this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025
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My dad is 78 years old, and my mom turns 69 this year. My dad plans to work for another year because he "can't afford to retire". Here is their financial overview:

Assets

  • 401(k) and IRA savings totaling just under $2 million.
  • Total income of roughly $109k according to last year's IRS filing (including mandatory Social Security disbursements, despite not yet being retired, due to my dad's age) in a low cost-of-living area. Excellent health insurance through my dad's job.
  • Outright ownership our single-family home. No mortgages!
  • Full-ownership of two SUVs, each purchased new less than ten years ago. No auto loans!
  • ~Fifty acres of rural real-estate, including a mid-sized tractor and a giant metal barn/shed that is almost twice the size of our house, and has a loft. No mortgages on the property.
  • A sailboat.
  • ~$20k sitting in their checking account right now
  • ~$400k of (non-retirement) stock investments ALL IN ONE SINGLE GOLD MINING COMPANY!

Liabilities

  • ~$70k of credit card debt at ~30% APR (!?), which I just recently this week convinced my mom to pay off, after a year of begging and pleading.
  • ~$150k in student loans at ~7% APR in my mom's name which she took out on behalf of the educations for me and my two siblings (I also would have paid these off years ago if I had any say).

What's Wrong?

They choose to live in poverty (of sorts), to forgo basic necessities, and to let their home---which they've lived in for nearly forty years---rot in disrepair.

  • About half of the house's exterior paint has flaked off completely. The rest is "boiling" off.
  • Our roof leaks every time it rains because we have needed new shingles for maybe twenty years (IDK). The shingles are boiling and warped, just like the paint.
  • ~40% of the walls in the house are bare, unpainted drywall from half-finished renovations my dad started thirty years ago.
  • ~20% of the walls have drywall on only one side. The other side is studs with bare wires running through them.
  • ~30% of the flooring is literally the concrete foundation, also from half-finished renovations my dad started thirty years ago.
  • One window in one of the two guest bedrooms has been half-made of duck tape for the past twenty-five years, because it was broken and never replaced.
  • There are several inch-wide gaps in the hallway ceiling surrounding the drop-down ladder to the attic through which 130F air pours directly into the central AC intake.
  • Our one and only working shower broke last year---the water would only trickle out. Instead of calling a plumber, my dad just suffered with for nearly a month, because it was no biggie---it just took twenty times as long to take a shower is all.
  • I thought that the one nice thing we had in our home was a proper stovetope range hood that blows the air outside instead of recirculating it into the house. Yesterday I found out that ours has been blowing the greasy hot air into our attic (where they store belongings) for the past twenty years, because my dad hasn't yet finished its duct work.

Our energy bills are huge. Did I mention we live in swamp-ass Texas and it gets 110F for much of the summer? In the past forty years they haven't invested a dime in energy efficiency improvements. It gets worse.

About ten years ago, our central air conditioner (which was probably installed in 1975 and came with the house when they bought it) broke down.

Instead of shelling out the cash for a new central unit, they bought one of those horribly inefficient portable ones that attaches to the window via a long hose. This brought the indoor living room temperatures down to ~89F in the summer. My dad would sit on the couch in his Walter White tidey-whitey underpants, sweating, two fans blowing on him, complaining constantly about the summer heat. They used shitty window units in the bedrooms. When the shitty portable unit in the living room died after just two years, they replaced it with a slightly less shitty portable unit from another company.

We finally got a new proper central air conditioner to go with our existing central air infrastructure (!) three months ago, after much pleading, protesting, and shaming by me.


A Vignette

Last night, I interrupted my parents nightly Netflix binge to talk to Dad about the roof. I mentioned how it's a no-brainer which pays for itself by adding value to the home (their financial asset!), and that every day we go without a new one, more damage accumulates---which will cost even more to repair.

His reply has been echoing in my head ever since...

grillman "A new roof could cost almost $10,000. Where am I going to get that kind of money?"

My dad refuses to hire contractors, because there are none in existence that he "trusts" to do it right. That's why the paint is peeling. Because before painting the house, he plans to REBUILD the sides of the house with lumber and his own two hands. Because you don't want to paint a shitty house, right? His plan is to wait until he retires, and then just do everything.


