Karl wrote:Tomous wrote:Lagamorph wrote:I just wish he'd come to me earlier given that he's already paid almost a years worth of interest. I've agreed to pay off the credit card for him in full to avoid anymore interest, on the condition that he cancels it immediately, then after his wedding he's going to start paying me back.
But online gambling really needs to be drastically more strictly controlled. It's literally all just a scam driven by psychological studies into addiction weaknesses and enticing you in with the word "FREE" in huge flashing letters. Yes there is absolutely an element of personal responsibility, same as with any kind of addiction, but with gambling it's just so much more scummy since every last aspect of it and its advertising has been meticulously designed to take advantage of a very particular set of people and then drain the most possible money from them in 'games' that they never had a realistic chance of winning.
Credit to you for stepping up and helping him improve his situation but you really want to be careful that you’re not just giving him a chance to start again and “win back the money he lost”. I’m sure you realise this but if he has an addiction he might not just be able to go cold turkey like that without any help.
To add to this, Laga, you should strongly encourage him to see a therapist IMO. I'm not a gambling addiction expert but I suspect paying for his therapy would probably help him more than paying off his debts.
Slayerx wrote:He might want to look into
https://gamban.com if he signs up they ban you from all gambling for I think 5 years.
He has told me that he hasn't done any online gambling since last year, so does appear to have 'kicked the habit' already, but I will make a suggestion of seeing a therapist and that I'll help him out there if needs be. Maybe even just tell him to keep the offer in mind if he ever finds himself thinking about it again in future.
I'll also encourage him to look into that ban from all gambling for 5 years thing, cheers. I knew you could voluntarily contact individual sites and ask them to blacklist you at their end, I didn't realise there was a central mechanism for doing that across the board though.
Bunni wrote:Lagamorph wrote:It is. They don't have a joint bank account though, still completely separate.
Might not be great to find out when they apply for a mortgage or something down the line. Hell of a surprise.
They've already got a mortgage and a house, and luckily he's never reached the point of not being able to afford his mortgage payment. It could come up in the event of them remortgaging, but at the same time the fact that he's not got missed payments on his record means it may not be brought up directly, especially if credit cards are paid in full without missed or defaulted payments.
To his credit, my brother did say he had two credit cards originally and he has paid off, and cancelled, one of them already by himself, but that one had a much lower credit limit than the other one. He's been paying what he can above the minimum payments, and has always at the very least made the minimum payment. The problem is that he's going into his overdraft every single month, so gets double whacked by charges for that. Clearly he's realised he had problems and has tried tackling them by himself, and done a half decent job of it if he's giving me the full story (But in situations like this it's rare to get the full story), I just wish he'd come to me sooner. He said he "hit rock bottom" last year, but didn't really give any more details at the time. I have seen his bank statements and only seen payments going out for a single credit card, so I'm inclined to believe him when he says it's just the one left. I also didn't see anything about debit deposits to any kind of gambling sites, and his mortgage is going out consistently.
I do also know is that he's getting into a much better position this year. He's recently gotten a £2,000/year pay rise from work, the wedding is in August so he won't be needing to put money away every month for that (Not to mention the stress of planning a wedding being off his plate) and he's now got me to rely on to help him through these final few hurdles, so I think mentally he's going to be in a much better position, and I'm cautiously confident that he's learned a harsh lesson without things having to spiral out of control. Honestly, when I heard the words "online gambling" I had momentary visions of him opening up to tens of thousands in debt, payday loans, etc, so I was quite relieved to find that it was 'only' £2,500.
