How do I explain why debt on debt is bad to my brother?
"I wouldn't try to tell him what he should do, nor would I provide any financial assistance. Invite him over and tell him how a Dave Ramsey book changed your life or something so that you aren't the one telling him what to do. People in fundamentally and persistently bad situations are like people with addiction problems... they tend to end up ""killing the messenger"" before internalizing that they are in a bad situation. They need to hit rock bottom before you can really help." Talk about opportunity cost. Show a rope, and put a tag with him on the end of it.  Explain that since he has max out his credit, he can no longer get more.  Without more credit here are the things he can't have The key to illustrate is that all the money he makes, for the next several years is obligated to the people he has already borrowed it from.  Try to have him imagine giving his entire paycheck to a bank, and then doing that for the next five years.  To drive it home, point out that there are 5 super bowls, 5 college championship games, 5 final fours, 5 annual concerts he likes, 5 model years of cars, 5 or more iPhone versions in those five years.  Or whatever he is into.  5 years of laptops, 5 years of fishing trips. These things are not affordable to him right now.  He has already spent his money for the next 5 years, and those are the things he cannot have because he is, in fact, out of cash. Furthermore, if he continues, the credit will dry up completely and his 5 year horizon could easily become ten. To illustrate how long 5 or 10 years is, have him remember that 10 years ago he might have been in college or the military.  That 5 years ago Facebook was no big thing.  That 5 years ago the Razr was an awesome phone.  That 5 years ago we had a different president. The key idea he should focus on is that every debt includes interest - the money he didn't borrow, but now owes. The interest goes straight to the lender pocket and the debtor has to get money somewhere for that interest. That's the key reason of why getting another loan only increases pressure on the debtor - with the new loan he owes new interest in addition to what he already owed. "Two suggestions: I don't know if you have them in South Africa, but here we have some TV reality shows where a credit consultant visits a family that is deeply in debt and advises them on how to get out of it. The advice isn't very sophisticated, but it does show the personal impact on a family and what is likely to happen to them in the future. ""All Maxed Out"" is the name of the one I remember. ""Till Debt Us Do Part"" is another, which focusses on married couples and the stress debt puts on a marriage. If you can find a similar one, loan him a few episodes. Alternatively, how about getting him to a professional debt counsellor?" "If you're looking for an analogy or exercise, I saw a personal finance show that had people climb stairs, with the debt as weight. Every flight of stairs more ""interest"" and loans to cover income gaps have to be added to the total debt they carry up the stairs. Can't find the video online though. But I think you need to ask your brother what he thinks his problem is, that will be solved with more loans. It's likely that your brother's problem can't be solved with advice. Since he's not spending rationally, rational arguments have no sway. I suspect he'll tell you his problem is one or two angry creditors, perhaps even ones you don't know about, rather than a fundamental imbalance between income and expenses. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, or moving weights from one backpack compartment to another, doesn't solve the underlying problems. Whatever you do, another loan from you should be off the table. He's an adult now, with problems the size of which you can't help with. We both know how his story ends: all creditors cut him off, and he's in court over garnished wages and creditors fighting over his assets. Reality is the only argument that will have any sway. He's far too personally invested in his scheme to admit defeat, which is why neither words not images nor moving pictures will help him with this learning disability." How about doing some calculations and show him how much he is paying for things he is buying on credit.Mix in some big and small purchases to show how silly it is on both. Some examples: What really made the debt issue hit home for me (no pun intended) was when I bought my first house and read the truth in lending disclosure statements to find that a $70K house (those were the days) was going to cost me over $200K by the time I had paid off a 30 year note. I'm not good at persuasion, and I'm not an expert at any of this, but here's what I've been thinking. Rather than telling him that he shouldn't rack up more debt, I'd ask him whether he's planning for his debt levels to increase, remain static, or decrease over the next five years. Try to make it feel like he's the one reaching the conclusion that he should be decreasing his debt load. If he says that he's fine with his debt levels remaining static or increasing, then I don't have any further advice. If he says he's trying to decrease his debt level, but it's actually increasing, then maybe he's in denial. The only thing that comes to mind is a recent HBO Real Sports segment (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDjkbgrgcmo) on a couple of NFL players who blew all of their money.  