Similarly, I talked to my mom days ago about how how a couple professional HVAC renovations totaling about one thousand dollars could drastically improve the airflow, efficiency, comfort, and noise level of our home.

You know what she said?

"Oh, no. I don't want to invest that much money into the house. We're not going to live here forever."

They do not communicate AT ALL. They are both living in the future in separate fantasy worlds.


My entire life I grew up thinking we were destitute, because *gestures around*, but mainly because my dad does nothing but complain about money and how everybody else is a rich doctor. My parents have been extremely cryptic and weird about finances for my entire life. My dad refused to tell HIS OWN WIFE his income for DECADES. The ONLY thing I knew about their financial situation until a few months ago (I'm 37) is that they had tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt. This has caused me and my siblings incalculable anxiety and stress. I was in bed with depression for years, thinking we were going to be thrown onto the streets at any moment. My mom could only tell me "not to worry about it". Yeah, that helps.

Any mention of finances will launch my dad into the same fucking speech about how his income is "going to go down to almost half" when he retires---he basically guilts you for bringing up the subject, in a condescending tone. He is an extremely miserable, dour, joyless man who emits an energy field which doubles the cortisol levels of everyone in a ten meter radius. He is incapable of warmth and affection. He is short-tempered and belittles my mom. My mom puts up with all of it because she's an evangelical and Jesus told her that he will one day make my dad a Christian and a good person, basically. She told me that circa 1997.

I asked my mom why she has all of that money on the "roulette table" (extremely un-diversified, volatile investments). I asked her what in this world she wanted the money for... She said she wanted new underwear and a new couch. That's it. Oh, and she wants her family to be happy. Finally, she revealed the true reason: Jesus tells her when to buy and sell the gold company stock, and she will one day make SO much money on the stock market that my dad will have no choice but to see that God is real, and accept Jesus Christ into his heart as his Lord and personal savior (and make their life and marriage perfect, I guess). She can't imagine or articulate any big-ticket item that she actually desires, she just wants to be "rich". She doesn't want to spend the money she has RIGHT NOW to improve the lives of her family RIGHT NOW.

I am still unpacking the C-PTSD I accumulated from a childhood of extreme emotional neglect. BOTH of my siblings have been involuntarily hospitalized for schizophrenia that manifested in the past three years. During our childhood, my mom spent all day in bed asleep with depression, and my dad didn't know I existed, even though I was right in front of him the whole time. Neither of them have any social skills whatsoever. We ate family dinners at the table together in complete silence for eighteen years. I didn't even know that wasn't normal.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 hours ago

Cool. My parents are just normal poor, which is much more boring.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago

At this point, you should just shrug your shoulders, say "fucking boomers man," and go about with your life, maybe saving money for the inevitable trip to the hospital or the mortuary depending on how much you love or feel obligated to pay for their healthcare/funeral. You're going to need a lifetime to unwrap whatever bullshit neuroticism that your parents are suffering from and they aren't going to be around for a lifetime. They have 5 years at best before they are (even more) mentally incapacitated or dead.

You will never figure your parents out and even if you did, you will not feel relieve or closure even with that knowledge. But I suspect you already know this on some level.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Many of us were raised by parents of the Great Depression, so were constantly made aware that the rug can be pulled from financial security at any moment. Your parents seem to have taken that lesson to an extreme, but I can understand how it could happen. My kids would say I went in the opposite direction, why accumulate wealth if it can just be taken away.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 hours ago

My kids would say I went in the opposite direction, why accumulate wealth if it can just be taken away.

Most reasonable take for me.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (1 children)

Did... did you actually personally see all these financial statements?

My gut reaction is 'they're lying / insane.'

BUT...

I also come from a very similar, essentially unimaginably absrud situation... except its my grandparents that are literal millionaires, on both sides of my family...

... but my parents are such unlikeable fuckups that no one in their families talks to them, one set of grandparents is incredibly stingy with money, and has promised to give most of it away to the corporate demon bitch daughter in law, and the other pair of grand parents...

