‘My mum is smoking our inheritance away, and it is killing her – should I intervene?’
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Dear Moral Money,
Mum has been a smoker for more than 50 years. She tells us she smokes 10 per day, but we suspect it is probably twice that and, at over £14 a packet, it is costing so much that she can no longer afford it from income and is subsidising her outgoings from her savings.
My brother wants to stage “an intervention” and get the whole family to come together and challenge her about the physical and financial damage she is doing. I know smoking is an addiction, but it seems to me that interventions are more about alcoholism or crack cocaine than about cigarettes, surely?
My biggest concern is that because I am the member of our family that lives closest to her, and thus am the one who visits most often, it will end up being me that knows if mum is smoking or not. The others will want to know. It is starting to feel as though I am being set up to spy on mum and police her behaviour, and this is not how I want our relationship to be.
Mum has been diagnosed with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), which is apparently greatly exacerbated by smoking. She is fully aware of the doctor’s advice. She says she “must die of something” and her cigarettes are one of her only remaining ongoing pleasures.
I worry about mum and there is a lot of help available to support her to stop smoking. I want her to be well. Nevertheless I brought her back some duty-free cigarettes, as she requested, from my recent holiday. When my brother found out he accused me of intentionally causing her harm, but I was only trying to save her some money.
He said the biggest saving and best result for all of us was that she stopped smoking, wasting her money and destroying her health, and we should try and make this happen. Apparently, our local pharmacy has a support group for smokers and their families to help a coordinated effort. I wonder if I should be taking advantage of potential solutions and helping my brother to get mum to stop smoking?
Anon
Dear reader,
It does worry me that you seem to be saying your mother has an unsustainable financial situation, and her smoking habit is undermining her financial security. If she is puffing through savings and is still only in her 70s, she may run out of money.
A packet of cigarettes a day is more than £5,000 per year and so I can see it would be a significant cost saving if she were to quit, but I don’t have enough details on the finances to know if the cost is ruinous.
I get the impression that your mother manages her life independently. It could be useful for all of you to get a bit more specific about planning for her financial resilience and, given my profession, I am bound to say that a good financial planner could be helpful to you here.
While I don’t think anyone has an obligation to live life in a way that creates a legacy for others (although I also know many clients who hold this as a cherished financial objective), I do believe that in our western society we have an obligation to design our spending and lifestyle so it fits within our resources, rather than expecting the next generation to subsidise our dotage because we blew the budget.
Having said all that, my 30-odd years of experience of talking to people about how they want to use their money tells me that if we enjoy something and it gives us pleasure, we have a right to prioritise the cost of it – if we are not neglecting the essential expenses of our lives.
I feel much more comfortable responding to the financial part of your dilemma, which is why I started there, but I have personal experience with addiction and family dynamics as well, so I will add my thoughts.
Nicotine is highly addictive. Most smokers who claim they get pleasure from smoking are describing relief from nicotine withdrawal experienced when they have a cigarette. As an ex-smoker, I remember the feeling. I also recall being unaware of the smell and taste associated with being a smoker until after I stopped. I realised both were something I was immune to/tolerant of in order to get my fix.
As a nonsmoker they are unpleasant to me, but at the time perfectly acceptable. Likewise, the cost and health implications were pushed aside with justifications that allowed me to rationalise going in for another dose of the relief.
At the time – despite my young children hating being in the car with me puffing away, regardless of the fact we could have had a nice family holiday with the money I reduced to ash, and ignoring the growing medical evidence of damage I was doing to my health – I was incredibly defensive when challenged.
Eventually I wanted to be a nonsmoker. It was a combination of information, ageing and evidence of consequences and a very powerful societal shift that made it unfashionable. Even once I wanted to stop it took several years for me to stop, and stay stopped. I made use of support groups and nicotine replacement therapies and eventually stopped in 2009.
My mum still smokes. I wish she didn’t. I also know that unless she wishes she was a nonsmoker she will continue to be a smoker.
I could try and intervene, but I recall how people challenging me just made me dig in and justify my behaviour. I also remember the friction of being in relationships with people who wanted me to stop before I was ready – those relationships were changed for life by the tension.
In summary I believe:
We all have a right to decide how we spend our disposable income, and one person’s poison is another’s medicine.
None of us have the right to expect others to pick up the tab for irresponsible spending, so encouraging mum to establish that she has a sustainable lifestyle is acceptable.
Interventions don’t work. Addicts deal with their addictions when/if they reach a stage where they want to stop. The best loved ones can do is make them aware of the information and access to help that is available when they are ready to do it for themselves.