Boomer parents don’t want to pay for anything
My parents are in their mid 70s. They planned well for retirement (they let us know how well off they are quite often). They own three properties, one being a summer lake home and one being a winter home in Arizona. They both bought brand new cars recently. They have expensive hobbies etc.
Over the past year, they have stopped offering to pay for anything, most notably dinners out as a family, chipping in for things we do together as a family etc.
Eventually my mom came clean and said essentially they have “done enough”, now that we are adults with homes and jobs we can start paying for everything. They are living on a “fixed income” and just can’t afford “extra expenses” anymore. They want to keep gift giving to the grandkids to a minimum now too.
My mom’s dad (my grandpa) a wonderful “greatest generation” man, paid for everything until he died 4 years ago.
Holidays, vacations, dinners out etc were all paid for out of his pocket, no questions asked.
I am just having a hard time processing this. Do I have a job and a home? Yes, and I am fortunate for that. But I’m certainly not well off. I just finished paying off a shit ton of student loan debt etc.
I just can’t help but feel totally irritated and exasperated that we are now expected to foot the bill for them if we ever want to go anywhere, do anything or celebrate anything.
When talking about this with my peers, it seems the sentiment is “I got mine, and now I’m going to hoard it for myself”. Can’t wrap my brain around it and just needed to vent!
Eta: just to clarify, my parents were not paying for everything/everyone and then suddenly stopped. That would be reasonable. They just stopped paying for themselves/chipping in and want us to pay their way. For example, if we go out to eat, they want us to pay the entire bill. We recently went to a big expensive play as a family and they refused to pay us back for their two tickets. That kind of thing.