Family Guilt

[Anonymous]

I posted about family and money. One of the responses mentioned a girl who sent money to her family, outside the U.S., while she was going without. The family thought she was rolling in money because she lives in the U.S. Well, my situation has some differences, but all in all not that different an idea, unfortunately. If your family thinks you are somehow rolling in money, and are basically looking for handouts, what do you do to fend them off? It is difficult because they know they can guilt me and DH out so that we will help. Sometimes they resort to calling us up and pretty much going off on a litanny of what they owe, as if we have no bills. Meanwhile, no one has ever helped us (yes, ever) and we have children to take care of (unlike them). They actually get into "well, so and so (child) doesn't need this, do they". Holy sh*t! Writing this, I can't believe I don't just tell them to f*ck off because they have never been there for us. Anyone else? Is this as outrageous as it sounds while I am writing it? I really want to tell them to do for themselves as we did. Ideally, I would love to go on and list all the times they were not there for us. OTOH, I know I don't want to give them the satisfaction of a drawn out explanation. Especially about how we "got" our much deserved money (hard work). Sorry so long, thanks for any support.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure why you can't just say "I'm sorry, I know we've helped in the past, but at the moment we are not in a position to do so." If they get mad, well, so be it. They'll call back when they need more...eventually they'll get the hint.

[Anonymous]

You say, "no, so sorry, we have our own bills to pay."

If they comment on your spending, look at them with a confused expression on your face. Then change the subject.

[Anonymous]

Although I don't know your family's situation, it sounds like your financial help has been a crutch for them and they need to figure out how to get their acts together. Remind yourself that giving them money is not helping them in the long run and you don't have to feel guilty for no longer enabling them. I don't know if it would make sense to offer to find them a well-regarded non-profit to help them straighten out their credit and learn how to budget or some other kind of agency for whatever their main problems are.