Context:
- I just found out that the student loans I’ve been saddled with for the past 19 years were completely avoidable because my parents are wealthier than they ever let on
- Something is wrong with my boomer parents—I don’t understand their relationship with money (or life in general). I think they may be seriously mentally ill
What happened
In 2014, my girlfriend and I moved into a rental home in a big city for about $1,500/month.
She later lost her job and it became unaffordable. The stress ended our relationship.
I struggled to stay in my home for the next seven years, until I finally declared bankruptcy and moved out in 2020.
I spent at least $120,000 on my rental home through those years. All down the drain. I liquidated all $30,000 of my retirement savings to try and stay afloat.
What could have been
2014 was a low point in the housing market. There were HUNDREDS of houses available in the ~$150k range, many of them nicer than the one I rented. All I needed was ~$10k for a down payment, and I could have been paying $800 for a mortgage instead of $1,500 on rent, and all of that money spent would be retained in the form of equity even if I still had to move out. It probably would have saved my relationship too (my parents complain about not having any grandkids, BTW).
What my parents say
When I mentioned this to my parents recently, they just said “we had no idea you wanted to buy a house”. NO, I JUST LOVED PAYING MONEY TO A LAND LEECH! I never even thought to ask for help with a down payment, because we were “broke”. My dad gave us grief over every dollar we spent. We never ONCE took a family vacation.
The truth
Today, my parents have $2 million in retirement savings, and no mortgage or car payments. They live in a rural area with a rock bottom cost-of-living. In 2003, they had HALF A MILLION dollars in cash, entirely separate from their retirement plans.
I’m really confused about the rental home. Why was it so important to keep living there once your situation changed so dramatically? Do you mean you had a mortgage and were renting out a room? Or was it a place you were renting?
A couple things stick out though:
Your parents are bad with money. They have some helpful habits that have kept it from ruining them but your mom apparently day traded away almost a half a million dollars. They buy expensive things that have long running costs that they run up debt to maintain (boat, farm apparently??). They casually run 5 figures in credit card debt and have to be pushed to pay it down for some reason.
They are clearly not well mentally, you’re obviously aware of this. They suffer from delusions and both seem to be in denial about their age and the conditions they live in. They are not coping well with how life is changing and it’s affecting their reasoning.
They also are trying to be helpful, I think. They took out debt to help you and your siblings, they tried to make your education cheaper by taking some of that on themselves. That they are less helpful than they could be honestly appears to be from their own inability to fathom money and how it works/what can be done with it more than malice or disregard for you and your siblings. It is obvious to us that getting a down payment would be a smart and helpful move, but you never asked and they appear to be bad enough at finances to genuinely not have thought about it.
So I’d say they’re not selfish (look at how they live, they’re clearly not benefiting from their decisions here) but ignorant and very unwell. Your dad clearly intends to work until he dies, he could be retired now if he wanted, he either doesn’t want to or honestly doesn’t comprehend that.
Or there’s more to the story you don’t know. Your mom has blown hundreds of thousands of dollars, there is a good chance more catastrophic losses are still hiding, maybe your dad is aware of these and that’s why he can’t retire.
It was a place I was renting. I was desperate to stay there because I was settled in and didn’t want to move into an apartment. I had a piano (heirloom) and home theater (purchased when I was doing well financially). I got a series of roommates to make it more affordable after my girlfriend left. I was unemployed for a long period, which caused most of the financial trouble. If I had been able to get another job (a friend offered me a better paying job literally three months after I went bankrupt and moved out of the state), it might have worked out.
They are very bad with money. At one point they took out a second mortgage to buy more stocks. They are both living in the future and don’t communicate. My mom’s biggest financial aspiration is buying a new oven. The reason she has sacrificed so much to make her stocks go up is because she believes that God will make her rich and that windfall will force my dad accept Christ as his lord and savior, thus saving her marriage.
I had to get them both to admit to themselves that they weren’t going to move into a different home before they die, which made my mom tear up. They never planned to raise their kids in this home (it’s not big enough), and now their kids are nearly forty.
My dad has not retired yet because he doesn’t believe he can afford to (he says he’ll retire next year, but only because he’s being pushed out). He doesn’t believe he can afford anything at all. He complains that “rich people” in our college town have purchased investment homes for their kids to rent, which he could have easily done himself, at least three times over. I never thought to ask for help because he always made it seem like we were a week away from living on the streets.