Monday, February 9, 2009

What my parents gave me

According to Random Anny, this is a topic going around on blogs these days and I thought it interesting, so I decided to contribute. This is only a list of financial contributions so you won't see things like "fear of abandonment" or "obsession with weight" on this list.

Essentially, my parents paid for all my needs until I was 16 and got a job. From then on, I bought my toiletries, paid for going out with friends/entertainment, etc. Often, I'd buy myself clothing, but my mom would also take me shopping pretty regularly. She kept some food stocked in the house that I was welcome to eat, but she didn't cook dinner, so I either went out with friends, which I paid for or ate something frozen or canned that my mom bought. Sometimes, probably about once a week, my mom would take me out for dinner. She also paid for major expenses like prom dresses and medical issues, etc.

My father bought me a car when I was 16 with an agreement with my mother that she would pay for my insurance until I graduated from college (which was later revised when I dropped out of school), so I got a free car from them and I paid for the gas, oil changes and repairs.

I had a scholarship for my first quarter of college and my mom paid for my other school expenses such as my dorm fees, etc. Then, I dropped out of college and moved back home. My mom stopped paying for anything at that point, but allowed me to live with her rent free without paying utilities or anything and I also started paying for my car insurance at this point.

Then, I moved out and got a roommate and at this point, I was pretty much on my own in terms of living expenses. I also went back to college around this time and paid for everything myself, including tuition, but I mostly put it on credit cards.

About two years into this scenario, I totaled my car and couldn't get to work or school, so I called my father and asked him for financial help and found out that he'd been sending my mom child support for me the entire two years that I'd been living on my own. At this point, he took pity on me and gave me his wife's car and bought her a new one and he also began to send me the "child support" directly. When I confronted my mom, after some initial denial and justifications, she agreed to make monthly payments to me to pay me back for the money that she had taken from my dad. So, I was doing pretty good there for a while and I was able to pay off much of my credit card debt and trade up for a better car. Eventually, my mom paid me off and shortly after, my father passed away. He left me about $15,000, which was a small life insurance policy provided by his employer to which I was the beneficiary (apparently he made this designation before he remarried and I was his youngest child) and my share of his "estate," which divided by the 8 people who had a claim on it, ended up not being very much. I paid off the rest of my debt with this money, and used the rest as the downpayment for our house 4 years after my father died and I was 25. I continued to pay for my education myself and used my inheritance as an emergency fund, but knew that I wanted to save it to use to by a house someday, which I did.

Overall, with the obvious exception of when my mom was stealing from me, I feel like my parents were really generous with me. Sure, it would have been nice not to pay for college, but I could have had a scholarship which I blew, so I can understand why they wouldn't pay, although they did pay for my siblings, so at the time, I felt really slighted, but in retrospect, I learned to budget and live frugally during those times which are excellent skills to have!

When I got married, my mom gave me $1000 towards the wedding. When my oldest sister got married, my parents paid for the entire wedding and when my other sister got married, my parents were divorced and they each gave her $1000. These are the disadvantages on being the youngest. By the time I came along, my mom did not care one bit about my wedding (she cared very much about the marriage, but not about the actual wedding).

My mom continues to do small things for me occassionally, like take me out to lunch or give me pajama pants or something like that. Something that she saw a good deal on and thought that I'd like. She took me out to lunch on Friday.

2 comments:

Anny said...

Your mom - ugh

Otherwise I agree that things sounded like they went well - even as the youngest child. Did your mom just stop cooking when you were 16 or was she always lazy about it?

FB @ FabulouslyBroke.com said...

.... she stole from you?

Wow.

That, is almost on par with my parents "saving" for my tuition and then telling me they didn't have it any longer. (Your is worse, since it was child support, and I didn't expect tuition to be paid in the first place until they mentioned it).

Well, you are who you are because of it. I think the silver lining is better than the dark stuff, although I like getting it out on the blog.

Came via Anny whom I've just discovered as well! Love the blog so far. Added you to my reader.