A couple of months ago my dad sold several properties, pooled the money together and bought a new home for my brother & his family in India, so they could move to a bigger house and put up their current house on rent as additional stream of income. Since then, we’ve been constantly asked by our well meaning relatives and extended family, What did you get?. Well, we got nothing. It upsets them more than it upsets us. I did not ask for inheritance of any kind from my dad, and I strictly believe its his money to do as he wishes. If he had decided to spend it all on a 5 star luxury cruise around the world for 3 years, I still wouldn’t have said anything. Its his money, he gets to decide what to do with it.
However, what has bothered and upset us is my dad assuming that I still need to finance all his (& my brother’s) trips here. I’ve never had a problem with financing him in particular (though we have financed my brother & his wife when they just started out their careers), but it has never once occurred to him or my brother that hey we’ve had a nice windfall, maybe we keep some of this to finance our own trips and not still expect the older brother to do it all. Things came to a point this trip where I flatly refused to gift a long laundry list of very expensive items that they wanted; I was told I should gift them, and when I just outright refused, they bought it anyway with their own money, leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I am disappointed that my dad is trying to get me to do what he did in his life with his brothers & sisters. I get why he had to be the load bearer of his family in the circumstances he grew up in (& i respect that), but I dont think he realizes that this is a different world now and very different life situations.
Anyway, I am glad I took the first step this year to finally start pushing back on my family. I guess it makes me look selfish & my openness has caught them off guard a bit, but I’ve also realized that I need to be stronger and draw boundaries around myself and my immediate family. I love them, but at the same time I am not a tool. And if that means someone’s gonna be upset about it, so be it.