expedite their short-term financial needs. However, a situation might arise where a family member’s credit history requires a co-signer to avail the loan. You can help your family member by becoming the co-signer after properly understanding the implications and responsibilities that you will be required to carry out. Ask the lender to notify you in writing if payment is skipped by your family member or a late payment was made. Finding out about potential repayment concerns can help you take positive action and bring the situation under control before it becomes even more complicated.
4. Creating a Budget Plan
Most of the times, people that are facing a financial crisis are actually not aware of where their money is being spent unnecessarily. If you have expertise in employing a budget-plan to manage your own cash and expenses, you can help your family member, who’s in financial trouble, by encouraging them to make and use a budget and bill-paying plan as well. In this way, as you work with each other to help them manage their financial situation, point out where they can cut unnecessary spending and attempt to boost their income to better satisfy the financial demands.
5. Prepay their Bills
You can help your family members in financial difficulty by pre-paying one or more of their regular bills which may include rent or mortgage, utility bills and insurance premiums among others. This will greatly alleviate them of a considerable amount of stress. Helping them a little in terms of such payments can provide your family member extra time which they could use to devise a budget-plan or a path of action to get out of this financial crisis.
Conclusion
Family members and money aren’t always a good mix. But in difficult economic times or in the face of unexpected emergencies, your loved ones may really need your financial support. Be sure to think through what you can and can’t manage to do before you commit to helping. Keep in mind, there might be constructive, efficient and imaginative ways to help your family members when your own budgets are tight.