Seeing how they've ended up might make the right impression, but given that your brother ran up $148K in debt, I'm not optimistic. This is not the case with your brother only. There are many business which run on this premise. It goes till the time all the conditions are in control and get busted when things goes out of way.  You have mentioned the loan amount and not the monthly repayment amount. Even if you say, a new loan will not solve his problem, what are the way out ? Telling things nicely sometime does not work especially when facts are otherwise. Hence you need to make a compete case study which should also consider his capacity to pay. As of now it seems he has debts of around 20 months of his earning, which can be considered high, depending upon the terms of major loan such as car loan and personal loan. A case study is way out. You can explain him with such case study that he should not go for further loans. I'm not sure how much living expenses are there but half of $12,600 in the US would be a decent monthly income.   I agree that debt on debt would just add to his problems, sort of like quicksand, the interest will just makes a person sink deeper and deeper.  It seems like it might take some more radical options here to pay off the debt. Like, could he move into a much smaller home or get a roommate? How expensive was that vehicle? Could he sell it and pay cash for a much cheaper used one and use the difference toward his debt? How much does he work? Could he get a second job for just a few hours to help make extra money? Is he willing to speak with a debt counselor?
"First off, your commitment to paying down debt and apparent strong relationship with your brother is admirable. However, I think you are overcomplicating your situation and potentially endangering your relationship by attempting to combine debts in this way. You could consider a simple example where you have interest bearing at 5% and your brother has interest bearing debt at 10%. If you both pay down his higher interest debt first, and then both pay down your debt after, then clearly you will have paid less interest combined. But, by waiting to pay off your debt until later, you have accrued more interest yourself. So who has saved money by doing this? Your brother. You will have paid (let's say, without getting into balances) $50 extra interest to save your brother $70 in interest. So why would you want to give your brother $50? Total interest savings between both of you in this simplified example are $20. So, in theory your brother could pay you $60 after the fact, effectively meaning you end up $10 ahead, and your brother ends up $10 ahead. Here, you end up in a position where you could still say, in theory 'we both came out ahead'. But what if your brother loses his job while you're both paying off your debt, and he can't help any more? Does he accrue some type of calculated interest until he pays you back? What if he's off work for 2 years and still owes you 30k? What if he just never makes his payments to you on time? At what point do you resent your brother for failing to uphold his end of the deal? Money and friends don't mix. Money and family mixes even worse. In rare circumstances where you absolutely must mix family and money, get everything in writing. Get it signed, make it legal. Outline all details of the transaction, including interest rates, and examples of how the balances calculate. In 5 years when things go haywire, following the letter of the law is what will keep you from becoming enemies. But with family, often people have an expectation that ""while we agreed I would pay x, he's my brother, so he should take pity on me and allow me to pay only y, if I need to"". Finally, to your question about how to calculate amounts to pay: it will be very complicated. You will need to track minimum balance payments, interest rates, and even potentially the lost income which one of you gives up to pay down the other's debt. You could do these things in a simplified way close to what I've set out above, but then ultimately one of you will lose out. If you pay down your debts first, how can you calculate the lost living potential for your brother, who might want to buy a house but can't save for a down payment for an extra year? What if he has to move, and without sufficient down payment, he needs to pay extra Mortgage Insurance on his loan from the bank? Will you compensate him for that? My recommendation, if you haven't caught it yet, is Do not do this. Your potential savings are not going to be worth the potential heartache of breaking your relationship with your brother.  