It's no secret that Chris was stealing from his parents wallet and purse for years. Also, Chris has an exceptional view on money. He spends a lot and expects his parents to "foot the bill" one way or another because Chris thinks they should be obligated to do. Even by other manchildren standards, that very irresponsible (then again, responsibility/accountability has never been one of Chris' strong suits). It's one of the reasons why Chris is in the financial hole that he's in, and Barb's own money "management" didn't help either.
There was a kid I was in school with who accedentially got assigned an adult bank account, he had the same name as his dad and lived at the same address and where loaded, he got a credit card and was able to spend 20k before his dad caught on and was getting dept payment demands from accounts he didn't know he had - he was that rich he paid it off grounded his kid for a month and made them do more housework.
That kid grew up and knew his dad would cover his debts or at least thought he would until his dad ended up having his assets seased for fraud, in under 6 months he whent from driving a leased Porsh dining out and picking up the tab for people he wanted to show off too to going to the job center and signing on and having a credit score nearing zero and getting a minium wage job and housing credits and trying to become a Instagram influencer.
I just looked him up an he's showing off watches he's trying on at various jewellers and posing with cars that he's badly cropping out the sales signs on, that's what a rich kid ended up like - Chris wasn't rich or more than moderately comfortable and is carrying more debt than that in reality.
I know this has been repeated before, but man is Chris dumb with money. As much as he gets from the tugboat and weens, he could've solved his debt problems years ago. I know Bob tried to teach Chris some financial solvency, but he just didn't try hard enough. I know Chris won't learn it, but he will die penniless.
No Bob didn't he cared for Chris and knew he couldnt attain much so much like the fucker I mentioned above paid his debts for him and only gave him a minor punishment - If Bob was my dad (or me) I'd pay it off just to prevent damage to my kids financial record but I would recoup every penny and force Chris to get a job.
The kind of money Chris was starting to rack up in the early days indicated a bigger problem with money than just being lowly paid, I moved out with a GF at 17 and was working full time and studying - when I was 18 I fucked up my car and in my family we're good with gifts i.e. if I give you £500 I don't expect it back but if I borrow it I will pay it back kinda thing - I borrowed £500 off my dad for the parts to fix my Car and sacrificed every bit of expendable income I had to pay him back.
Chris didn't learn that a gift is one thing, but a loan is another he just thinks money happens to other people and he doesn't get enough of that luck or have a mental association between work and reward. I worked out in my first job what I was paid a hour after tax and every hour I made my phone play a alarm of the sound of £3.47 in coins being put into a savings jar and I always kept track of my spending and at the end of a day totted up how much I've spent to how much I've earned and saved. I did that very early on in my working life and it's payed for it's self and there has been a few experiments doing something simmilar that have proved that works.
If Bob told Chris up front, Son I will pay off this debt but you are going to pay me back as fast as you can and your going to get a job and keep it one way or another you are paying it off even if you have to sell off your toys an games we're getting that money back from you it would have had a serious impact on chris, especially if he was cut off from creature comforts till he paid it back.
And Barb's? She's in a situation where her assets can be attached too.
Barb get's a Private pension, a Widows pension and some other stuff, and Bob had a WW2 vet pension benifits (he was korea post WW2 occupation force but prior to the Korean war) and I think there is a lot of protection surrounding those kind of benifits my guess is from evidence about Chris just being able to help himself Barbs not as tight financially (not good certainly but not as bad as chris thought) as thought.
My personal guess from someone I know who is the widow of a WW2 vet with a POW enhancement, her own pension, and benifits she is getting around 2 - 3k a month, I'm in the UK but that number is based off a guy and his wife who are regulars on a forum I post on who declined all offers of support when the husband passed and she broke down why she was OK finanically and didn't need donations and asked for them to be given to a local charity her husband was a big member of. We bought them a mini digger tractor and planted a cherry orchard in his name and funded a lot of other works, and she loves sitting in Jacobs Grove.
This person lives in the same area as Barb, so the only reason I bring it up is her COL should be close if not identical.
Barb has a lot of things going on financially and always has, my guess is she was a Consumer darlin of the mide 80's going forward and thats someone who takes a lot of debt out and buys assets with the BIG loans that can be reposessed, and the bare minimums paid back each month on everything else meaning they pay far far far more than they borrowed. They are also whats called Tac on's i.e. here is this product insurance for £0.99 a month so if your toaster, CD player etc goes bang we fix it or replace it is sold as a forgotten money earner for the company.
They dont expect you to recall what 99p a month is for and it's on it's own an innocuous value so you wont try and cancel it, but will happily charge you forever for a toaster you bought for £10 in 2002, and I am guessing that is a small but significant drain on Barbs account (BTW Kiwi's audit your boomer;s accounts if you can, they all get ripped off with this crap in some way, my dad shit canned AOL in 97 but still had a service fee getting charged for 15 years until I told him to call them an get it back).