... well ok, I lied, they're no longer millionaires, because they spent two decades taking care of / being defrauded by their most pathetic failson, constantly giving him money for cockamamie business plans he would immediately fail at, letting him manage their assets and properties and then whoops, everything has to be liquidated for some reason...

all for this idiot failson who could never get his alcoholism under control and eventually had to flee the state after threatening a neighbor with a gun, over reonvating a fucking fence basically shared between the two adjacent homes... and then spend half a year at an absurdly expensive detox spa and resort, after which he immediately resumed drinking.

And also as well, my mother spent the vast majority of my childhood being neurotic and depressed, my dad dove deep into alcoholism to the point of multiple DUIs, couldn't drive without a blow and go for 7 years... and during all this, none of the wealthy grandparents bothered to help with anything at all, beyond setting aside part of a college fund for my brother and I... which my brother didn't even use due to himself burning out his brain with MDMA at raves, from which I personally had to save him from ODing on more than one occasion.

In other words, a standard, American, right-wing, perfomatively hyper christian family.

I stopped talking to all these nutters years ago now, after they tried to commit me to a mental institution for ...

... attempting to explain to them that my doctors were changing some of my medications up a bit, which they all decided was me having a manic/schizoid/psychosis episode and just entirely delusionally making that up... despite me literally showing them the paperwork from my team of doctors.

Last time I talked to my dad, he was explaining to me how Tom Hanks' son rapes kills and eats babies for their adrenochrome, and then literally without missing a beat, showed me to his garage set up with machining tools where he assembles ghost guns without serial numbers, and showed me how he does it.

Last time I learned anything about him was that he had finally retired and bought a house out in the not quite but nearly boonies... right at the absolute peak of the housing bubble, which is currently bursting.

...

I can only hope the Cascadia megaquake occurs and kills them all.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

did you actually personally see all these financial statements?

Yes. I have the login credentials to their two accounts with Merrill Lynch, and my dad's 401(k) with Fidelity. I personally reallocated the funds in the latter account on behalf of my dad, with his permission, to my recommendation. Those three accounts are over $2 million total.

On second thought, there is one investment account which I have not seen, which is my mom's etrade with $112k. I have no reason to doubt her though, based on their other (personally verified) assets.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 hours ago

I... I don't know what to say other than... I'm so fucking sorry.

Like, with the amount of money they have... they could just buy a new house, and give you and your siblings 250k, and still be absolutely fine for another 20 years.

Its fucking mind boggling, they're like zombies, just accumulating wealth and seemingly not even being aware of it, nor seemingly having any intended use for it.

They're beyond the snowball point of ... just being able to live off of interest alone...

???

Maybe you can try to angle or trick or convince them into getting conservatorship over one or both of them?

So that they don't just... donate a million dollars to some mega pastor or the ASPCA when they kick the bucket?

???

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

As a fellow cPTSD "enjoyer", trying to cultivate an empathetic understanding of my abusive mother based on her personality disorder has been both helpful and counterproductive for my own healing process. Be empathetic and understanding of the reasoning behind the behaviour, but also be cognisant of when you're using intellectualisation methods to avoid actually engaging with your own painful feelings.


I think a lot of people are so alienated from homeownership now that the concept of endlessly deferred maintenance has started to become alien. It usually starts with like a couple of minor things you don't have the energy or time to fix yourself. (The one weird drawer you have to smack, peeling paint on the siding, the squeaky baseboard heater) You just get used to it, and then it just keeps getting worse. Eventually you get to the point where the problems start causing other problems and you just don't see it or notice it. Every year the HVAC bill goes up, and you get to the point where you aren't even thinking about it as a problem. It's just "normal." A huge problem is the endless value growth of the housing market.

If you bought a beater car for $3000 in 2004 and never changed the oil but now it's valued like a Ferrari, you're just not going to think about putting twice what you paid for the whole car into buying a new alternator.

I've seen a shocking number of American boomers who could easily afford maintenance just let their house literally rot out from under them to the point where their homes were condemned and seized because they were an active danger to the entire neighborhood.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

That's a good point with the car analogy. A lot of times I feel like we should level this 1960s house and start all over, but spending that kind of money would give my dad a heart attack.

