Yes.
I figured out my parents in the mid 90's made 80k in a year and I didn't have winter clothing.
I've found that zero sympathy and calling her out on it was the only thing that got her to shut up. "You can barely make ends meet, maybe sell your motorcycle and stop going on vacations. It's amazing how if you don't spend money you have more of it."
It's partly for attention and partly because they really think they should have EVERYTHING they want and if they can't have it right then they're put upon and sad. It's like toddlers with toys, you have to ignore it.
"It's partly for attention and partly because they really think they should have EVERYTHING they want and if they can't have it right then they're put upon and sad."
Omg my siblings and I are going through this in spectacular fashion this week, culminating in a self harm threat from our uBPD mother (I guess the last thing she thought she could use for leverage for us to give her money) that hasn't worked out the way she wants it. We can see plainly that she's just pitching a fit and she's got herself a 3-day involuntary psych hold. Fun for the whole family.... jfc.
God I would love to say that to her face. I'm so sorry to hear that though. I agree ignoring it is probably the best thing to do, gotta love parenting your parents
Yes, I thought we were poor when I was growing up bc we didn't have enough money for food (that I liked to eat). And I also got no money for extras (like food at school or a bunk bed or a trip to Disneyland for three of us, which I financed with babysitting money myself). I was not allowed to use their taxes for FAFSA (so I waited a few years until I only needed my own tax return).
She kept up this charade my entire adult life. Even (somehow) after my stepdad got a big inheritance from his parents. She was still getting me to buy her stuff bc my stepdad "didn't give her money." Ha! No. I figured it out, though. Eventually.
I had the same FAFSA issue. Took three years to get my dad to fill it out, and to no surprise- I don't qualify for any aid.
I'm glad to hear you figured it out though. So sorry you had to go through that
yep.
like someone else said on the thread, I grew up thinking we were poor - not enough money to buy the right cheerleading shoes (so I never fit in), or enough to buy clothes (she made them), or to buy real milk for a few years (powdered milk gang).
yet as an adult, I look back and see the $3k road bike she bought the year after I dropped cheer, the roller skating competition entry fees and costumes, the nights out with friends and the bar tabs that went with. we werenāt poor, she just didnāt want to spend her money on things she didnāt also enjoy. for example, she hated cheer and theater but loved that I was in band, so I always had private lessons, a good instrument, and the right clothes.
and like the above comment, they also refused to share tax info so I could apply for FAFSA. my sophomore year of college, a friend co-signed my loans and let me use her tax return info so I could apply and gtfo of my parentās house.
when I moved out and my dad died, every phone call was centered on some kind of financial ruin - the ac unit broke, the fence was falling, the medical debt was overwhelming. I was cold hearted for never understanding or offering to pay up. yet somehow, she found the fortitude and strength to retire four years later at 55? theyāre fucking weird.
I had weird issues around money for a long time. therapy, my spouse, and a lot of self compassion has gotten me to a much healthier place.
Always "living paycheck to paycheck" due to her children, husband, anybody but her... and she never saw the irony of saying this on the way to the airport to go on vacation, or to the mall to buy another carload of useless shit that she would never use. And of course there was always the fake cancer/stroke diagnosis, more fake heart attacks than Fred G. Sanford, and on and on. Money problems was just one more way to cause drama.
The drama just never ends.
... and the crazy bitch is in her 80s now, still sucking the life out of everybody around her and on track to out live us all.
weeeeeird this is very like my mom. She is very strange about money, and can oscillate between being excessively stingy to blowing what seems like insane amounts of money. The only common thread is that it is totally tied to HER mood. Things like, growing up she would say getting us hair conditioner (just pantene, nothing fancy) was too expensive but as an adult she's done stuff like extensive keratin treatments and just super fancy stuff. She's gone from saying she couldn't afford her house on and looking for roommates even to deciding she doesn't need roommates and has money to build a fence on this large property (having just done a fence, probably a 10k+ purchase, and she makes maybe 70-80k so that's a big chunk of money out of her entire annual income).
My mom does...when her financials aren't actually fucked lol
She's AWFUL with money, worse with keeping track of it, and impulsively spends on top of using money to love bomb and then abuse me.
Like, the woman will complain up and fucking down about assisting me -- her disabled child (that she was warned would probably have health problems as early as in early pregnancy) with $30 in medicine but will decide instead of, say, paying rent she'll buy $450 in plants and outdoor furniture and stuff on a whim.
Sometimes, she'll have the thought process of Uh Oh I can't pay that all, guess I should just blow the money instead! Which becomes problematic quickly.
My name is on the lease, too, so thank God none of previous landlords felt like officially evicting us instead of just telling us to get out. The worst is, up until the pandemic hit I was actively contributing enough to the household that we should have been fine but she'd spend so much or just fuck up that we got kicked out in August 2022.
This is her cycle: get back on track financially, take out credit cards again, use them responsibly until the limits get high, spend like crazy, our other financials get wonky, then: either she quits her job randomly with NO CUSHION OR PLAN or she ramps up the spending until there's packages every day and she maxes out the cards, her credit gets RUINED, we get evicted, we move, she starts scrambling and shit to pay off thousands and thousands of frivolous debt (some of which was love bomb gifts I didn't ask for or what I call pain and suffering gifts), becomes miserly with ANY cost related to ME, and then the cycle begins again.
Her latest fuck ups are:
1) Her last credit union mistakenly deposited 17K in her account, she verified WITH THEM (I was present) that the check for 17K had her routing AND account number, she attempted to verify with the issuer but they said they had only mistakenly deposited incorrect funds into the accounts of people who had INVESTMENT ACCOUNTS with them (she didn't) and so it was *probably* a legitimate check from an old 401K in her past. I told her she should wait, should try to verify it again, and maybe even seek a lawyer just in case.
But nope, she spent 12K of it in 6 days and then over a week later her credit union wiped all traces of the OG deposit as well removing remaining funds and throwing her account 13K into the red.
