I moved back in with my parents at 35 a couple years ago after personal financial ruin.
CW: Suicide
I was so depressed at the time that I told them they should let me die because I didn’t want to be a financial burden on them.
That’s how seriously money was weighing on my mind at the time.
All I knew about my parents finances before yesterday was that they had multiple high-interest credit cards nearly maxed out. I knew this because my mom has shared the account login credentials with me.
All I could think about was getting a job ASAP to help the family stay of the streets, but I was too depressed to function.
Yesterday after a long conversation, my mom shows me her Merrill Lynch account on her iPad. It has a balance of over $128k. All stocks.
My mom has been squirreling every dollar she can into it for the past thirty years.
I clicked “max” on the balance history. The balance used to be over $600k but she makes a lot of trades.
I’m going through a lot of emotions rn.
You’re not alone. After my dad left my mom, he and his new wife became fairly wealthy, they’re probably millionaires now. While this happened his kids and ex squatted in their old home for a few years until they were kicked out and then moved into a leaky house that barely had heat in New England. I never got shit from him in adulthood besides being able to stay on my step-mother’s health insurance which he would get pissed at me every time I used. Though I’ve been lucky to never be in a bad financial spot, I still worry constantly, sometimes to the point of panic, about money because of how I grew up and he’s done irreparable harm to me and the people I love by hoarding wealth.
Some parents hate their kids. Some just have no empathy for them. Either way I think it’s quite reasonable to be upset about it and define your relationship around it. It gets easier to deal with over time.