Dear Prudence,
My sister and brother-in-law are refinancing their home from a 30-year to a 15-year mortgage. They’ll pay more each month, but with lower interest rates. They say it isn’t significantly more than what they have been paying. This decision upsets my mom. She has anxiety issues, especially around money and finances, that have been definitely magnified by the pandemic. My parents are financially comfortable professionals, but my mom had a working-class childhood. There were times my grandparents struggled to make ends meet when she was a kid. It still affects how my mom thinks about money issues. She is genuinely afraid that agreeing to higher monthly payments is risky for my sister’s family—say one of them loses their job and they can’t make the higher payment. She has lost sleep about this worrying about the potential for foreclosure, her grandkids losing their home. She’s broken down with me on the phone about it and another time with a close friend.
My dad asked my sister and brother-in-law if they could, for my mom’s mental well-being, consider a 30-year mortgage and just make payments as if it was a 15-year loan. They said no because the shorter mortgage further reduces their interest rate by 0.5 percent. My dad offered to make up the difference, which is less than $100 a month. My brother-in-law refused to even discuss it. He said that our mom would just have to live with their financial decisions, anxiety or no anxiety. My dad’s plan gives them everything they want financially and will ease my mom’s mental state. We all understand this is their decision to make, but I think my brother-in-law is being unreasonable. I need a script that allows me to make clear the damage his obstinance could do without being overly emotional or losing my cool. Any advice?
—Family Anxiety