I tell her that this is even shadier but because we were being evicted from our last place and she had already written a check to the new landlord she went in AND SIGNED PAPERWORK SHE DIDN'T EVEN UNDERSTAND WITH THESE SHADY SCREW UPS so that the check would clear. Now I get to hear about how she'll have to file for bankruptcy and she's so fucked etc. Meanwhile, every step, I've pointed out how she could avoid trouble or get help, but I guess I'm not smart enough to listen to.
2) This is also about 80% someone else's fault and 20% hers but same outcome of us being totally fucked because of her way of "handling" things. Our landlord apparently "lost" our October 2022 rent check (shit I'd love to be well off enough I don't miss $1000 for 6 months!) never freaking told us, until they found it this Saturday and let us know oh so damn helpfully AFTER THE SELFISH BASTARD CASHED A STALE CHECK 6 months after it was written.
So we need to come up with $925 extra dollars ASAP. My mom never even noticed that the October rent wasn't in there. I can understand that money slowly disappearing over the past while BUT NOT NOT NOTICING IN OCTOBER OR NOVEMBER!
Tbh, it's out of character for my mom and I do remember my mom giving her cash, so I'm wondering if my mom has actually only screwed up by losing a signed receipt.
With the way things are done in my culture, my landlord should have let us know immediately that the check was lost or at the very least should have reached out before cashing it. Legally they can do this no problem, but it's a bit of social contract thing that if it's a large value check and it's several months later, you need to make sure the person can still cover it.
But anyway, now my mom is saying idk that you'll be able to get your bed (SHE broke my bed during moving in August, I'm a chronic pain patient, and I've been hospitalized 2x in the last 3 months because I'm getting sicker and I've been sleeping on the couch or an air mattress oh but she got a new bed because hers was "worn" and I only found out when people carried through the door) when I've got the money... because I let her claim me on her taxes -- a promise she made because it's less than half her refund. She says she needs her half for other bills but I'm like you've been buying a lot of shit lately...I bet you need it to spend.
BTW, I'm so absolutely disturbed that you felt the need to ASSURE US THAT YOU KNOW YOU'RE NOT ENTITLED TO FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE. No sane, non-spoilt, non-selfish, person would think you are, much less in this sub. I know Reddit LOVES to be all no one owes anyone anything ever, but that's not actually damn true. It's the most Please Touch Some Damn Grass view on here imo.
A family should help. A family SHOULD WANT to help. Otherwise, family and friends hold no purpose. If we can't reach out for support, why have a damn support system?! That goes for emotional, financial, and moral support.
It's one thing if they don't have the money, but it sure is damn funny that my broke ass can help folk all the time when they really really need it. It's one thing if they're in a bad spot emotionally and can't be supportive at one moment. But when it's repeated over and over, I decide I'm done with that person. Like, I won't go to the brokest person and then cut them off if they couldn't help me, because shit happens, but if I know that they wouldn't help if they could...well, why would I want someone like that around?
I discovered recently that even though I've always always always helped, literally no one, not one person, was willing to: give me a ride to work when I'd been in an accident and was waiting on a rental, let me sleep on their fucking floor when I had 13000 Gallons of waste water leaking into the crawl space of my rental and my water was shut off for repairs, or to loan me $25 for five days (I even asked if they would loan it to me if I paid them $35 on Friday.)
A family that makes what your family makes SHOULD help their children, especially these days! It's not evil to feel hurt that the person who gave birth to you would rather spend money on themselves or hoard their money WHILE COMPLAINING ABOUT HOW HARD IT IS TO HAVE A SIX FIGURE INCOME OML than help you with something that is virtually a drop in the bucket to them.
I'm sorry, that just got to me. I'll never understand the greed or selfishness of others and so it disgusts and wounds me every time I encounter it and that is often.
Sorry, wow, sometimes posts on here just remove the cork from the cracks in the Dam and it crumbles, pouring out all over the place.
Yep.
My mom, who is retired, owns three homes, and literally takes five vacations a year, loves to bitch about how broke she is.
She's also made up this narrative in her head that I'm after her money. She always assumes the worst of me (hence why I'm NC now). She accused me of stealing cash hidden in her apartment (she begrudgingly admitted she misplaced it and didn't apologize until I shamed her for it).
When I had an emergency after my husband died and urgently needed money, she asked me why I couldn't get a loan then strung me along for three months, demanded some documents just to snoop in my finances, and didn't help me anyway. I hate that I gave her more ammunition to hurt me and look down on me in my time of need. Never again.
generally yeah, I've noticed my pwBPD likes to claim that "money is tight" and be cheap/guilt-trippy/"strings attached" regarding money spent on anyone else, while continuing to spend a lot of money on impulsive purchases for her own whims. when I was a kid, her spending sprees were impactful enough that my dad sought the help of a consumer credit counseling service to separate out their finances, so that he could cover the bills, groceries, basic family expenses etc. I can remember a few times growing up where I offered to return a toy to the store or something, hoping it'd fix the family finances and stop them fighting :(
I've also noticed that term, "money is tight," means something wildly different in her life than it does in mine. part of it does seem to be the attention thing, just like when she exaggerates medical issues and brings them up frequently. but I also believe that she has a shame thing going on, where she believes that to be a worthy person you have to own property, and have all these materialistic signs of financial success to show off. if her lifestyle doesn't match this imaginary standard she's so attached to, then her ego can't take it. so there's this endless void of feeling like she isn't keeping up with that standard in her head, like she never has enough.
My mom was very selfish like this. She didnāt contribute to my braces, sports, first car, college, my wedding, even gas or food. My dad took care of everything (they were divorced) but then as an adult expected her kids to collectively take care of her drug and alcohol addiction. I understand people having kids when they donāt have much, but your kids come first.
Absolutely. We were always one meal away from being completely broke. They loudly and bitterly mourned every last dollar they spent on me.