Instead, look at joining your minds, not your money. Set goals for yourselves individually, and hold each other accountable. Make this an open conversation between yourselves, as it can be difficult to talk about finances with other people. Your support will help the other person, and hopefully help keep you on track as well. To provide numerical context for potential savings, which you appear to still want, consider the numbers you've provided [you have 40k debt at 10%, your brother has 20k of debt at 5%]. Let's assume you each can pay up to 20k against the principal of your loans each year. Finally assume for simplicity that you also have enough to pay off interest as it gets charged [so no compounding], and you pay in even instalments each year. Mathematically that means your interest each year is equal to your interest rate * your average annual balance. If you each go alone, then you will accrue 10% on an average balance of [(40k+20k)/2] = 30k per year, which equals 3,000 in interest in year 1, then [(20k+0)/2] = 10k * .10 = 1,000 interest in year 2. Total interest for you = 4,000. Your brother will accrue [(20k+0k)/2] = 10k * .05 = 500 in interest in total. Total interest for both of you combined would be 4,500. If you pool your debt snowball, then you will clear your debt first. So the interest on your debt would be [(40k+0k)/2] = 20k * .1 = 2,000. Your brother's debt would fully accrue 5% of interest on the full balance in year 1, so interest in year 1 would be 20k * .05 = 1,000. In year 2, your brother's debt would be cleared half way through the year; interest charged would be [(20k+0k)/2] = 10k * .05 * 50% = 250. You would then owe your brother 10k, which you would pay him over the remainder of year 2. His total interest paid to the bank would be 1,000 + 250 = 1,250. Total interest for both of you combined would be 3,250.  In a simplified payment example using your numbers, maximum interest savings would be about $1,250 combined. How you allocate those savings would be pretty subjective; assuming a 50:50 split, this yields $625 in savings to each of you. If you aren't able to each save 20k per year, then savings would be greater for snowballing, because otherwise it will take you even longer to pay off your high interest debt. This is similar to your brother loaning you 20k today that you can use to pay off your debts, after which you pay him back so he can pay off his. Because you will owe him 20k for 2 years, but an average of ~10k at any one time [because he slowly advances it to you today, and you slowly pay him back until the end of year 2], at $650 in benefit passed to your brother, this is roughly equivalent to him loaning you money at 6.5% interest." "&gt;I think you should move along before you get hurt. This is a grown up conversation little one.  First: you're clearly a totally arrogant cunt who is so uncomfortable with the position he has elected to take that he can't argue it on its merits and is instead left with petty insults, so it is actually not clear to me why I'm even responding. But anyway, here we go.  &gt;The UK did NOT sell debt and simultaneously purchase its own debt in the past (until modern times).  I state at the outset that I take this to include purchases of government debt by central banks. If you mean the ""government"" itself re-buying its own debt then firstly I'm not sure where that came from and secondly it isn't what I'm talking about.  Put some meat on the bones here, sport: when do you define ""modern times"" as commencing? I don't want to give you a date and then have you move the goal posts again. So give me a time period you're after so we can go again.  Also note I said the British Empire, not the UK.  You should perhaps do some reading on Pitt the Younger, or the history of the Bank of England in general. You'll no doubt see that it provided loans to the government from the beginning, which is equivalent to a modern central bank buying government debt. I wont lie and say it is exactly the same, but the reason it isn't exactly the same is that it was 250 years ago. There was no open market operations as there is now, with monthly bond auctions. The BoE just loaned the money when needed. Bonds were typically only issued for specific purposes (e.g. Napoleonic wars).  What Pitt the Younger did in freezing redemptions was the equivalent of the BoE buying British government debt.  But anyway I await your vitriolic and completely-point-avoiding reply.  &gt;And who said the reason soviet union collapsed was because of its banking policies? Putting words in peoples mouths aren't we.  You did:  &gt;So, the soviet union purchases its own debt, and this is a shining example of a historical empire that worked in your mind? Come on man, you aren't that fucking stupid are you? You don't need me to explain why that is a very, very incorrect choice do you?  What else were you trying to say there?  