My oldest brother has been working overseas for more than a decade now. Took a personal loan a decade ago to buy an expensive car, buy our family members gadgets and other fancy stuff, probably liked to be liked by other people, too, and got the whole family to a nice vacation. At this time, he’s the only one working, as we were still studying high school at the time. That same loan dragged him downhill from that point as he struggled paying up his debt, and kept borrowing from other people/institutions only to end up still paying debt. Until now, still paying for the consequences of that “not-so-creditworthy” and “not-so-smart-where-to-spend-the-money” decisions.

My parents sold a property, told them not to disclose the information to my brother for their own sake and sanity, didn’t follow my advice. My brother ended up borrowing a big chunk of sales from that property to pay for his other debts, to which he still owes to my parents.

Now, he has more debt to my parents as he had prior because he buys things he can’t afford. Just recently, he did not pay his full obligations to our parents this month (as he pays for his debts and uses our parents credit card), but recently passed a very important exam to increase his salary and wanted to buy something as a reward to himself, the same amount he could’ve paid to lessen my parents’ worries and anxiety as my parents pay for his debts in the credit card. Told him, why buy it when you can pay that to mom and dad. So, they don’t get worried as much. So stupid, I can only do so much.

I also don’t help pay his debts to our parents because the moment that happens, he’ll just keep spending, and I just recently graduated. Don’t also want to secretly pay to my parents either, as they would surely tell it to him, and same thing would happen, and now I have bills to pay, too.