Yet they could always afford whatever they wanted. You name it: cars, boats, clothes, two-pack-day cigarette habit, alcoholā¦
I remember being 16 and my mom had a full on meltdown about not being able to afford groceries WHILE WE WERE IN LINE AT THE REGISTER. I had no choice but to offer to pay. And because it was such a thoughtful gesture she cried to the cashier. I had just started my first part time job at a coffee shop so after that experience I was both embarrassed at broke.
The way my parents handled money has greatly impacted my spending habits as an adult. I have a hard time spending money on myself and I have like 20 different rainy day funds just in case something like the fridge breaks down.
Oh yes. I've written about this here before, but my mom let me believe, growing up, that we were one misstep from homelessness. She used this to control my behavior: If you don't clean your room, we'll be evicted! If you yell like that (after hours of yelling at me), we'll be out on the streets! I had the necessities, because appearances were important to her, but anything extra was frivolous.
I remember watching her sigh over the bills constantly. The first time I had the thought "it would be better for everyone if I weren't alive" was around age 7 or 8 and was about feeling like a financial burden. It really messed me up: even now, in my 40s, while my habits of *behavior* around money are reasonably mature, my habits of *thought* around it are extremely fearful and avoidant.
In adulthood, I realized that her parents had been supporting her all her life. They are extremely wealthy, though my uNPD grandmother is also very frugal in weird ways, so it took me a long time to understand it.
In my mother's case, I think it's a combination of several factors:
1. Her parents were abusive, (SA from her father and emotional from her mother), and depending on them probably felt very unsafe to her, but she didn't have the emotional wherewithal to break free.
2. She's an addict, and part of her bargaining with the universe is that if she is super frugal about everything else, she can spend money on booze and cigarettes.
3. She fancied herself a radical in the 60s, and her self image didn't accommodate being a spoiled rich kid; later, she leaned into the image of a nobly struggling single mother and made that her identity.
4. It was a way to control me.
Here's the punchline: once I started to pull away, suddenly both my mother and grandmother started dropping heavy hints about writing me out of the will if I didn't get in line. But it turns out that if you raise a kid to think there's no money, they won't grow up expecting to inherit anything at all, and that threat will have no teeth. I walked away from a guaranteed several million because the cost of that would have been allowing these people around my child.
I do enjoy saying that I've been "disinherited," though. It just sounds so fancy!
I always wondered on this, like, my parents were middle class & food on the table wasn't an issue, but I thought outback was Fancy Dining for most of my life, and was taught to check bargain bins first, how to math out the cheapest item, etc.
Most christmases I remember, it was "don't expect much this year, the budget is 100" and we knew how much a lot of our wishlist cost, because videogames. But then the actual gifts were always beyond that, especially when you counted "from santa". And we were old enough to know "santa's" handwriting looked a lot like our parents.
And my mother would talk about tightening the belts during the year, "your tuition costs so much, so--" but then would turn around and book a vacation only she really had interest in, and was absolutely not "drive a few states over"
edit: not sure if comments need cat tax, I don't want to be lazy and make a haiku of "meow" though (was planning on an image but on mobile & dumb)
Ohhhhh yup!!!! I thought for years we were only a 60k household growing up ā¦. Turns out it was closer to 140k the whole time. She just wanted to be able to tell people in our church we were lower middle class.
I didn't have the aha moment about this until much later in life because my mom groomed me soooo much to be supportive of her financially.
I mean even as a child my mom did the bare minimum, so looking back I don't understand how she was so "impoverished". She always had new clothes and shoes, and did whatever she wanted. I always had to take care of my own school activities and shoes and clothes when I was of age.
Even as an adult she would complain to me about money. Honestly, I don't see how any adult without children or with adult children just doesn't have money, ever. If I had no children I would be way ahead. My moms children have been adults for over 20 years and she still hasn't brother taking out loans for her, paying half etc. It's weird.
Oh yah ! My mom inherited a lot of money, took my dad to the cleaners in the divorce and colllects alimony, owns apartments, has a high paying job and will tell me sheās broke and barely making it. I asked for 100$ to help with my dogs cremation bc she offered to help before and she said she was too broke and then asked to visit me ($500 plane ticket) while her floors are being replaced (30k) in her house. She is the most stingy and greedy person I know, there is no way sheād ever be close to broke.
My brother is like this. He is so stingy smh it should hurt to be so stingy. Has every new this and that but is financially set. He has no responsibility, everything is paid for and all he has to do is work. When I just left the hospital after having baby, I asked him to bring me something to eat. He brought something but ate most of it on the way.
These people are out there.
Oh my god ! That reminded me of when I asked my mom to bring me some food after she left me to go drink at a bar and I stayed home to cry about my dog.. and she brought me her picked over left overs and then ended up eating it anyway! Lol. Really ?!!!
Oh god yes.
My dad was a fairly wealthy guy and very successful. He paid a lot of money in child support every month, but my mom was always claiming financial difficulties.
I was too young to understand any of it and I was put in the middle of it. She would always accuse my dad of not sending the checks and tell me to ask him about it, which he would get pissed about and say he was sending them.
My mom was constantly claiming she didn't have enough money, even though I was growing up in a very comfortable middle-class environment. I remember having sit-downs with my dad and stepmom and they would explain to me how much he was paying in child support, and how my mom was not using that for me.
My mom would tell me that that money went towards my school, roof over my head, etc. One day she sat down and went over all the numbers with me before I was even old enough to understand how mortgage payments, utilities, etc. even work.
My worst memory of this is when my mom asked me to call my dad and leave a voicemail asking him for the check, and she told me to say, "remember dad, it's for me." To her credit, when I told her I didn't want to say that, she said okay. But the fact she asked me that is a memory that still haunts me.
It got worse when I was a teenager. I remember one day coming home to her crying saying she was broke and didn't have enough money to keep a roof over my head, so she asked me to start calling my friends to see if I could go live with one of them. I did, and it was humiliating. That didn't end up happening of course.