You asked for an example, he gave it, you said it was a bad example. Remember, just in case you can't stay on topic, the discussion is about central banking policy here. I presumed you were implying that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the reason for it being a bad example for central bank policy. Please otherwise feel free to articulate why it is a bad example, citing specific evidence if you don't mind." "&gt; Well, if you only own the option, you are only limited to loosing the premium. With futures, at least with the brokers I talked to, most of the time you need to sign a margin contract just to trade futures. I don't want to go into debt, and I don't think I would do too well to be fairly honest.  This isn't how margin works. Your broker would demand more money before coming back to you.  &gt;  I am a college student, and want to limit my risk  Yet you're talking about things that are very risky, and that you don't take seriously.  &gt;  To me honest, if I had my way I would just buy and hold, and that is the strategy I want to emulate closest  Why aren't you buying and holding equities funds? Why not have your way?  &gt; Basically, I want to avoid debt, but still trade commodities.   ""Margin"" in futures isn't a loan. It's the fraction of the value of a contract you actually pay. There's no borrowing involved.  If you want less risk, don't get the maximum you can, but rather have cash reserves.  You do not sound like you are in a position to be investing in these sorts of instruments at all." Explain to me how the fact I will go to jail with a gun pointed to my head if I don't pay taxes which then go to pay off your debt simply because I worked hard to get a good job and pay off my debt is not stealing?  What the hell are you talking about - that is literally the definition of stealing - putting a gun to someone's head and taking their money.  If I graduated with a lot of debt (which I did) but couldn't pay it off I would take personal responsibility like an honest person and work hard to find a good job or live cheap to pay it off (like I did). This will also incentivize less people to get unnecessary degrees that don't have jobs available because they don't increase productivity/standard of livings for other people.  The reduction in demand also will force Colleges to cut costs and lower prices. A win win.  Stop thinking stealing from me to pay off your debt is moral just because you hire the Government to do it for you. "That ain't nothing.  It's really easy to get ""whipped up"" into a sense of entitlement, and forget to be grateful for what you do have.  If this house doesn't exist, what would his costs of housing be elsewhere?  Realistically.  Would landlords rent to him? Would other bankers lend him money to buy a house? Would those costs really be any better?  What about the intangible benefits like not having any landlord hassles or having a good relationship with the neighbors?  It's entirely possible he has a sweet deal here, and just doesn't make enough money.  If your credit rating is poor, your housing options really suck.  Banks won't lend you money for a house unless you have a huge ton of upfront cash.  Most landlords won't rent to you at all, because they are going to automated scoring systems to avoid accusations of racism.  In this day and age, there are lots of ways to make money with a property you own.  In fact, I believe very firmly in Robert Allen's doctrine: Never sell.  That way you avoid the tens of thousands of dollars of overhead costs you bear with every sale. That's pure profit gone up in smoke.  Keep the property forever, keep it working for you.  If he doesn't know how, learn.  To ""get bootstrapped"" he can put it up on AirBnB or other services. Or do ""housemate shares"".  When your house is not show-condition, just be very honest and relatable about the condition.  Don't oversell it, tell them exactly what they're going to get.  People like honesty in the social sharing economy.  And here's the important part: Don't booze away the new income, invest it back into the property to make it a better money-maker - better at AirBnB, better at housemate shares, better as a month-to-month renter. So it's too big - Is there a way to subdivide the unit to make it a better renter or AirBnB?  Can he carve out an ""in-law unit"" that would be a good size for him alone? If he can keep turning the money back into the property like that, he could do alright.  This is what the new sharing economy is all about.  Of course, sister might show up with her hand out, wanting half the revenue since it's half her house.  Tell her hell no, this pays the mortgage and you don't!  She deserves nothing, yet is getting half the equity from those mortgage payments, and that's enough, doggone it!  And if she wants to go to court, get a judge to tell her that.  Not that he's going to sell it, but it's a huge deal. He needs to know how much of his payments on the house are turning into real equity that belongs to him.   ""Owning it on paper"" doesn't mean you own it.  