DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: When we bought our home two years ago both sets of our parents said we were making a mistake and buying at a bad time because of the interest rates.

We had enough savings to put in a downpayment and together we were making enough to easily pay the mortgage. Even with the high interest rates we were in a good place to get our own home, especially since at that time the rent we were paying got seriously jacked up and we thought we should start building equity instead of giving our greedy landlord more money.

Last week our house went into foreclosure. My husband lost his job and could only find parttime work and my company froze raises for 2025 following a bad 2024.

Because we put all our savings into the house, we didn’t have anything to pull from when things got tight.

Neither of us has told our families yet about the foreclosure. We are still hoping to find a way out of it and have been given some hope by what we have been told by a friend who went through the same thing. We could not stand the “told you so’s” we know we would get from our parents.

We also don’t want them to think we are just telling them about our foreclosure so we can borrow money from them, which is not an option.

So are we doing right to keep our situation to ourselves? --- FIGHTING TO KEEP OUR HOME

DEAR FIGHTING TO KEEP OUR HOME: Hopefully you’ll be able to find a solution to your foreclosure.

Since you’re in the process of exploring your options, and there’s still a chance all isn’t yet lost, perhaps there’s no harm in waiting to share your situation with your families until you have some kind of resolution ‒ even if it’s an unfavorable one.

However, if either of you are close with your parents and would readily share other kinds of news with them, keeping your troubles to yourself may add more strain to an already difficult time for you and your husband, and after withstanding a few “told you so’s” you’ll possibly find your parents are a valuable resource in areas other than lending money.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: My stepson is ten years older than his dad’s and my son. “Jared” spends every other weekend with us and I really love how much he likes being with “Todd.” Jared, though, has a typical 15-year-old boy’s tastes. His mother lets him watch R-rated movies, and my husband doesn’t mind that she does. He likes to have his Boys’ Nights with his sons, and of course, they aren’t interested in what Todd would find entertaining. Todd ends up sitting up with the guys watching action, war, and horror movies. I leave them to it and go and read, but then I have to be up with Todd half the night because he has nightmares about what he’s seen in the movies. I won’t even get into the video games the guys play, sometimes with Todd in the room.

I love that my husband has this special time with his sons, and I don’t want them to stop, but I also don’t want Todd watching everything his dad and brother are watching.

Do I put a stop to the Boys’ Night movies? --- NOT A FAN OF VIOLENCE

DEAR NOT A FAN OF VIOLENCE: I don’t believe the Boys’ Nights have to end, but it sounds like some supervision is in order.

As Todd’s mother, you have every right to a say in what movies and video games he’s being exposed to.

There’s a world of difference between five and 15, and your husband should have a sense of what’s appropriate for each age group. Since he doesn’t seem to, or is afraid of offending Jared, then it comes down to you to set limits on or provide younger-child-friendly alternatives for Boys’ Nights movies and video games.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: My husband loves shopping for bargains. The trouble is he has a habit of spending too much to save some money. We have stockpiles of stuff in our basement like toothpaste, deodorants, cleaning products, paper towels, pasta, and the list goes on. We end up throwing away some of the food items that go past their use by dates, and that seems wasteful to me.

I know things have gotten crazy expensive and I don’t blame him for trying to save us money when he can, but I feel like we should put some of the money to better use now instead of putting it all in the things we eventually get around to using, preferably before they go bad.

I don’t know how to stop him from all the stocking up, especially since he does most of the shopping on his way home from work. We have definitely had shortages of things the last few years and I know my husband is keeping those times in mind, but do we really need to keep buying the way he does? --- WIFE OF A BARGAIN HUNTER

DEAR WIFE OF A BARGAIN HUNTER: I fully understand the pull of a good bargain. To the frugal-minded they’re hard to resist. Unfortunately, they can also end up not being such great bargains after all.

One recommendation I’d make is to try, if possible, to time the shopping trips around your schedule so that you could join your husband on his excursions.

That way you might be able to rein him in or at least redirect his tendencies to save towards the kinds of things that are less likely to collect dust in your basement along with the other supplies already down there.

Sometimes a little constraint and supervision go a surprisingly long way.