She has a down for a small place to buy for herself but is out of control with her spending then expects others to bail her out when she goes broke. She is still in charge of her finance which is scary because she has a hard time remembering anything let alone have self control it's just scary.
I am disabled. I live in a building with senior citizens. One of the things I do is pick-up boxes that are left in the foyer and bring them up to peoples' apartments. The two most common activities in my building are: 1. Watching TV and 2. Gossiping about their neighbors. In my building, there are several individuals, all seniors, who regularly order from TV shopping channels. Where I live (Greater Boston Area), the TV shopping networks are on over-the-air TV. This means that you don't have to have cable TV in order to get them. I can assure you this: they are well-aware that a significant portion of their customers are lonely, mostly elderly people. They train their order takers to chat these people up, so that they feel they have a personal relationship with that particular shopping channel. They don't give a hoot that Grandma is spending away her life savings on their products.
So, what can you do? Realize that your senior is probably bored and would really like human company and friendship. That's why she is ordering all that crap.
I would then contact your local Council for the Aging, senior center or Elder Services. If you don't know who to contact, call your mother's state senator or state representative's office. They have a constituent services representative who is generally knowledgable about services available in your area. You will want to talk to a social worker / outreach worker and explain what's going on. The social worker / outreach worker should be able to help you formulate a plan as to how to talk to your mother about this. It is possible that your mother has health problems that have gone undiagnosed or are under treated that could contribute to this problem. So, it's important for your mother to see her doctor and for you to tell her doctor what's going on and why you are concerned. One of the things a social worker / outreach worker can do is to try to entice your mother to get out of the house and to get involved in activities at the senior center.
You might want to consider hiring a private elder care coordinator. They are either experienced social workers or nurses who are used to working with difficult seniors and their families. What you would do is this: you would schedule an initial appointment with the elder care coordinator, give that person a summary of where your mother is at, her overall health and behavioral health. You would express your concerns about your mother recklessly spending money on home shopping channels. The elder care coordinator would then strategize with you as to how to handle the problem. One of the things an elder care coordinator does is moderate family meetings. Having a neutral third party, who really does have your mother's well-being at heart and who has mental health training, is very helpful.
Hope that helps.
Just doing this could make her sit up & stop - other wise you'll have it for later if you need it - stop banging your head against a brick wall - doing this could wake her up a bit
Honestly, if you can't cut out the shopping channels and the catalogs---then you just have to grin and bear it. My mother's place is an "organized hoard" for now---but she cannot get into a lot of the places she's hidden things, so as I clean, I surreptitiously junk as much stuff as I can. Not much. I want to cry, thinking how hard dad saved for retirement and see this money go to garbage. I AM going to get ALL her current catalogs and contact them to stop being sent to her apt, If I have to lie and say she died to get them to stop, I will.
The only thing that slowed her down was the dementia, as it got harder and harder for her to even figure out how to fill out an order form, the shopping stopped. I have had to cancel several services that she put on auto-renewal on her cc.
I was lucky that I convinced her to fill out a DPOA for me last year, so I don't have to have her declared incompetent in order to take care of her finances now. It was part of the entire estate planning packet from the attorneys office, when she had to sign 6 different forms, it was easy to get her to sign it.
Sorry that I don't have any advice on how to control this, wishing you luck.
I used a very low limit credit card for ordering off the internet, that way if my credit card is captured, whomever has it won't be joy riding on the information highway for very long :)
or just cut the plug off. no tv, no qvc, no shopping.
I did this once and it worked temporarily (lol, for my first husband...)
I even changed the number on the credit card, but somehow her orders still went through. Then I tried to get HSN and QVC removed from the channels..no luck.
Now, 5 years after my mother's death, my brothers are suing me, accusing me of using her credit card to order these things.
I really don't know what I should have done differently. I was her POA, but my mom was not mentally impaired. She could make her own decisions. She had plenty of money, so it wasn't an issue to me after she explained to me that it was her money.
Since she is still in charge of her life, there isn't much you can do except show her how much she is spending. She will probably get angry and defensive, but she may realize the truth of what you are saying.
My father was a compulsive catalog shopper. A typical month would see about $1K in catalog sales. Holiday months would be double that. He had no concept of the money he was spending. He didn't even add the columns. (We learned when he died he had mixed dementia.) I never was able to handle it effectively. Really it was because he sat in a chair doing nothing but looking out the window and at catalogs for about 20 years. I know he was bored. My mother wouldn't back me up on any plan, so the only thing I could do was try to intercept the catalogs and have the companies stop delivering them. He would mail an order and ask me to mail it. I would conveniently lose the envelope. It was an everyday thing. He ultimately spent pretty much his entire SS check on catalogs, but never grasped it. I felt better about it thinking how some older people buy RV's and travel across country. He sat in the window and ordered from Vermont Country Stores. :-/
Her spending sounds compulsive. She may not be able to reason that her money is flying out the window because of her purchases on QVC.
Does someone have her POA? If not, then someone needs to get POA and then try to oversee her expenses. Break it down into two goals: first, someone needs to become her POA. Your mom and whoever she designates as POA needs to see a lawyer and have the papers drawn up. Once that's in place then the issue of the spending can be addressed.