The cPTSD is something I've only recently begun to suspect about myself; I haven't yet discussed it with my psychiatrist. It started when I googled "why do cute things make me cry" and the first result landed me on a related post on the cPTSD subreddit. Then I started recalling all the times that I became extremely, inexplicably emotional when watching tender family moments play out in animated TV shows.

For example: there is an episode of Rick and Morty that ends with Morty crying on his bed (or maybe he was just visibly upset---I don't remember), because he had just broken up with his first girlfriend and was experiencing a painful new emotion for the first time. It was very sad---something that might even bring a reasonably well-adjusted viewer to tears if they were emotionally invested in the story and could identify with the characters. But that's not what hit me.

Morty's mom, Beth, hears him crying and walks into his room, up to his bed, sits next to him, embraces him (😮), strokes him (😱) and says "there, there. Mommy's here... mommy's here..." Morty sobs... but I start sobbing harder than a five-year-old kid who just watched a movie where the dog dies. WTF!? I was shocked. "OMG. Parents can do that!? That would have felt SO good," I thought. I tried to think: What would my parents would have done thirty years ago in that scenario? I think they would both gawk in horror at me---IF they noticed my distress at all. Hugging me would not have even crossed their mind---I am dead serious. Speaking soothing words would also have been beyond their skill set.

Then the whole prolonged trauma thing made sense. It's not a single event that made me cry myself to sleep one night and left me with trauma, it's the accumulation of mini traumas with zero emotional guidance.

I tried as hard as I could to recall a hug from my parents. I think I hugged them at the airport or something a couple times... I think (as a formality). Phrases never uttered in my childhood household include:

  • "How are you?"
  • "How was your day?"
  • "I love you."
  • "I'm proud of you."
  • "I'm sorry that happened to you."
  • "Are you okay?"
[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago

bourgeoisie mind virus (unironically)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

i've seen something like this. my parents are late 70s. one is a "blow all their money on nonsense and rack up credit card debt" and the other is a compulsive net worth hoarder. i have theories about how their individual relationships to money triggered the others' compulsions, but i'm at the point of no longer investigating it. rather, just triaging as i can and trying not to take the evolving, totally avoidable disaster personally.

to me, the connection i felt most strongly about was their advanced age and complete lack of future planning or sense of proportion for what is possible given their state of physical and mental decline. my sibling and i began talking to them 10 years ago about developing a plan for their dotage, because we knew they had some savings, we "kids" were both just getting by, and eventually, we all wanted to be nearer to each other so we could look out for them as they lose capacity. to avoid what happened to their entire cohort: caught out by scam artists, ripped off and/or suddenly in dire straits, physically, and needing some kind of assisted living situation with nobody knowing where any assets are, no one with cognitive function having the capacity to take the necessary time off from work to set them up, etc etc. we wanted to be proactive about it and come up with a plan.

literally brushed off for a decade. they just wanted to play and play and play, trips around the world for exotic treats, basically racing to the brick wall of the problem, never recognizing the looming limitations. wanting to spend their last remaining good years doing their own thing and waiting until they couldn't do basic self-care anymore or think straight to come to the table and talk about a plan. now they're fucked, they think it might be time to do something, but can't contribute any mental or physical capacity to it, but still think they should be in charge while the "kids" (in the middle 40s) should just do whatever bizarre command pops into their mind at a given moment. like we don't have jobs and responsibilities already.

i am some combination of sad and mad about it, because my sibling and i basically begged them year after year to help us plan a strategy to take care of them so that this situation now unfolding wouldn't happen. and they rebuffed us over and over, because they seemed to believe they would be at 100% mental and physical capacity until their 90s or something.

i tried a few years ago to explain to my mom that i had a whole plan for my life that involved me purposely setting up my day to day life to be completely low key with daily walks, lots of time and effort spent on low impact personal maintenance, and generally easy living by 55, because i wasn't going to crash into old age by surprise. she, at the age of like 75 at the time was like, "wow, really? i still don't think about any of that." meanwhile, i was having to drive her somewhere right then and support her mobility at every step.

it's like a compulsive avoidance of recognizing one's own decline and mortality, leading to an absolute lack of personal integrity. it's like being around toddlers that have control of all the assets, won't communicate anything, but may just dart into traffic at any moment... or decide that bathing is optional. it absolutely blows, but there's a limit to how much responsibility i'm going to take for it, because we were proactive and they said constantly rejected the idea. so now they get the same reactive solutions every other zero plan boomer gets from their kids.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

it's like a compulsive avoidance of recognizing one's own decline and mortality, leading to an absolute lack of personal integrity.

