<prompt> Human: EDIT 2: Overwhelmed by the sheer amount of responses - thank you all for taking the time to read and respond. The tough love is much needed and the compassion much appreciated. Safe to say that I am inspired and motivated to set aside emotion and dedicate myself to educating myself properly.Hi PF. First off thanks everybody for their time and input.A quick background: my family is currently renovating a house that we own and its taken nearly a year and has been costing us a fortune. My parents are no longer able to budget for the costs and I have been asked to take out a 40-50k personal loan to help out so that they can finish the house once and for all. Their plan is to help me pay it off in a year or so, but the point is that they need money up quick and up front.While I want to help my family where ever I can, my limited knowledge of finances and personal financial situation are lacking and I am afraid that I cant make make a rational and informed decision. I currently am managing 18k in student debt, 3k in credit card debt, with 40k in annual income. Im barely managing to be financially independent and I struggle to make payments. On top of this, I am very out of the loop with the renovation process and dont understand how much more we actually need to finish the house.Is taking out a personal loan, using it to consolidate my studentcredit card debt, and putting the rest toward the house, my best recourse? What other options do I have? I definitely have a lot of guilt and desire to help my family but my limited knowledge and the sudden demands create a lot of anxiety. Please help!TL;DR - family needs me to take out a 40-50k personal loan while I have about 20k in debt, with a 40k annual income. What options do I have?EDIT: I appreciate the responses and I know on paper it absolutely seems like a terrible idea. I am curious though as I want to take this opportunity to educate both myself and my family as to why this is a bad idea and what other options we might have. Any input is much appreciated - thank you all so much!  <response>: They should sell the home, pay off any debts they have, and then purchase a cheaper, smaller home instead.Your first responsibility is to yourself. You are already in debt, and in a position where paying off that debt soon is difficult its 50 of your gross salary! Thats terrifying already!.You cannot afford any more debt, especially if you were to incur it on behalf of others, on an unlikely promise that theyll help pay it back later. Given the situation theyre in now, its unlikely that theyll be better off in the near future, and the whole time youd have more and more interest piling up on that debt... putting you under water for many years to come, when you should be saving.You know how, on airplanes, the safety cardvideo tells you to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others?The same thing applies here. YOU CANNOT AFFORD to help other people with their financial trouble unless YOU yourself have no debt, have enough savings to cover any unforeseen catastrophic events that might happen medical bills, job loss, and are already saving at a decent rate for your retirement and other future life events. Then your oxygen mask to continue the plane analogy would be on firmly and securely, and you could take the time to help your family. 