‘My mom, dad and brother are terrible with money,’ Is He Wrong for Pretending He Doesn’t Have Money So His Family Won’t Bother Him?

Me? Money? Nahhhhh! Forget about it!

I think we can all agree that lying isn’t good, but sometimes lies are necessary to keep folks off your back…like family members who want money from you.

And the guy who wrote this “Am I the A**hole?” story on Reddit wants to know if he’s gone too far…

Read on and see what he had to say.

“My wife(52F) and I (51M) recently partly retired with 4 million in savings (1 million of which is our home). I am systems engineer and my wife was an RN.

I still work part time/contract but less than 20h/week and my wife is fully retired. We are very fugal people and try to save where we can. I’ve also made it clear to my wife to never tell my family we have money and to pretend that we are dead broke.

Her family knows we do well but they never ask for money. My family won’t stop asking for money.

My mom, dad and brother are terrible with money. My dad and brother both work oil and gas which results in a few fat years of tons of money coming in followed up with lay offs. Not saying the lay offs are their fault but they have never save anything so they run up credit cards to pay for everything.

My parents have borrowed against their house so many times they effectively haven’t paid anything towards the principle and they have had that house for 35 years. They should be retired by cant and my dad recently had to go back to work as a school bus driver because they have so much debt and no money.

My brother inherited their spending issues and has his own alcohol struggles. He’s currently going through his second divorce.

I didn’t tell my son not to tell his grandparents we recently retired. And they found out from him recently and have been calling me livid because we pretended we were broke for years. But clearly if we can retire we have savings. I didn’t tell them because I know the results are they would just ask as for money constantly.

They have on several occasions when we went on vacation and they found out via facebook(we have since learned not to post). And came knocking for money. We lied and told them we won some money but had spent it all on the vacation.

Am I obligated to help them?

I don’t feel so because both my parents and brother made lots over their career but my dad is in his 70s and still working. I’m sure they are contacting me to ask for money but AITA if I continue to pretend I have none (not sure how I’m going to that now that they know we are semi retired).”

Here’s what folks had to say about this.

This reader said he’s NTA…but he needs to grow a pair!

Photo Credit: Reddit

Another person said it sounds like they can’t even enjoy the money they have.

Photo Credit: Reddit

And this person said he needs to create some boundaries.

Photo Credit: Reddit

Amen!