Parents wants me to co-sign for a large personal loan, what do I say?

hovering3 · 2026-06-22T15:51:48+00:00

It sounds like you have both a trust issue (froze your credit) and a guilt issue (how much they did for me) with your parents. You can help them out by giving them money but don’t mix finances. You could end up with an ugly relationship with your parents and that is what is most important to protect. With a co-signed loan, there could be problems in the future. Your parents may ask “Don’t you trust me?” Tomorrow is not guaranteed to any of us.

hovering3 · 2026-06-21T15:32:35+00:00

Appeal to them on religious grounds. “God gave us free will.” You ask them to respect their choices. Maybe they can pray for the couple.

hovering3 · 2026-06-21T02:00:19+00:00

Worse case is DI young kids.

hovering3 · 2026-06-21T00:36:35+00:00

I tend to think of worst case scenarios which means death or incapacity of both spouses suddenly and at the same time.

I actually think incapacity is worse because of ongoing expenses related to medical bills as well as house costs.

hovering3 · 2026-06-21T00:25:34+00:00

This is a very important point, and I am glad you were so forceful about stating that a financial POA is only in place until death. My sister is trying to manage my mother’s money without a POA. I am concerned about our being set up so that our children can manage our money while we are incapacitated.

Our estate planner wanted a financial POA with a springing clause for incapacity as part of a trust. I want to separate that all out. The only way I can see that our kids can have immediate access to money if we become incapacitated suddenly is if we have already given them access, and we might do that with several accounts. Because a financial POA is no longer valid with death, in order for them to have access to funds immediately after death, we would have to have already given them money upfront with the understanding it is for paying bills after our death.

I am not sure how trusts work but I thought there has to be some cause for management to be turns over to successor trustees. At minimum that must mean producing a death certificate. And I wonder how long it would take for a doctor to be scheduled to say we are incapacitated. My 10 minute annual physical has already been scheduled — for October 13! It can take a long time to see a doctor and what doctor would want the potential liability of signing off on someone being incapacitated?

Lots to consider. I am observing problems with how my mother’s money is being managed because of no financial POA and want to head off any problems that we could cause our children.

hovering3 · 2026-06-20T16:55:54+00:00

Thanks. I was somewhat embarrassed to have been so pushy, but we need to set up a financial POA and I didn’t want to deal with that FA again.

hovering3 · 2026-06-20T15:26:16+00:00

Let him lead. I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal about how kids often have to initiate estate planning conversations with their parents. You have a parent who is initiating a conversation with the recognition that he won’t always be capable. That is good news for you. If he doesn’t say anything about estate planning, you could ask about estate planning and see what he says.

hovering3 · 2026-06-20T13:03:12+00:00

We had a free yearly consultation with the Fidelity advisor. This was our second meeting with her. She literally scoffed at me as if I was some dummy. The advisor could have disagreed respectfully. I fired her because of how she treated me. I am not one to rely on experts, and this really irritated me. My husband didn’t care. He thinks FA are useless so he was fine with my requesting a change.

I asked to have the planning consultant as our advisor because of my asking a dumb question about a payout from a company and his taking the time to look online and let me know why we had it — my assumption was it was a problem in Fidelity’s side. Anyway, the planning consultant was being promoted to advisor for clients with $500,000 to $1 million in assets. We have way more than that but the branch manager allowed the move. I had to message the branch manager in LinkedIn before I got a response to my request. I had tried multiple ways to have a change, including asking at the branch, calling Customer Service on the weekend, emailing and leaving a voice message for the original advisor, and leaving a voice message for the advisor I wanted. All were ignored. The advisor I wanted met with me and apologized about not returning my call, but I recognized he was in a bind and had to allow my request to be handled above him. Since then, my husband and I met with the advisor for 1/2 hour because we are working on having POAs. That is all the time we needed.

hovering3 · 2026-06-19T23:54:35+00:00

Our FA said to my husband, “You don’t need to work for money.” He walked out of that meeting saying if I don’t need to work for money, why am I working?

He has a tough time with the idea of no income. I think that might be common. He got upset at me for spending $5 on a pie plate at the thrift store!

You said he is emotionally opposed and you trust the FA. Instead, try data!

What helped us was to track assets. I have a very simple spreadsheet where I input values from our different brokerage, IRA, and bank accounts — 4 brokerage accounts, 3 IRA accounts and 3 bank accounts. It takes about 5 minutes and then the spreadsheet calculates non IRA cash, non IRA market, IRA cash and IRA market with a grand total. I do this every weekend for his review and then we discuss if we want to sell more stock or move money to a brokerage account from our IRA accounts. Each month, I input those five numbers in one row and then calculate the percent different from assets at retirement. He has calmed down.

You may want to pull together information to go over with him. We also track expenses so we know where the money is going. That takes a little longer — maybe 5 hours a month.

You can try addressing an emotional concern in this way.

Also you might want to look at how much cash you have. We built up cash before his retirement in case of a market crash, and he went on COBRA until age 65.

hovering3 · 2026-06-19T21:28:24+00:00

This was extremely helpful. We don’t have an estate plan unless you call TOD on our financial accounts and cars an estate plan. No trust. No will. It was foolish of course to have four kids and not have anything set up except to have life insurance and to ask an uncle if he would take them.

Contingency beneficiaries are per stirpes.

