My parents are relatively wealthy, own multiple properties etc, this has been in part due to some smart investments but primarily due to substantial inheritance from their own families. They are very comfortably off and will continue to be into old age.
I’ve never had any financial assistance from them, and neither have my siblings, but we’ve all gone on to build comfortable lifestyles for ourselves. We don’t have everything we want, but we’re not exactly hard up either. We’ve definitely worked hard for what we’ve got though, and to be able to enjoy our lives.
Recently, our parents have started talking about how they need to spend all their money, how they want to make sure they don’t leave it behind and making other, pretty nasty, comments about how we don’t deserve a penny. We’re not sure where this has come from, and have tried to explain to them that we don’t expect any inheritance from them and it’s their money to spend as they choose, but they seem convinced we’re money grabbing and can’t wait for them to pop off so we inherit a tidy sum. This has become something of an obsession and comes up in most conversations. One of my siblings pointed out that they had both benefitted from inheritance and that this had helped them, and my parents seem to have cut all contact with them as a result.
Has anyone else experienced this? It’s such an odd situation. I can’t help but feel I’d want to give my children as much help as possible in life, not the opposite. Hoping we can salvage some sort of relationship moving forward, it’s creating a real atmosphere.