There's a mortgage on it, which means you don't own all of it.  The amount you own is the value of the house minus the mortgage owed.   This is called your equity.   Of course a sale also MINUS the costs of bringing the house up to mandatory code requirements,  MINUS the cost of cosmetically making the house presentable.   But when you actually sell, there's also the 6% Realtors' commission and other closing costs.  This is where the mortgage is more than the house is worth.  This is a dangerous situation.  If you keep the house and keep paying the mortgage all right, that is stable, and can be cheaper than the intense disruption and credit-rating shock of a foreclosure or short sale.  If sister is half owner, she'll get a credit burn also. That may be why she doesn't want to sell.  And that is leverage he has over her.  I imagine a ""Winter's bone"" (great movie) situation where the family is hanging on by a thread and hasn't told the bank the parents died.  That could get very complex especially if the brother/sister are not creditworthy, because that means the bank would simply call the loan and force a sale.   The upside is this won't result in a credit-rating burn or bankruptcy for the children, because they are not owners of the house and children do not inherit parents' debt." "This sounds like an accounting nightmare to be 100% precise.  With each payment you're going to have to track: If you can account for those, then the fair thing to do is for one person to stop paying after they have paid the amount of principal they had at the beginning of the process, or possibly after they have paid an amount equivalent to the total principal and accrued interest they would have paid if they paid their loans individually.   The problem is, one of you is likely going to pay more interest than you would have under the individual plan.  In the example you gave, if your brother pays off any of your loans, he is going to be paying more in interest than if he paid on his 5% loans. If you pay the highest rate loans first, whoever has the lower total balance is going to pay more interest since they'll be paying on the higher rates until they've paid their ""fair share"".   I don't see a clean way for you to divvy up the interest savings appropriately unless you trueup at the very end of the process.   Math aside, these types of agreements can be dangerous to relationships. What if one of you decides that they don't want to participate anymore? What if one of you gets all of their loans paid off much earlier - they get the joy of being debt free while the other still has all of the debt left? What if they then don't feel obligates to pay the other's remaining debt? Are you both equally committed to cutting lifestyle in order to attack these debts? In my opinion, the complexity and risk to the relationship don't justify the interest savings." "Without all the details it's hard to tell what options you may have, but none of them are good.  When you cosign you are saying that, you believe the primary signer will make good on the loan, but that if he doesn't you will. You are 100% responsible for this debt. As such, there are some actions you can take. First, really try to stress to your friend, that they need to get you outta this loan. Urge them to re-finance with out you if they can. Next look for ""better"" ways of defaulting on the loan and take them. Depending on what the loan is for you could deed-in-lue or short sale. You may just have to admit default. If you work with the bank, and try not to drag out the process, you will likely end up in a better place down the line.  Also of importance is ownership. If you pay the loan, do you get ownership of the thing the loan was secured against? Usually not, but working with an attorney and the bank, maybe. For example, if it's a car, can the ""friend"" sign over the car to you, then you sell it, and reduce your debt.  Basically as a cosigner, you have some rights, but you have all the responsibilities. You need to talk to an attorney and possibly the bank, and see what your options are. At this point, if you think the friend is not that much of a friend anymore, it's time to make sure that any conversation you have with them is recorded in email, or on paper." In a nutshell, not really.  That's the risk you take when you co-sign for someone.  The lender only made the loan because of the strength of your brother's credit, not your mother's, so his reputation (in the form of his credit rating) is going to take the hit because of his mother's behaviors. The one thing he can do is this:  The credit bureaus allow you to add a comment or explanation to your credit file which may be helpful, provided potential creditors read it, which is never a guarantee.  It's worth trying though, so suggest to him to look into it. Here's a link for him/you/anyone to look at that can help explain how this works and what effects it can have: Adding a comment to your credit file for negative items I hope this helps. Good luck!