<prompt> Human: My wife is on a trip to visit her family. The sister and her two children 13 and 5 live with the mom, who was recently fired from her state job for poor performance. They have had a tough time of paying bills, it is now a 2 adult 2 child house-hold living on 1 part-time job at Target. They are falling behind on mortgage and bills, and my mother-in-law is 100 behind the prospect of a pending lawsuit against the state it has already been thrown out and there is little chance of an appeal and not looking for work. I sympathize with her story, but at this point, her termination is complete and it is time to move on.My wife and I just bought a house and completed a renovation, but almost all of that was done on credit. The house was 0 down, the 29,000 renovation was mostly paid for with credit cards. I am in the position of appearing very wealthy to my friends and family, but having almost no money to speak of. Note: I am a year and a half into a very promising managerial career. I make over 100k a year and my wife makes about 35k. While I understand my house buying decision has a substantial amount of risk involved, we have a solid plan to be debt free and have a sizable emergency fund within 1 year, but right now we are broke.My wife desperately wants to help her family by taking out this loan, and she is fully aware that it brings her name, my name, our new house, and our entire lives into financial jeopardy. I told her that it was our loan, and that we would be the ones paying it off. Any money we got from her sister would be a welcome surprise, but we shouldnt expect to be paid back in full, and certainly not on time.I thought of the wisdom Ive read in this sub, like, If a bank wont approve a loan, then neither should you. They have seen more info and have better decision makers.I also predicted that, no matter what, there would be bad blood. If the sister makes her payments, she would feel angry every month having to give money to her sister, who has more than her. If she cant pay, she will be defensive and angry at being placed in that position, even if she made it herself. There is no way to win.So I recommended that we look at all the free cash we can muster, and give it to them as a one time gift, no strings attached. We came up with 2,200 to give them. This would provide 3 months of mortgage payments, free her sister of having to make payments, keep our future clean of an unnecessary loan, and my wife would actually get to enjoy being a hero for her family. The sister-in-law wasnt happy with the decision, but I think we made the right one. Losing 2,200 in cash hurts now, but not nearly as much as 5,000 interest would, plus a family ripped apart, and marital happiness compromised.Just something that happened over the weekend, thanks for all the great advice Ive gotten here. I may be broke for now, but at least Im Im not broken!  <response>: If someone is disappointed with a 2200 gift instead of a 5000 loan, they never intended to pay back the loan in the first place. 