My dad and I have never been super close. My parents divorced when I was 3, and he was never a consistent part of my childhood. He's not a terrible guy, he just wasn't a very good father. He's had a lot of issues over the past decade or so, notably losing his home, relapsing from his alcoholism several times, getting divorced, and slowly declining in health.
He still lives alone in an apartment and has refused to be in any way proactive about my sister and I helping him move to a retirement community and get him settled. He lives solely on social security of around $1600 a month. He is notoriously bad with money. I recognize he needs more help as he approaches end of life. The current compromise is that I have Amazon deliver some essentials for him monthly, and I provided him an Amex card from my account with a spending limit that he's supposed to pay off every month. This is to help him bridge expenses between his social security checks because before he would end up overdrawing his checking account several times a month.
At first, this was working okay, but in the past 90 days, he's overspent the card, which I realize is not on a balance limit but on a monthly charge limit, so somehow he's racked up a current balance of over $1400. He spends $500 a month or so at the market down the street, probably split between deli food, cigarettes and Red Bulls (which is his current vice, albeit better than alcohol). We've talked several times about budgeting, his spending habits and how they're unsustainable, and how I'm willing to help him do more if he's willing to move out of his death trap apartment and let my sister and I manage his finances.
Every time I talk to him about this stuff, I end up feeling stressed and shitty afterwards. I don't want to be in the position of forcing his hand or taking his freedom, and I also don't particularly feel like I owe him much given our suboptimal father-son relationship over the years. I've come to terms with never really having a father figure, but I do feel obligated to make sure his cat doesn't eat him. My sister has her own challenges between her mom having Alzheimers (she's a half-sister, from his 1st of 4 marriages) and raising a family, whereas I'm still single and childless. I make pretty good money, but I have my own debts and obligations I'm trying to manage responsibly.
My question is basically, how should I approach this? Do I cut off his card and make him go back to overdrawing his checking account? Do I cut him off unless he's willing to let me control his finances and put him on an allowance? Do I cut him off until he's willing to move and truly live on a fixed income? How have others dealt with aging parents who don't want to accept help or are irresponsible with the help given? Am I being a huge asshole?
tl;dr - My aging father is being irresponsible with the financial assistance I give him while refusing to let my sister and I do more to get his finances and living situation in check. Also, he was a marginally shitty father.
Submitted November 05, 2019 at 12:49AM by uncooldaddyissues https://ift.tt/2oRsjY2
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