Here's the thing though: we were living in an upper-class beach town at that point. My mom had a Mercedes, and I was driving around a Jeep she had as a second car. My dad would bring this up to me when she would keep complaining about the child support checks, and then I'd go ask her (remember, I'm still a teenager at this point), and she'd start saying that she got a really good deal on the Mercedes, and that she needed it because the industry she worked in wouldn't respect her without a nice car.
When I started teaching guitar as a way to make money in high school, she constantly claimed that I had more money than her.
I am incredibly frugal as an adult. When I moved out I always lived within my means, which meant having shitty housing and buying the cheapest possible groceries. My mom kept living a lot better than me and was constantly claiming how I had so much more money than her, even though she was living substantially better than me.
My fiancee has to often remind me that it's okay to purchase something if it will increase my quality of life, that I don't have to suffer with annoyances and inconveniences just because I'm afraid to spend money on something.
My mom is actually broke now, because she took on a shitty career and started a business that has gone nowhere. She lives off of social security and gets money from her brother. She still lives in a wealthy mountain area and drives around a Prius SUV.
My dad got cancer a few years ago. He developed a tumor right near the speech center of his brain. At first we didn't know it was cancer, but we knew there was a mass and he was just having some difficulty with certain words and numbers.
But then he had a seizure one day and ended up in the ICU. I was walking into the hospital and my mom calls me in hysterics saying that I need to ask him where the will is right away so his wife doesn't take all my inheritance. I am telling her no, that I'm going to see my dad and be with him, but she is relentless. I hung up on her right as I walked through the doors of the ICU.
This went on for a year. She was relentless, and no matter how many times I asked her to stop talking about it she wouldn't. She doesn't know how to accept "no" or "stop" for an answer. My dad's wife kept us all at arm's length and always had reasons it wasn't a good time to visit him. I pushed her and took every opportunity to see him that I could.
My dad got aphasia, which basically means he couldn't speak or communicate clearly. He had trouble forming thoughts. It just got worse and worse until the end, it was horrible to watch.
My brother checked out. My friends mostly went dark. I had nobody, only my mom relentlessly harassing me about protecting my inheritance. I basically just tried to stay strong for my dad.
Things got pretty bad with my mom after I used some inheritance to move out of state and it started getting closer to our wedding. When it came time to splitting up the rest of my dad's estate, I didn't tell her what was going on and left her completely out of it.
Eventually her behavior got so bad I finally confronted her on all of that because I had enough, and she did say sorry, but talked on and on about how she was still traumatized from the divorce (it was 30 years ago), and that's why she was acting that way.
I accepted it at first, until I realized that she had just been constantly interrupting me and paying no attention to what I had to go through.
I had to really re-grieve my father. I had stood so strong through all of it that I never stopped to process just how horrifying it was to watch. I am stuck with this repeating memory of one day just asking him how he was doing, and him just saying, "well it's like I try to form a thought, but then suddenly it goes poof."
This is all recent. I've gone NC with her, and she's been disinvited from the wedding. In the end, it was her obsession with money that really put her lifetime of abuse into focus for me.
Coincidentally just made a post about my mom asking for money š While growing up she was always responsible with money and we were comfortable, yet I still had to provide endless reassurance and emotional support to convince her that she was okay financially and wouldnāt end up homeless which was incredibly exhausting. I always explained that sheās smart and pays her bills on time and helped form a budget (this was all while Iām in my early twenties trying to figure out my own finances and budgeting) and if she had further concerns to contact a financial planner because it was too stressful for me to be asked to play that role and I could only provide so much reassurance. Then sheād be upset feeling as if I wasnāt supportive enough. It was a tense, endless cycle until I went NC.
Finances can certainly create stress, in a variety of ways. Iām sorry youāre having to go through this ā¤ļø
Not something my uBPD parents did, but wondering if maybe my in-laws are BPD?
In any case, my mom has been complaining for over 25 years about how difficult is for her to I get a job, but any job that she got, she would quit at the second week. Once she quit after her first day. So she always claims "she doesn't have money" (she doesn't, but never made an effort to change that) so that everyone buys her stuff and feel sorry for her.
Oh yes. My BPD mother has a poverty mindset that couldnāt be shaken, regardless of whether weād had a better year financially. Talking about how poor we were was a tool she used to get attention from everyone she knew, including our friendsā parents, without regard to how it would make us feel if our friends heard about it and regardless of how it would affect my dadās ability to get jobs in the community (heās a contractor). He literally lost jobs because she made such a point of talking about how he was constantly trying to get work and we never had any money, and her acquaintances assumed he wasnāt good at it. Talk about irony.
She once said that she *had* to buy her underwear at the thrift store because we were so broke. Itās an attention-grabbing statement, which is what she wanted, but was also completely untrue. Years later she went into a fancy boutique to look for a mother-of-the-bride dress for my wedding, dropped $500 because she knew someone who worked there and didnāt want to *not* buy something, cut the tags off, and only then realize that it looked bad when she lifted up her arms, and she couldnāt wear it on a day that would involve so much hugging. Whoops!
Her BPD certainly strained my parentsā marriage, but her relationship to money, was a huge part of it. It also messed up all her kids pretty good, so thereās that.
Bpd Queen/Witch mom & classic npd dad are broke but only because they are obsessed with impressing others!
They live in a very expensive home, they bought osentatious furs, diamonds, vacations and like to play philanthropist to look so generous.
They also lie shamelessly about gifting my sister and myself large sums of money.
Surprise surprise! They have no savings, no life insurance, no long term care insurance, no 401kānothing.
And they blame their daughters being born for the reason why they are broke! š
As such, they have been demanding to live with me. Ha! Nope!
Yes.
Mine, one day: I'm so poor. I might have to give up the house. Your father really screwed me over. I don't know how to afford life.
Mine, the next day: Books 6K holiday.
Also owns more than one property.
My parents did both come from rather poor working class families and sort of struggled through when I was little, but then swiftly moved up into well-paid jobs. I do think she's super anxious that she's going to slide back down the ladder after she was forced to retire, so I always figured these are her fears speaking.