Please tell me they at least have a will.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 hours ago

supposedly, but who knows and how dare i make inquiries, is all i care about money? etc etc.

i decided to continue on as if all of it would vanish like a fart in the wind years ago, since that seems to be the most common phenomenon with boomer wealth. between the industries that have sprung up around preventing intergenerational wealth transfers via specific elder abuse/exploitation and the perennially evolving financial / identity theft scams with constant robo calls that the government never actually does anything about, it seems like capital formations are rapidly clawing back all that unclaimed surplus value they allowed the boomers to accrue during the cold war.

probably would have had a chance at building something a decade ago, some kind of subsistence situation for future generations to return to as a means to resist exploitation, but that would have meant the retired boomers had to spend a month of every year of their retirement being a productive, communicative part of the family team instead of spending every waking moment dancing like a child at play in the garden of earthly delights.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago

Commenting to say I'm experiencing nearly the exact same thing. My parents are dealing with some major health issues that have been compounding for over a decade. Instead of addressing it then, they waited until it was a do-or-die emergency, which resulted in some huge life changes that they were not prepared for. Every day now there attitude is essentially "well we can't predict the future so we're just living day-by-day." It's so incredibly stressful for me and my siblings.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago

sweat

Wow... that's... that's just a WHOLE lot.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

are you that person who posted some months ago that your parents used to have like 600k in an investment account but now it's 100k

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Yes. I posted that when I had just finally learned the full truth about their financial situation. I walked away without reading any replies, because the subject was too much to deal with at the time. I should qualify that I later learned that some of that $600k included one of my dad's IRA's which was simply moved to another investment firm, so my mom wasn't responsible for all of that loss---I could probably log in and calculated the exact amount if I really cared to (I don't)---however, I know that there were other accounts in the past that she moved from ~$150k to $0 through panic trading, and I could glean from that said $600k account that her choice of stocks in the long term (~20 years) performed significantly below market average, despite good performance over the past few years (as is typical). So my depiction of the situation was still emotionally accurate.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago

Sounds like my mother-in-law. Woman is sitting on at least a million in stock and inheritance money but is a drunk shut-in who lives like an animal in her piece of shit house. She refuses to buy or do anything that would improve her life including significant medical procedures.

She broke her hip a few years ago and basically sat in her chair and used a trash bin bucket as a bathroom for half a week because she didn't want to spend money on hospital bills. The whole house was such a fucking wreck. Her toilet looked like some hellmouth as she clogged it some time in ancient days and just kept using it. Why? Because she didn't want to hire a plumber.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Friendo you’re not alone. My parents were (somewhat) in your situation with my grandparents farm, and seemed to have learned from that not to pass down a mess to your loved ones. They still passed down the adhd (which I now see the patterns of through many family members and their coping), trauma around discussing money, and I’d probably be like your dad if not for years of therapy to manage compulsions, and painfully learning how money works (rather than just black-box credit cards).

It’s a shit soup of the generational effects of poverty, Protestantism, compulsion, and shame

[–] [email protected] 0 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I found out my parents actually believe the whole going up a tax bracket means you take home less money myth. These are people who make good money, have been doing their taxes themselves for decades, and are what anyone would call "normal" intelligent people.

That generations is wild. It's so ingrained that they shouldn't talk about personal matters that they also completely avoid thinking about it.

I often wonder if a lot of people do any self introspection at all or analyzing of the things they believe. It sure seems like they don't, but then what is going on in their heads instead??

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (3 children)

my parents actually believe the whole going up a tax bracket means you take home less

:agony: why is this so common?!?!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

why is this so common?!?!