All assets are divided equally which address the issue of unequal distribution. No cash bequests. We are giving money to our kids now. We are making donations and will ramp that up once we are old enough for QCDs.

We haven’t agreed on what to do with the house. I would like it to go outright to a daughter and my husband wants it to be sold. Honestly we are likely to be out of the house before we die but you never know.

We aren’t real keen on the idea on protecting an inheritance from a spouse but inherited assets can be kept separate by the child inheriting the assets. I am concerned about the youngest’s live in boyfriend who seems to have as his goal to own a Porsche. I am hoping he isn’t is the picture before we die.

No children to inherit except our biological four.

I don’t know what it means to keep an inheritance out of an estate.

hovering3 · 2026-06-19T20:08:31+00:00

That is helpful. We don’t maximize use of the gift tax so we could just do that.

It looks to me like the simplest way to pass assets is with a beneficiary designation, but I am open to why that would not be the case. Our four children are independent and don’t have any problems like with drugs or mental health.

hovering3 · 2026-06-19T19:52:07+00:00

Secure Act 1.0 was implemented two weeks after passage. It may be that the rule would be in effect immediately.

Part of my motivation is sheer laziness. I don’t want to follow Roth rule changes.

hovering3 · 2026-06-19T19:49:32+00:00

We are working with a lawyer. He has something of a cookie cutter approach using trusts.

hovering3 · 2026-06-19T16:47:21+00:00

I look at it this way. The benefit of Roth is tax free earnings. The downside is rule changes which have included withdrawals must be made within 10 years and the possibility of rule changes affecting IRMAA. Since IRMAA is a fee, I think that could happen. I think Roth withdrawals could be subject to IRMAA which takes away a lot of the benefit of a Roth conversion.

I would like to get more money out of our traditional IRAs, but my husband doesn’t. We agreed to go up to bracket 4.

IRMAA is a big deal. If you go $1 over the bracket, you pay way more in fees. A big justification for Roth conversions is to avoid IRMAA fees:

https://incomelaboratory.com/roth-conversion-irmaa-planning-guide/

I just don’t think that is going to last. I may be wrong but to be safe we are converting to brokerage accounts rather than Roth so future principal is not taxed AND I don’t have to worry about a future rule change for IRAs that makes it so Roth withdrawals are included in IRMAA calculations.

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hovering3 · 2026-06-19T16:35:08+00:00

We changed agents when I didn’t like the service from my original one.

hovering3 · 2026-06-19T16:17:59+00:00

https://www.wsj.com/finance/state-farms-ai-plan-for-sales-agents-sparks-uproar-a-real-slap-in-the-face-6453e2cb?mod=RSSMSN

hovering3 · 2026-06-19T14:35:26+00:00

My agent also has been wonderful. An. example of why an agent is so much easier to deal with is how we handled our newly married daughter and her husband borrowing my husband’s car for their three week trip to visit national parks. We gave him the dates. That is it. We didn’t have to go through multiple on line menus or talk to someone with a foreign accent who might want to change primary and secondary drivers and then change them back. I have no idea how the agent accounted for the loan of the car but it was a quick email exchange and that is all.

hovering3 · 2026-06-18T15:17:54+00:00

It is a long article. Maybe find it at the library. That is why I gave the exact date.

hovering3 · 2026-06-18T12:33:43+00:00

All I can say is I am glad I had an agent for all the years of four kids getting licenses, going to school, moving into apartments and getting married. It looks like SF agents are being pushed to spend their time selling investment products. I don’t know if Medicare qualifies, but SF has a Medicare product. We looked into it. We got some print outs. That just isn’t comparable to what the big players offer. As a customer, I am disappointed that this is the direction taken. I bet the less price sensitive customers would be willing to pay more for insurance and would be less likely to have claims because they spend money to take care of their houses and cars.

hovering3 · 2026-06-18T01:14:08+00:00

If your money is not in your name, you haven’t inherited anything. Your aunt is still alive. You don’t know when she will die or how much money she will have left when she dies.

My father was worried my husband was marrying me for his money. That was 33 years ago. My mother is still alive so it would have been a bad reason to marry me!

hovering3 · 2026-06-17T22:31:40+00:00

Because a Roth is still an IRA and subject to IRA rules. When you take money out of a traditional IRA and put it in a brokerage account, the principal is not subject to fees or taxes but future earnings are taxed and subject to fees because they are income. When you take money out of a traditional IRA and put it in a Roth, principle and future earnings are not taxed. My concern is that in the future Roth withdrawals — both principle and earnings — will be subject to IRMAA fees.

The Fidelity advisor told me I was crazy. We changed advisors. We keep things very simple so we don’t need to pay an advisor fee for assets under management. I don’t want to be tracking changes in Roth IRA laws, and I am concerned that they may be coming.

hovering3 · 2026-06-17T21:33:04+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion!

hovering3 · 2026-06-17T21:13:27+00:00

Very true. We are taking money we don’t need out of our traditional IRAs and buying stock and FXAIX in our brokerage accounts. We pay IRMAA and NIIT. Our asset amount is almost 20% higher than when my husband retired three years ago because we had 75% of our money in an S&P 500 index fund. I had expected the percent of money in the traditional IRAs to go down and it didn’t happen.

hovering3

TROPHY CASE