Sounds to me like you need some of this:
I think that’s a fair reaction. I’d tell your Dad you’ll start giving him cash if he needs it once he turns 65, but not before. If he wants to retire early, he should come up with a better plan. And I’d make it clear to him the money you girls contribute to his retirement, is for him to use and not for his girlfriend to go shopping. That’s the part I can’t get over. If my Dad needed money I’d help him out, but not if he’s got a woman living with him that isn’t contributing at all.
Yeah, I agree. The company pensions and paid medical are a thing of the past for most if not all people going forward. I was fortunate enough that my dad got paid medical and a pension that allowed him to retire at 55, and was responsible enough that he never did need my help. I was always prepared to help if needed, but it never came to that. With medical costs soaring out of control, questions about the future of Social Security, and companies cutting more and more out of our future, I could see this really becoming more common.
I am super jealous of the guys and gals that retired from my company 5-10 years ago as they got full medical and a very nice pension. Those are all gone now at our place for everyone pretty much starting when I was hired. I did manage to secure a modest pension that I am due, but I don’t count on anything at this point.
Also, sorry to hear you are going through this @Nesrie. That is a tough situation.
It’s my mom whom I am worried the most. I really don’t think her health will allow her to wait until she is 65. She is also the one I can’t live with, so I am not sure what to do about that, but that’s, well that. I don’t think the advice is bad, just hard.
Thank you for that. I get so frustrated with this stuff. I feel like I can’t do anything because any minute now some member of my family is going to go down the drain, and I won’t be able to help.
I absolutely expect to assist them with their needs when they’re older. Him buying a new manufactured house to drop on his ocean side lot and then pretty much the next day telling us in a round about way that he is going to afford this with the bargain price of 2 out of 3 of his daughters paying starting in September… even I couldn’t imagine that.
A 70 year old dad telling me his water heater is going out or something, and a mom telling me she can’t afford her medication… I’m trying to figure out how to work that into my budget. Neither one of them has been willing to “work for someone else” for years. They have nothing saved.
This 100%, 0% of the other thing. It sounds like you managed to grow up with a good head on your shoulders, despite your parents fiscal irresponsibility. Trust your instincts, they will serve you well. And that’s not just a line from a movie. Your Dad can’t exactly make you give him money, guilt will be his only weapon. Harden yourself, you do him nor yourself favors by coddling him.
That’s what makes it hard though, what happens when he gets into real financial trouble due to his own profligate ways? Easy for us to say cut him off, he’s not our dad.
Giving in to him now is almost certainly not the answer, it’s only going to make your scenario even more likely. I’m not a professional in these manners though, so I hope no one is taking my advice as anything more than just “my gut feeling on the matter”, though.
Then maybe there’s a more equitable middle ground between “just give in” and “cut him off“ that wiser minds than ours can find.
Probably. But given the facts as I know them, if it was me and my Dad? Naw, sorry Dad. Don’t be crazy. Not that my Dad would ever pull something like this, though. Well, I guess it’s not impossible though, he’s kind of wacky.
I dunno.
Story time.
My friend, we’ll call her Megan, because that’s her name and I’ll confuse myself if I call her something else, was born to a large family (4 kids) run by two very irresponsible parents. They grew up in a giant, ramshackle house with a ton of pets and broken cars and piles of crap and stacks of movies littered everywhere. I’d say white trash, but it feels mean to call a friend’s family that. But, well, you know.
Her dad made okay money but just couldn’t hold onto it for ten seconds. As soon as he got paid, he’d run off and buy a trampoline or a new truck or a stack of VHSes (later, DVDs) and shower it all on the family and then two days later he’s trying to figure out how the electricity’s getting cut off again.
Once my friend hit 15, she started working, and they started taking the paychecks. She had an older brother, but he was kind of a stoner bum, and her younger sisters were hopeless messes, so it was all on her.