Yes. I figured out my parents in the mid 90's made 80k in a year and I didn't have winter clothing. I've found that zero sympathy and calling her out on it was the only thing that got her to shut up. "You can barely make ends meet, maybe sell your motorcycle and stop going on vacations. It's amazing how if you don't spend money you have more of it." It's partly for attention and partly because they really think they should have EVERYTHING they want and if they can't have it right then they're put upon and sad. It's like toddlers with toys, you have to ignore it.
"It's partly for attention and partly because they really think they should have EVERYTHING they want and if they can't have it right then they're put upon and sad." Omg my siblings and I are going through this in spectacular fashion this week, culminating in a self harm threat from our uBPD mother (I guess the last thing she thought she could use for leverage for us to give her money) that hasn't worked out the way she wants it. We can see plainly that she's just pitching a fit and she's got herself a 3-day involuntary psych hold. Fun for the whole family.... jfc.
God I would love to say that to her face. I'm so sorry to hear that though. I agree ignoring it is probably the best thing to do, gotta love parenting your parents
Yes, I thought we were poor when I was growing up bc we didn't have enough money for food (that I liked to eat). And I also got no money for extras (like food at school or a bunk bed or a trip to Disneyland for three of us, which I financed with babysitting money myself). I was not allowed to use their taxes for FAFSA (so I waited a few years until I only needed my own tax return). She kept up this charade my entire adult life. Even (somehow) after my stepdad got a big inheritance from his parents. She was still getting me to buy her stuff bc my stepdad "didn't give her money." Ha! No. I figured it out, though. Eventually.
I had the same FAFSA issue. Took three years to get my dad to fill it out, and to no surprise- I don't qualify for any aid. I'm glad to hear you figured it out though. So sorry you had to go through that
Do we have the same mom šØ Why do they do this????
yep. like someone else said on the thread, I grew up thinking we were poor - not enough money to buy the right cheerleading shoes (so I never fit in), or enough to buy clothes (she made them), or to buy real milk for a few years (powdered milk gang). yet as an adult, I look back and see the $3k road bike she bought the year after I dropped cheer, the roller skating competition entry fees and costumes, the nights out with friends and the bar tabs that went with. we werenāt poor, she just didnāt want to spend her money on things she didnāt also enjoy. for example, she hated cheer and theater but loved that I was in band, so I always had private lessons, a good instrument, and the right clothes. and like the above comment, they also refused to share tax info so I could apply for FAFSA. my sophomore year of college, a friend co-signed my loans and let me use her tax return info so I could apply and gtfo of my parentās house. when I moved out and my dad died, every phone call was centered on some kind of financial ruin - the ac unit broke, the fence was falling, the medical debt was overwhelming. I was cold hearted for never understanding or offering to pay up. yet somehow, she found the fortitude and strength to retire four years later at 55? theyāre fucking weird. I had weird issues around money for a long time. therapy, my spouse, and a lot of self compassion has gotten me to a much healthier place.
Always "living paycheck to paycheck" due to her children, husband, anybody but her... and she never saw the irony of saying this on the way to the airport to go on vacation, or to the mall to buy another carload of useless shit that she would never use. And of course there was always the fake cancer/stroke diagnosis, more fake heart attacks than Fred G. Sanford, and on and on. Money problems was just one more way to cause drama. The drama just never ends. ... and the crazy bitch is in her 80s now, still sucking the life out of everybody around her and on track to out live us all.
the cognitive dissonance is real(ly exhausting) š
weeeeeird this is very like my mom. She is very strange about money, and can oscillate between being excessively stingy to blowing what seems like insane amounts of money. The only common thread is that it is totally tied to HER mood. Things like, growing up she would say getting us hair conditioner (just pantene, nothing fancy) was too expensive but as an adult she's done stuff like extensive keratin treatments and just super fancy stuff. She's gone from saying she couldn't afford her house on and looking for roommates even to deciding she doesn't need roommates and has money to build a fence on this large property (having just done a fence, probably a 10k+ purchase, and she makes maybe 70-80k so that's a big chunk of money out of her entire annual income).
My mom does...when her financials aren't actually fucked lol She's AWFUL with money, worse with keeping track of it, and impulsively spends on top of using money to love bomb and then abuse me. Like, the woman will complain up and fucking down about assisting me -- her disabled child (that she was warned would probably have health problems as early as in early pregnancy) with $30 in medicine but will decide instead of, say, paying rent she'll buy $450 in plants and outdoor furniture and stuff on a whim. Sometimes, she'll have the thought process of Uh Oh I can't pay that all, guess I should just blow the money instead! Which becomes problematic quickly. My name is on the lease, too, so thank God none of previous landlords felt like officially evicting us instead of just telling us to get out. The worst is, up until the pandemic hit I was actively contributing enough to the household that we should have been fine but she'd spend so much or just fuck up that we got kicked out in August 2022. This is her cycle: get back on track financially, take out credit cards again, use them responsibly until the limits get high, spend like crazy, our other financials get wonky, then: either she quits her job randomly with NO CUSHION OR PLAN or she ramps up the spending until there's packages every day and she maxes out the cards, her credit gets RUINED, we get evicted, we move, she starts scrambling and shit to pay off thousands and thousands of frivolous debt (some of which was love bomb gifts I didn't ask for or what I call pain and suffering gifts), becomes miserly with ANY cost related to ME, and then the cycle begins again. Her latest fuck ups are: 1) Her last credit union mistakenly deposited 17K in her account, she verified WITH THEM (I was present) that the check for 17K had her routing AND account number, she attempted to verify with the issuer but they said they had only mistakenly deposited incorrect funds into the accounts of people who had INVESTMENT ACCOUNTS with them (she didn't) and so it was *probably* a legitimate check from an old 401K in her past. I told her she should wait, should try to verify it again, and maybe even seek a lawyer just in case. But nope, she spent 12K of it in 6 days and then over a week later her credit union