It's a giant pet peeve of mine... family members who think that others in their family are "rich". It is a fact that my Dad hosted a huge family party every year at Christmastime.... I do not know for how many years this occurred, I only know that it ended when I was 4 years old, for a variety of reasons. I do not even know all of the reasons...
Anyway, ever since I can remember, all I have heard is "when are you all going to host a family reunion?" Well, I am not. A family reunion would cost a lot of money, especially since I do not own a home large enough to even consider such a thing. Plus, I don't even know where my Dad's side of the family disappeared to! I know where to find 4 or 5 of my paternal cousins, but I digress.
The point of this article is that some members of the family seem to think that my Dad was rich,...like Rockefeller rich, J. Paul Getty rich, (google them if you don't know what I am talking about)... that simply was not the case. My Dad had a little bit of money, he owned his own business, and it was still lucrative when he retired from it. But my Dad also paid cash for everything! Cars, homes, and the multiple surgeries he had in the last few years of his life. I am not going to name numbers for anyone, but when my Dad died there was not a great pile of money left. There was enough to provide for me until I reached "majority", which was 8 years.... that was everything: housing (read property taxes), clothing, transportation, food, and a few minor extras (park district classes, piano lessons). When I turned 18 there was a tiny sum in a money market account, and that is long gone as of this writing.
It has been suggested that my mother gave money away, which is simply not the case. I know for a fact, by the way we lived, that there was a limit to the money. One example is that neither of us liked the house we were living in, but we remained there until it was in a condition where improvements were called for (it was not at all unlivable), timely things that needed attention, but we did not have any money for home improvements, no matter how necessary. We lived in that house that neither of us liked for 17 years after my father died. We drove cheap little "economy" cars. There was no money for extravagance. I went to community college for under $500 a semester, even though I had been accepted by a major university, and I worked part time in the school library.
The thing I am trying to say is that, unless Uncle "Boo" lives in a mansion, with a butler, and has 4 or 5 automobiles, you do not KNOW that Uncle "Boo" is filthy rich. The younger siblings do not really know if their older siblings paid their parents back on that loan, because it was none of their business. There are very few rich uncles out there, most of us do not have rich relatives who are going to leave us a pile of money.
So, if you think that I am going to invite you out to eat, and that I will pay for your meal(s), you had better think again, my friend! Because I live from paycheck to paycheck, and right now (as I write this) I am unemployed. Think about that. If you are waiting for that invitation from me, then get over it, or die waiting, because my Dad was not rich, and I am far from rich, and even if I won the lottery -at this point I would go find some homeless people and buy dinner for them before I would feed relatives whose homes are paid for and have retirement savings.
I apologize if that comes off as angry or hurtful, but I am just plain tired of the nonsense.
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