And let me be clear, I mean it when I say they started right away. My friend saved up a modest amount of money to buy herself a (very) used car in her first couple of months of working when her dad came to her with a big sob story about his truck almost getting repossessed and he needed some cash quick to save it. So she gave him all her newly earned money, and he paid down the truck debt, and that was that. Or so she thought, cuz three months later, he was behind on the bills again and the truck got repo’d anyway. So much for the cash she’d lent him.
From that point forward, they’ve been completely reliant on her. She paid their old house payments. She paid their phone and cable bills. She paid for the pets’ medical care and bought clothes for her sister’s kids when they started having them a couple of years later (only one of the sisters is currently a drug addict on the run from the law, amazingly).
When my friend went to college–paid for on her own by scholarships and cash–and got married to a nice young boy out there, you thought that’d be it, but nah. Her parents got so far behind on the house that they were gonna lose the whole thing. . . so she bailed them out again and took on a gigantic loan and made them promise to pay her back regularly, which of course they didn’t do.
My friend finally polished off her parents’ mortgage and is two years away from finishing her own. She and her husband work in IT in rural TN, so they’re not insanely rich by any means, but they make way, way more than most folks down there. So by 33, 34, she’ll have paid off two mortgages, a handful of cars, and probably a few credit cards to boot, in addition to her own schooling.
And the family is still woefully hopeless and would be out on the streets without her. She gives and gives and gives and never does anything for herself or goes anywhere or looks for jobs further away because she knows that without her, her parents, brother, sisters, and nieces would all be homeless in a month’s time and starved to death a week after that.
At this point, I don’t think she’ll ever get out from under it. She’s just going to support her entire gigantic, irresponsible, shitty family (who’ve always picked on, mistreated, and put upon her from day 1, mind you) until she finally works herself to death.
Some people just can’t help but ruin their own lives. Watch out, cuz they’ll drag you in and ruin yours, too.
That’s some shitty-ass truth right there, but it’s still truth. So what do you do? If you’re trying to rescue a drowning person, at what point to you just let them go or else go down with them? Rhetorical question of course, everyone had to make that call for themselves.
Man, I dunno. It’s easy for me to say what I’d do, but easy to do in that moment?
I’m a very giving guy, it would be a long way before I did that to someone. But my patience is long, but sharp. Once you hit that point, we’re done. I would cut you out of my life, change phones, and forget you ever existed.
At least that’s what I say, but I don’t know if I could actually do it. If I’m honest it’s probably 50/50 if I pulled a Megan instead.
As a counterpoint, there’s my partner, Arika, and her dad.
Her dad’s a hopeless, lovable idiot. He’s massively irresponsible, an unrepentant alcoholic with severe diabetes, and a complete fucking failure of a human being. He’s also hilarious, charming, warm, and immediately likable. He’ll walk into a place in filthy clothes, unshaved and stinking like the streets (he’s homeless, of course) and land himself a job within five minutes of talking to the manager. Mind, he’ll get canned for being a hopeless wreck within a few months, but still.
For years, A supported him as best she could, esp. after the women in his life finally gave up and let him go (first her mom, then his next girlfriend, then his mom and sister). But at the end of the day, she realized he’d never stop guilting her, never stop bugging her, never stop worming his way into her life over and over again, always just needing a little more money, a little bit longer on the couch, another couple of car rides. It was never changing. He just couldn’t hold himself together long enough to be independent.
So she cut him out. Cut contact, blocked his number, tore up his letters.
And ya know what? He stayed a homeless wreck of a beer-swilling sonofabitch. He met and impregnated another woman or two. He bounced between jobs and extended-stay hotels and homeless shelters like a tragic pinball.
AKA, nothing at all changed for him, while her life finally started to get on track without his insidious influence.
She’s allowed him back in a little. She’ll meet him on holidays, pick him up from whatever bridge he’s living under and take him to a movie and Waffle House and give him a pair of shoes or a jacket for his bday or Xmas. But that’s it. We don’t answer the calls for $20 bucks here and a $200 loan there. Cuz there’s no point. It’s throwing money away.
