There's a fine line between being generous and being used. Kelly found herself on the wrong side of that line when she called into The Ramsey Show recently, asking a question that probably keeps a lot of well-meaning people up at night: How do you know when your financial help has stopped helping?
Her family had already invested $12,000 supporting an international student who'd lost her financial backing. What started with good intentions had devolved into what Kelly described as a parade of irresponsibility, ingratitude, and outright dishonesty.
Good Intentions Meet Bad Follow-Through
The setup seemed noble enough. When the student lost her funding, Kelly's family stepped in to keep her in school. "Our goal for her is to help her get a degree so that, you know, generations can change with that," Kelly explained. The kind of thing that sounds great when you say it out loud.
Then reality kicked in. The student failed a $300 English proficiency test three separate times. Kelly paid $150 for an online prep class that the student simply didn't bother using. At one exam, the student forgot to bring her passport, which meant more wasted money and another rescheduled test.
The insurance situation was even worse. The school tacked on a $700 charge for insurance without warning, and the student never mentioned it. Kelly said the student "didn't come and say, 'Guess what? My insurance isn't good enough. You're going to be paying $700 for that.'" Just radio silence until the bill arrived.
Kelly summed up the frustration perfectly: "It feels like she's not studying. She's not appreciating." The family was working harder on this student's education than the student herself.
Dave Ramsey's Prescription: A Hard Stop
Personal finance expert Dave Ramsey didn't mince words. "I'll choose disappointment before I'll choose violating principles," he told Kelly. His advice was to set a clear endpoint rather than let this drag on indefinitely.
"I'm going to pick a number, and I'm going to let her know that at the end of that number, our support will end. That gives her a little bit of an off-ramp instead of just a sudden end to it today," Ramsey explained.
His recommendation? One final semester with a budget cap of $3,000. "We're going to cover this, and we're going to give you this amount of money, and our support is ending at that point. Sorry," he said. "This is your last semester. You're gone."
Ramsey pushed back hard against the guilt factor that was keeping Kelly in the situation. "You would not tolerate this out of any other situation," he told her. "The only reason you're still in this game is you're guilted into it."
And that guilt, he argued, was corroding the family's values and replacing them with resentment. When generosity becomes obligation and obligation becomes frustration, nobody wins.
Setting Boundaries Without the Drama
What Ramsey wasn't suggesting was some dramatic confrontation or moral lecture. He compared it to dealing with underperforming employees at his own company. "This didn't work. We tried to do this, and it was not something that we're participating in anymore," he said. "We're not going to make a big speech."
It's a clean break based on principle, not punishment. The family tried to help. The help wasn't being used effectively or appreciated. Time to move on.
Sometimes the hardest part of being generous is knowing when to stop. Especially when the person you're helping has learned that your kindness has no boundaries and their behavior has no consequences. Kelly's family learned this lesson $12,000 later than they might have liked, but Ramsey's advice gives them a way out that preserves both their finances and their sanity.