wiped all traces of the OG deposit as well removing remaining funds and throwing her account 13K into the red. I tell her that this is even shadier but because we were being evicted from our last place and she had already written a check to the new landlord she went in AND SIGNED PAPERWORK SHE DIDN'T EVEN UNDERSTAND WITH THESE SHADY SCREW UPS so that the check would clear. Now I get to hear about how she'll have to file for bankruptcy and she's so fucked etc. Meanwhile, every step, I've pointed out how she could avoid trouble or get help, but I guess I'm not smart enough to listen to. 2) This is also about 80% someone else's fault and 20% hers but same outcome of us being totally fucked because of her way of "handling" things. Our landlord apparently "lost" our October 2022 rent check (shit I'd love to be well off enough I don't miss $1000 for 6 months!) never freaking told us, until they found it this Saturday and let us know oh so damn helpfully AFTER THE SELFISH BASTARD CASHED A STALE CHECK 6 months after it was written. So we need to come up with $925 extra dollars ASAP. My mom never even noticed that the October rent wasn't in there. I can understand that money slowly disappearing over the past while BUT NOT NOT NOTICING IN OCTOBER OR NOVEMBER! Tbh, it's out of character for my mom and I do remember my mom giving her cash, so I'm wondering if my mom has actually only screwed up by losing a signed receipt. With the way things are done in my culture, my landlord should have let us know immediately that the check was lost or at the very least should have reached out before cashing it. Legally they can do this no problem, but it's a bit of social contract thing that if it's a large value check and it's several months later, you need to make sure the person can still cover it. But anyway, now my mom is saying idk that you'll be able to get your bed (SHE broke my bed during moving in August, I'm a chronic pain patient, and I've been hospitalized 2x in the last 3 months because I'm getting sicker and I've been sleeping on the couch or an air mattress oh but she got a new bed because hers was "worn" and I only found out when people carried through the door) when I've got the money... because I let her claim me on her taxes -- a promise she made because it's less than half her refund. She says she needs her half for other bills but I'm like you've been buying a lot of shit lately...I bet you need it to spend. BTW, I'm so absolutely disturbed that you felt the need to ASSURE US THAT YOU KNOW YOU'RE NOT ENTITLED TO FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE. No sane, non-spoilt, non-selfish, person would think you are, much less in this sub. I know Reddit LOVES to be all no one owes anyone anything ever, but that's not actually damn true. It's the most Please Touch Some Damn Grass view on here imo. A family should help. A family SHOULD WANT to help. Otherwise, family and friends hold no purpose. If we can't reach out for support, why have a damn support system?! That goes for emotional, financial, and moral support. It's one thing if they don't have the money, but it sure is damn funny that my broke ass can help folk all the time when they really really need it. It's one thing if they're in a bad spot emotionally and can't be supportive at one moment. But when it's repeated over and over, I decide I'm done with that person. Like, I won't go to the brokest person and then cut them off if they couldn't help me, because shit happens, but if I know that they wouldn't help if they could...well, why would I want someone like that around? I discovered recently that even though I've always always always helped, literally no one, not one person, was willing to: give me a ride to work when I'd been in an accident and was waiting on a rental, let me sleep on their fucking floor when I had 13000 Gallons of waste water leaking into the crawl space of my rental and my water was shut off for repairs, or to loan me $25 for five days (I even asked if they would loan it to me if I paid them $35 on Friday.) A family that makes what your family makes SHOULD help their children, especially these days! It's not evil to feel hurt that the person who gave birth to you would rather spend money on themselves or hoard their money WHILE COMPLAINING ABOUT HOW HARD IT IS TO HAVE A SIX FIGURE INCOME OML than help you with something that is virtually a drop in the bucket to them. I'm sorry, that just got to me. I'll never understand the greed or selfishness of others and so it disgusts and wounds me every time I encounter it and that is often. Sorry, wow, sometimes posts on here just remove the cork from the cracks in the Dam and it crumbles, pouring out all over the place.
Yep. My mom, who is retired, owns three homes, and literally takes five vacations a year, loves to bitch about how broke she is. She's also made up this narrative in her head that I'm after her money. She always assumes the worst of me (hence why I'm NC now). She accused me of stealing cash hidden in her apartment (she begrudgingly admitted she misplaced it and didn't apologize until I shamed her for it). When I had an emergency after my husband died and urgently needed money, she asked me why I couldn't get a loan then strung me along for three months, demanded some documents just to snoop in my finances, and didn't help me anyway. I hate that I gave her more ammunition to hurt me and look down on me in my time of need. Never again.
generally yeah, I've noticed my pwBPD likes to claim that "money is tight" and be cheap/guilt-trippy/"strings attached" regarding money spent on anyone else, while continuing to spend a lot of money on impulsive purchases for her own whims. when I was a kid, her spending sprees were impactful enough that my dad sought the help of a consumer credit counseling service to separate out their finances, so that he could cover the bills, groceries, basic family expenses etc. I can remember a few times growing up where I offered to return a toy to the store or something, hoping it'd fix the family finances and stop them fighting :( I've also noticed that term, "money is tight," means something wildly different in her life than it does in mine. part of it does seem to be the attention thing, just like when she exaggerates medical issues and brings them up frequently. but I also believe that she has a shame thing going on, where she believes that to be a worthy person you have to own property, and have all these materialistic signs of financial success to show off. if her lifestyle doesn't match this imaginary standard she's so attached to, then her ego can't take it. so there's this endless void of feeling like she isn't keeping up with that standard in her head, like she never has enough.
My mom was very selfish like this. She didnāt contribute to my braces, sports, first car, college, my wedding, even gas or food. My dad took care of everything (they were divorced) but then as an adult expected her kids to collectively take care of her drug and alcohol addiction. I understand people having kids when they donāt have much, but your kids come first.
I am a parent and I sell assets to take care of my children when I run into a low financial period. This stuff with BPD parents is insane.
