It’s nice when relatives help their family members out when they’re in a tough spot financially, but should family members feel forced to help financially irresponsible relatives?

That’s the question the OP is grabbling with in today’s story.

Let’s find out why his family thinks he should help his relative…

AITA if I don’t help a relative because they wasted their money buying a house for 2.8Million

I [M40] have a blended family and a cousin [M34] on my step-parent’s side who used to be close to me.

However, due to him moving abroad and conflicts over an inheritance, we no longer talk these days.

Recently, I’ve been receiving calls from various local and overseas relatives asking for financial help for my cousin.

His cousin really does need financial help.

He has defaulted on his house payments and is more than six months behind on mortgage and loan repayments because his wife [native Chinese] convinced him to buy a house in Shanghai.

He [ABC, by the way] had a good job in what should have been a stable company, but the virus f’ed them hard, and he has never recovered.

Apparently, it seems he got laid off eight months ago.

Even though he got laid off, he decided to make an expensive purchase.

When we were still talking, and he told me that he was going to buy this ludicrously expensive 2.8 million RMB house (about 400k USD) that was basically a concrete box.

I told him he was insane and would regret it for many reasons, but particularly because he would never actually own the place due to Chinese laws.

He owes a lot of money.

Now, four years later, he still owes nearly 2 million RMB on his mortgage since his payments have only been covering the interest, and near an additional 1 million RMB in loans for the decorations used to make that concrete box a place you can live in.

I am a teacher in the US, and I don’t earn enough money to own my own damn house, so how am I supposed to give someone else money to pay off theirs when I warned them this would come back to bite them HARD?

In the Chinese real estate market, you are always just one bad day or one conman away from losing three generations of savings.

This house was so expensive (for him) that it took up 70% of his monthly income just to pay the interest on the mortgage.

OP doesn’t want to give up his savings.

Now, I am being harassed for his stupidity to help him out of this hole because I let on that I had a decent savings account.

It’s not house money, but I want to buy a new new car; something nice for once and not just new to me.

Even my biological family is giving me grief about this. But I don’t want to help.

Will I be the jerk if I don’t help them?

Wow… talk about entitled!

The folks on Reddit definitely agreed that this cousin is out of line.

One reader thinks this is the solution…

This reader gives the Chinese perspective.

Another reader offers this advice.

This person points out that the OP did already try to help.

This person provides another reason not to help.

The relative should’ve listened to his cousin’s advice before he bought the house.

Asking for a hand out is going too far.

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.