Bourgeois propaganda. They don't want their taxes raised nor those of their top servants (C-suite execs, etc). So they fear-monger that the moment you earn just a bit more money, bam you get hit with losing 50% of it which is horrifying to normal people who just want to make a bit more money and fear this will happen to them. Thus the people who have been indoctrinated with this oppose tax increases. If they understood the amount you need to live on (say $250k) was taxed at one lower rate and you only got hit with 50% tax on the amount over a million you earn they would be much more amenable to higher taxes on the higher brackets.

Not only that but it makes workers content with less. I've literally heard people say they didn't take a raise or a promotion because it would put them just a few thousand over into in a higher tax bracket. I mean this is the dream for the bourgeoisie. They get to blame it on government and convince their worker serfs that they want a lower paying job because of taxes.

So it's a gross simplification for the purposes of getting people to oppose all taxes by fear-mongering brackets as cliffs.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 hours ago

Okay bourgeois propaganda sure, but I've never encountered this except by word of mouth. It's really pervasive for not having been spread through mass media.

It gives the appearance of being a loophole to save money, giving it a special appeal to the dull American mind.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago

I'm not generally in favor of making taxes more complicated but taking away that table you look up your taxes on would fix this

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago

I have a hypothesis that one of the good things about the rise of the Internet is that common misconceptions like this all got stamped out. They got replaced with even wilder stuff in many cases, but...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 13 hours ago

"Oh, no. I don't want to invest that much money into the house. We're not going to live here forever."

i mean...it sounds to me like they are nearing retirement and, like most boomers, have decided 'fuck it i'm not here for a long time jesus will sort me out' like they do towards pollution, climate change, etc etc lol

[–] [email protected] 0 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

fam this is dire

and i talk to new trans people every day over their shit conditions

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago

What’s Wrong?

Lead poisoning.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

It could be some kind of undiagnosed/unadressed mental illness, too. If your folks aren't willing to see a professional about it, nothing you can do, but it may help you reframe their actions so that it causes you less grief.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

It could very well be as "simple" as depression and past trauma. My sister mentioned schizoid personality disorder yesterday, and reading about it kind of sounds like my dad except for the "not getting angry" part.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago

schizoid personality disorder but you also get angry = american protestantism

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

I don't mean to claim to know your issues or trauma, but in my case recognizing the signs of mental illness in my mother helped me move forward with dealing with my own childhood trauma. It doesn't erase them, but at least it helped me see her actions as those of someone who isn't well.

I hope this helps you be more at peace with your folks' actions, even if materially it doesn't change much.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

I have enough experience with life to know that it leaves a lot of people fucked up through little or no fault of their own. I have sympathy, and see them as deeply flawed people trying their best. They are playing out the role of parents that was modeled to them in their own childhood. I'm trying to balance kindness towards them with vocalizing my trauma. It's particularly hard with my mom, because it breaks her heart to hear about that stuff.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 hours ago

Hang in there, comrade cuddle.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I don't know if it has a specific label, but "not well" is definitely a correct starting point

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 hours ago

In my case it explained so much, and somewhat made the resentment I felt towards her and myself easier to get over. It's not that she was a bad person or that I did something wrong, she's just sick and didn't really have the tools to deal with it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

They just like watching the number in their bank account go up

The joy and satisfaction an extra 10000 could give them far outweigh any material benefits of a new roof

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago

Yeah this is it right here. They like looking at their net worth increase but only in terms of money or stocks. Maybe they think once it hits a certain threshold everything will be fine, or maybe they just want to rack up the score before they die.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I also would have paid these off years ago if I had any say

Don't lmao

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 hours ago

I've been so focused on removing the shackles of debt my whole adult life that I haven't thought much about it. You're right, what are they going to do to my parents if they don't pay it? Ruin their credit rating? Don't need that anymore. Pull their Social Security? I doubt it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

This is why they stopped putting lead in the gas folks. matt-jokerfied

[–] [email protected] 0 points 14 hours ago

We gotta add lead back to gas to counteract the micro plastics. What does plastic hate? Metal. Lead. Very heavy metals. That's right. Drink from lead goblets. Inhale leaded gas fumes. Maybe even drink a little room temp mercury. Hey it can't hurt. I bet it tastes delicious too. Liquid metal! In your mouth. We were meant to drink it. You're enjoying yourself and healing your body.

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