Personal Development for Smart People Forums - View Single Post - How do you deal with Gold Digger Relatives?

Ilya · 07-28-2007, 06:11 PM

This is a serious topic. In culture where I grew up, the children were considered to be eternally indebted to their parents. This is supported by the argument, that the parents had to give up a lot to bring up their children. For the most part of the century this debt was repaid by care to parents in their old age, providing the place to live, and all that is necessary for life, really.

This culture is the result of the twentieth century history, which lead to the death of more then 60 millions of people due to wars, hunger and political repressions. The surviving people lived in conditions close to poverty, when retirees could not support themselves and working people could not afford their own homes. In those conditions, denying financial help to parents meant literally trowing them out in the streets and starving them to death. I'm telling this to illustrate the difficulty of the decisions I had to face.

Over the last 15 years the situation changed in a strange way. The people gained the chance to earn money with their labor. Unfortunately, time is needed to learn how to deal with this chance. Some people - 3-5% of the population made huge fortunes. At the same time, more then 30% of people live below the poverty line. My father and my last living grandmother are among them.

As some of you may know from my other posts, early in life I started my quest for financial freedom. At the time of this decision, I was a student with a part-time job, that was earning me $300 a month. With the cost of living that was not too different from the cost of living in the US, I had to make a very difficult decision that I was not going to help my relatives. I decided that the scarcity in my family has to end and it should end with me. I had to sacrifice the interests of the previous generations, for the sake of the future generations.

Fortunately, this decision didn't lead to any tragic consequences. All our family managed to survive the difficult years. Most of my relatives - close and far managed to maintain their standard of living, while I have reached the goal of financial independence. At this moment, neither of my relatives needs urgent financial help, but if they do, I have dedicated funds to help them out. Now I'm confident that when my parents retire, I will be able to support them financially. This somewhat reduces the guilt I feel from my earlier decision. Now, when I know what I know about personal finance, it is clear to me, that I could afford helping my relatives and still reach my goals.

So my advice is do help out your relatives, to the extent you can afford. Having financial projections will help you to know how much you can allocate for this, without compromising your future. While helping, do encourage the people to manage their finance better, to think about the future.

07-28-2007, 06:11 PM	#18 (permalink)
Ilya Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Moscow, Russia Posts: 452	This is a serious topic. In culture where I grew up, the children were considered to be eternally indebted to their parents. This is supported by the argument, that the parents had to give up a lot to bring up their children. For the most part of the century this debt was repaid by care to parents in their old age, providing the place to live, and all that is necessary for life, really. This culture is the result of the twentieth century history, which lead to the death of more then 60 millions of people due to wars, hunger and political repressions. The surviving people lived in conditions close to poverty, when retirees could not support themselves and working people could not afford their own homes. In those conditions, denying financial help to parents meant literally trowing them out in the streets and starving them to death. I'm telling this to illustrate the difficulty of the decisions I had to face. Over the last 15 years the situation changed in a strange way. The people gained the chance to earn money with their labor. Unfortunately, time is needed to learn how to deal with this chance. Some people - 3-5% of the population made huge fortunes. At the same time, more then 30% of people live below the poverty line. My father and my last living grandmother are among them. As some of you may know from my other posts, early in life I started my quest for financial freedom. At the time of this decision, I was a student with a part-time job, that was earning me $300 a month. With the cost of living that was not too different from the cost of living in the US, I had to make a very difficult decision that I was not going to help my relatives. I decided that the scarcity in my family has to end and it should end with me. I had to sacrifice the interests of the previous generations, for the sake of the future generations. Fortunately, this decision didn't lead to any tragic consequences. All our family managed to survive the difficult years. Most of my relatives - close and far managed to maintain their standard of living, while I have reached the goal of financial independence. At this moment, neither of my relatives needs urgent financial help, but if they do, I have dedicated funds to help them out. Now I'm confident that when my parents retire, I will be able to support them financially. This somewhat reduces the guilt I feel from my earlier decision. Now, when I know what I know about personal finance, it is clear to me, that I could afford helping my relatives and still reach my goals. So my advice is do help out your relatives, to the extent you can afford. Having financial projections will help you to know how much you can allocate for this, without compromising your future. While helping, do encourage the people to manage their finance better, to think about the future. __________________ Ilya.