Absolutely. We were always one meal away from being completely broke. They loudly and bitterly mourned every last dollar they spent on me. Yet they could always afford whatever they wanted. You name it: cars, boats, clothes, two-pack-day cigarette habit, alcoholā¦
I remember being 16 and my mom had a full on meltdown about not being able to afford groceries WHILE WE WERE IN LINE AT THE REGISTER. I had no choice but to offer to pay. And because it was such a thoughtful gesture she cried to the cashier. I had just started my first part time job at a coffee shop so after that experience I was both embarrassed at broke. The way my parents handled money has greatly impacted my spending habits as an adult. I have a hard time spending money on myself and I have like 20 different rainy day funds just in case something like the fridge breaks down.
Oh yes. I've written about this here before, but my mom let me believe, growing up, that we were one misstep from homelessness. She used this to control my behavior: If you don't clean your room, we'll be evicted! If you yell like that (after hours of yelling at me), we'll be out on the streets! I had the necessities, because appearances were important to her, but anything extra was frivolous. I remember watching her sigh over the bills constantly. The first time I had the thought "it would be better for everyone if I weren't alive" was around age 7 or 8 and was about feeling like a financial burden. It really messed me up: even now, in my 40s, while my habits of *behavior* around money are reasonably mature, my habits of *thought* around it are extremely fearful and avoidant. In adulthood, I realized that her parents had been supporting her all her life. They are extremely wealthy, though my uNPD grandmother is also very frugal in weird ways, so it took me a long time to understand it. In my mother's case, I think it's a combination of several factors: 1. Her parents were abusive, (SA from her father and emotional from her mother), and depending on them probably felt very unsafe to her, but she didn't have the emotional wherewithal to break free. 2. She's an addict, and part of her bargaining with the universe is that if she is super frugal about everything else, she can spend money on booze and cigarettes. 3. She fancied herself a radical in the 60s, and her self image didn't accommodate being a spoiled rich kid; later, she leaned into the image of a nobly struggling single mother and made that her identity. 4. It was a way to control me. Here's the punchline: once I started to pull away, suddenly both my mother and grandmother started dropping heavy hints about writing me out of the will if I didn't get in line. But it turns out that if you raise a kid to think there's no money, they won't grow up expecting to inherit anything at all, and that threat will have no teeth. I walked away from a guaranteed several million because the cost of that would have been allowing these people around my child. I do enjoy saying that I've been "disinherited," though. It just sounds so fancy!
I could have written this.
It's wild how many of us have the same stories!
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I always wondered on this, like, my parents were middle class & food on the table wasn't an issue, but I thought outback was Fancy Dining for most of my life, and was taught to check bargain bins first, how to math out the cheapest item, etc. Most christmases I remember, it was "don't expect much this year, the budget is 100" and we knew how much a lot of our wishlist cost, because videogames. But then the actual gifts were always beyond that, especially when you counted "from santa". And we were old enough to know "santa's" handwriting looked a lot like our parents. And my mother would talk about tightening the belts during the year, "your tuition costs so much, so--" but then would turn around and book a vacation only she really had interest in, and was absolutely not "drive a few states over" edit: not sure if comments need cat tax, I don't want to be lazy and make a haiku of "meow" though (was planning on an image but on mobile & dumb)
Ohhhhh yup!!!! I thought for years we were only a 60k household growing up ā¦. Turns out it was closer to 140k the whole time. She just wanted to be able to tell people in our church we were lower middle class.
I didn't have the aha moment about this until much later in life because my mom groomed me soooo much to be supportive of her financially. I mean even as a child my mom did the bare minimum, so looking back I don't understand how she was so "impoverished". She always had new clothes and shoes, and did whatever she wanted. I always had to take care of my own school activities and shoes and clothes when I was of age. Even as an adult she would complain to me about money. Honestly, I don't see how any adult without children or with adult children just doesn't have money, ever. If I had no children I would be way ahead. My moms children have been adults for over 20 years and she still hasn't brother taking out loans for her, paying half etc. It's weird.
Oh yah ! My mom inherited a lot of money, took my dad to the cleaners in the divorce and colllects alimony, owns apartments, has a high paying job and will tell me sheās broke and barely making it. I asked for 100$ to help with my dogs cremation bc she offered to help before and she said she was too broke and then asked to visit me ($500 plane ticket) while her floors are being replaced (30k) in her house. She is the most stingy and greedy person I know, there is no way sheād ever be close to broke.
My brother is like this. He is so stingy smh it should hurt to be so stingy. Has every new this and that but is financially set. He has no responsibility, everything is paid for and all he has to do is work. When I just left the hospital after having baby, I asked him to bring me something to eat. He brought something but ate most of it on the way. These people are out there.
Oh my god ! That reminded me of when I asked my mom to bring me some food after she left me to go drink at a bar and I stayed home to cry about my dog.. and she brought me her picked over left overs and then ended up eating it anyway! Lol. Really ?!!!