I dunno if she’s happier for it. Eventually, her dad’s gonna die of exposure or alcohol-worsened diabetes or getting the shit kicked out of him by yet another roommate/girlfriend he’s not paid a dime to despite living with them for months. But the fact is, that’s gonna happen no matter what. There’s no amount of money or love Arika can dump into that pit that’s gonna change that.
Would throwing away all that money and care make the inevitable end any easier?
No idea. We’ll find out one way or another soon enough.
Well, the one thing Nesrie’s father has is apparently land and enough money to drop a house on it. Without her $200 a month he would have some assets and would have to make a decision.
My in-laws are wonderful people but my father-in-law could never manage his mother. They had to sell a ranch and move into a mobile home and eventually they had to sell that. My MIL is now dead and my FIL lives in an apartment not far from us. My wife handles his finances, and he is better off than he has been in a decade.
I know a lot of people don’t agree with me, but I decided years ago that genetics mean nothing. Blood means nothing. I get to decide who my family is. And I decided a long time ago that my Bible-thumping mother and her family, and my redneck brother, are NOT family. We may share genes, but they are NOT my family. My family are the people I surround myself with who share love and respect and affection.
Life’s just too short to put up with bullshit from people who thing they have a hook on you just because you share genes. No. Just no.
I would be very surprised if that land is paid for. I’m pretty sure he is in debt up to his eye-balls, land, new house, semi-truck, truck, camper, girlfriend’s car… the list is pretty long. This is supposed to be the year the semi is paid off, which I foolishly let excite me. This should have meant he could work a little less, but still work, and take that payment money and stash it away for repairs, taxes and that sort of thing… but no, after his semi is paid for he’s just… not working anymore.
I don’t disagree with you actually. My dad is not my biological dad. I was never adopted because that would mean they would lose our social security checks, any other excuses was bs, and he divorced my mom. He did raise me though.
I know I paint in a terrible light because his list of flaws is long. He came from a very abusive, physically abusive home, so did my mom. For the most part, they broke that cycle of abuse in this family tree… forever. When I am especially low, i try to remember that. I was never hit by a 2x4 or belted until I couldn’t walk.
My mom is 1 of 2 siblings who is actually became functional enough to make it to adult hood too. 1 suicide, 1 disappeared, not the Green River killer, we’ve checked blood with those victims.
He’s still my dad.
I also have nephew #1, by age, who is my little sister’s son who has very little and no college fund, mom isn’t working… I want to help him too, but I can’t give my lil sister money or she’ll wind up doing what my parents did with our savings and bonds and things when it came down to it.
I won’t let him drag me down, and I am fortunate to have another sister who is the same situation and also stable so we can make decisions together.
There’s a line. I just don’t know where to mark it… until then, I stockpile cash because I don’t have support system… I am the system support for others.
That is almost exactly the story of my wife and her family. I try to get her to stop but that just gets me grief. Lately she’s been doing better. Mainly because we just can’t afford it.
My son’s travel basketball season has started.
Always fun. I love basketball and it’s a kick that he’s passionate about it. But weirdly high security during pre-game warm-ups last night…
Watched a NFL game with my brother yesterday. He’s 55, I’m 53, and it was the first time that has ever happened. So that was cool.
I recently managed to get in contact with an old friend I haven’t seen in 7 years.
She’s very private and doesn’t have a social presence, which made it really tough for me to find her - especially since she went through a phase of changing e-mail addresses every 2-3 years. I ended up getting lucky with finding an old e-mail blast she sent out to a large group of her friends and I sent out another mass e-mail asking if any of them can get me in contact with her.
We just caught up over lunch and it was amazing how much her interests have changed over the years … but honestly my interests have changed as well and we had a really good 2hr conversation comparing life notes.
Now that I’ve met her it’s clear that we won’t be able to just pick up where we left off all those years ago but I’m hopeful we’ll stay close.