You would think that I would perhaps be able to work this out myself but family life is complicated especially the deeper you ar in with situations and I honestly don't know if my father is being mean/mean spirited or not. My friend thinks he is.
Before I start, I will say this is not about me wanting any money off my parents (I know this is heavily frowned upon on MN!). Since leaving home 26 years ago I have never asked for a penny from my parents nor have I been given any.
Up until 6 or so years ago my parents were living a pretty good life. They have never had any money worries and imo have lived a comfortable and fairly stress free, easy life. My parents are now in their early 80's and my dad has enjoyed good health and apart from needing a pacemaker and suffering from osteoporosis, so too had my mum. Dad would spend his week on the golf course or touring around in his classic motorbike, mum did some charity work in a local shop and at the weekends they were always out with friends. I live around the corner and would visit them a couple of times a week, often going out with my mum and my dc when they were young (my dc are their only gc).
However, in 2018 everything changed. My mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She then developed glaucoma and cataracts and this year she has received a breast cancer diagnosis.
Since the dementia diagnosis and seeing dad struggling with mum's health needs (he is not a natural born carer) I started to help out more and more and before you know it I am going round 4-5 times a week, helping with all of their life admin, financial stuff, organising all of mum's medications and many hospital appointments (which I always attend with them) and health administration, helping with changing beds, doing their washing, taking mum to her day centre twice a week and making mum a packed lunch for both of those days too (all from my own pocket).
I don't earn a lot as I only work part time due to health issues. Money is often tight and my dad is fully aware of this.
I do all of these things to help because I know my dad struggles with mum's diagnosis and he feels the disease has also taken his life away, I know he is suffering also and it breaks me to see my parents like this. I do these things to repay my mum back for being such a lovely mum.
But I suppose the bugbear is that my parents have a lot of money (well in my opinion anyhow). Hundreds of thousands invested (from inheritance from my grandparents), £50k sits in a current account, £15k in another and they live in a very large house worth over £600k (which is now too big for them and beoming a noose around my father's neck as it is 100 years old). Dad is very hesitant to spend any of their money as I know he is worried there won't be enough to over mum's care home needs when she has to go into care, I understand his worries. They currently have a carer in for an hour Mon-Fri to help mum shower (it took me two years to persuade dad to agree to this). A hairdresser comes once a week to wash mum's hair and she attends the two afternoon sessions at the day centre per week and that's enough, dad will not pay out for anything else. My sister does their cleaning once a week/fortnight or whenever she can do it.
For our 'wages' as my dad calls it ,he gives my sister and I £40 per month each. When I told my friend this she was taken aback, she thinks this is very mean. The money helps me alot but I suppose with the amount of phone calls I make for them, the driving my mum to her day centre and paying for her packed lunch it probably covers that and leaves me with not much more!
He isn't very generous, I must admit but is this mean?