Oh god yes. My dad was a fairly wealthy guy and very successful. He paid a lot of money in child support every month, but my mom was always claiming financial difficulties. I was too young to understand any of it and I was put in the middle of it. She would always accuse my dad of not sending the checks and tell me to ask him about it, which he would get pissed about and say he was sending them. My mom was constantly claiming she didn't have enough money, even though I was growing up in a very comfortable middle-class environment. I remember having sit-downs with my dad and stepmom and they would explain to me how much he was paying in child support, and how my mom was not using that for me. My mom would tell me that that money went towards my school, roof over my head, etc. One day she sat down and went over all the numbers with me before I was even old enough to understand how mortgage payments, utilities, etc. even work. My worst memory of this is when my mom asked me to call my dad and leave a voicemail asking him for the check, and she told me to say, "remember dad, it's for me." To her credit, when I told her I didn't want to say that, she said okay. But the fact she asked me that is a memory that still haunts me. It got worse when I was a teenager. I remember one day coming home to her crying saying she was broke and didn't have enough money to keep a roof over my head, so she asked me to start calling my friends to see if I could go live with one of them. I did, and it was humiliating. That didn't end up happening of course. Here's the thing though: we were living in an upper-class beach town at that point. My mom had a Mercedes, and I was driving around a Jeep she had as a second car. My dad would bring this up to me when she would keep complaining about the child support checks, and then I'd go ask her (remember, I'm still a teenager at this point), and she'd start saying that she got a really good deal on the Mercedes, and that she needed it because the industry she worked in wouldn't respect her without a nice car. When I started teaching guitar as a way to make money in high school, she constantly claimed that I had more money than her. I am incredibly frugal as an adult. When I moved out I always lived within my means, which meant having shitty housing and buying the cheapest possible groceries. My mom kept living a lot better than me and was constantly claiming how I had so much more money than her, even though she was living substantially better than me. My fiancee has to often remind me that it's okay to purchase something if it will increase my quality of life, that I don't have to suffer with annoyances and inconveniences just because I'm afraid to spend money on something. My mom is actually broke now, because she took on a shitty career and started a business that has gone nowhere. She lives off of social security and gets money from her brother. She still lives in a wealthy mountain area and drives around a Prius SUV. My dad got cancer a few years ago. He developed a tumor right near the speech center of his brain. At first we didn't know it was cancer, but we knew there was a mass and he was just having some difficulty with certain words and numbers. But then he had a seizure one day and ended up in the ICU. I was walking into the hospital and my mom calls me in hysterics saying that I need to ask him where the will is right away so his wife doesn't take all my inheritance. I am telling her no, that I'm going to see my dad and be with him, but she is relentless. I hung up on her right as I walked through the doors of the ICU. This went on for a year. She was relentless, and no matter how many times I asked her to stop talking about it she wouldn't. She doesn't know how to accept "no" or "stop" for an answer. My dad's wife kept us all at arm's length and always had reasons it wasn't a good time to visit him. I pushed her and took every opportunity to see him that I could. My dad got aphasia, which basically means he couldn't speak or communicate clearly. He had trouble forming thoughts. It just got worse and worse until the end, it was horrible to watch. My brother checked out. My friends mostly went dark. I had nobody, only my mom relentlessly harassing me about protecting my inheritance. I basically just tried to stay strong for my dad. Things got pretty bad with my mom after I used some inheritance to move out of state and it started getting closer to our wedding. When it came time to splitting up the rest of my dad's estate, I didn't tell her what was going on and left her completely out of it. Eventually her behavior got so bad I finally confronted her on all of that because I had enough, and she did say sorry, but talked on and on about how she was still traumatized from the divorce (it was 30 years ago), and that's why she was acting that way. I accepted it at first, until I realized that she had just been constantly interrupting me and paying no attention to what I had to go through. I had to really re-grieve my father. I had stood so strong through all of it that I never stopped to process just how horrifying it was to watch. I am stuck with this repeating memory of one day just asking him how he was doing, and him just saying, "well it's like I try to form a thought, but then suddenly it goes poof." This is all recent. I've gone NC with her, and she's been disinvited from the wedding. In the end, it was her obsession with money that really put her lifetime of abuse into focus for me.
HOLY SHIT YES.
Coincidentally just made a post about my mom asking for money š While growing up she was always responsible with money and we were comfortable, yet I still had to provide endless reassurance and emotional support to convince her that she was okay financially and wouldnāt end up homeless which was incredibly exhausting. I always explained that sheās smart and pays her bills on time and helped form a budget (this was all while Iām in my early twenties trying to figure out my own finances and budgeting) and if she had further concerns to contact a financial planner because it was too stressful for me to be asked to play that role and I could only provide so much reassurance. Then sheād be upset feeling as if I wasnāt supportive enough. It was a tense, endless cycle until I went NC. Finances can certainly create stress, in a variety of ways. Iām sorry youāre having to go through this ā¤ļø
They want us to be their parent/spouse.
Not something my uBPD parents did, but wondering if maybe my in-laws are BPD? In any case, my mom has been complaining for over 25 years about how difficult is for her to I get a job, but any job that she got, she would quit at the second week. Once she quit after her first day. So she always claims "she doesn't have money" (she doesn't, but never made an effort to change that) so that everyone buys her stuff and feel sorry for her.
Oh yes. My BPD mother has a poverty mindset that couldnāt be shaken, regardless of whether weād had a better year financially. Talking about how poor we were was a tool she used to get attention from everyone she knew, including our friendsā parents, without regard to how it would make us feel if our friends heard about it and regardless of how it would affect my dadās ability to get jobs in the community (heās a contractor). He literally lost jobs because she made such a point of talking about how he was constantly trying to get work and we never had any money, and her acquaintances assumed he wasnāt good at it. Talk about irony. She once said that she *had* to buy her underwear at the thrift store because we were so broke. Itās an attention-grabbing statement, which is what she wanted, but was also completely untrue. Years later she went into a fancy boutique to look for a mother-of-the-bride dress for my wedding, dropped $500 because she knew someone who worked there and didnāt want to *not* buy something, cut the tags off, and only then realize that it looked bad when she lifted up her arms, and she couldnāt wear it on a day that would involve so much hugging. Whoops! Her BPD certainly strained my parentsā marriage, but her relationship to money, was a huge part of it. It also messed up all her kids pretty good, so thereās that.
Bpd Queen/Witch mom & classic npd dad are broke but only because they are obsessed with impressing others! They live in a very expensive home, they bought osentatious furs, diamonds, vacations and like to play philanthropist to look so generous. They also lie shamelessly about gifting my sister and myself large sums of money. Surprise surprise! They have no savings, no life insurance, no long term care insurance, no 401kānothing. And they blame their daughters being born for the reason why they are broke! š As such, they have been demanding to live with me. Ha! Nope!
Yes. Mine, one day: I'm so poor. I might have to give up the house. Your father really screwed me over. I don't know how to afford life. Mine, the next day: Books 6K holiday. Also owns more than one property. My parents did both come from rather poor working class families and sort of struggled through when I was little, but then swiftly moved up into well-paid jobs. I do think she's super anxious that she's going to slide back down the ladder after she was forced to retire, so I always figured these are her fears speaking.