My Girlfriends Family is Ruining her credit and life
I’ll try and keep this as short as possible.
We live in Ontario, Canada.
My Girlfriend took out a $44,500 loan for a 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee for her brother. She was coerced by her family, plain and simple. Her whole family’s credit is in the gutter, that’s why they couldn’t get approved for the loan. The brother has already wrecked 3 vehicles prior to this one, and for whatever reason they thought this was a good idea. They have no concept of financial literacy.
My gf works two minimum wage jobs, volunteers and just finished her bachelors degree. She is trying to build a life for herself. The payments are $350 bi-weekly and the daily interest is like $10. The loan is a 7 year plan and she has $33,000 left to go.
Here’s the kicker, her brother owes her $4000 off the books because she covered a bunch of these payments out of pocket. Now to boot, she just got a $9,400 407 bill, $7500 in tolls, $1600 in interest in the mail. He promised her he would not take the 407 and lied. He’s clearly taking it daily. He and my gf’s mom are delusional and think that an outstanding 407 balance does not negatively affect your credit score, it does if it goes to collections, it is common sense.
He’s 30 years old and started a car detailing business with his friends. He got into an accident and had to get surgery, he wasn’t at fault and is in the middle of getting a lump sum amount from insurance, but this has been the story since last year, I am convinced he is stringing her along as an anchor to continue to use her.
My gf is not the best at confrontation and advocating for herself. Even on the phone yesterday when confronting him with the 407 bill, he’s not taking it seriously, and started yelling and cussing at her when she questioned why he would do that.
Her parents make no money and live with her grandparents.
What are her options? What would you do? If this cycle continues it will negatively affect her credit score and is already causing severe stress.
She has a $30,000 school loan that she has to worry about herself, and has hopes of doing a masters program. If her credit score is rough, they will deny her student loan.
I believe there is a couple things:
-Take the car back and sell it, pay off whatever you get and just take this as a learning moment. Make a payment plan with the bank of the last outstanding and the 407. Don’t trust your brother again.
-Wait for this supposed insurance claim money to come in and hope for the best, continue to hope he doesn’t use the tolled highway and pays his loan on time.
-Her dad offered to take out a loan in his name (if he gets approved) to help.
-Sit down with family and come up with an actionable plan to pay this off, sell things, what are the points for the lawyer and updates with claim, can we transfer it into someone else’s name?
What do you guys think? Me and her are stressed