It can’t be easy to learn that your parents have used you for financial gain and done other things to set you up for failure.

If you were in this situation, would you still help your parents financially, or would you refuse?

The man in this story was in a situation like this, and he made a great life for himself. He does not want to help his family.

Is he being selfish or rational? Let’s read the whole story.

AITAH for not giving my parents money?

My parents were really bad with money growing up.

I never realized we were “poor,” but I remember debt collectors calling, lights going out from unpaid bills and so forth.

My dad worked A LOT and my mom hardly ever worked. I was moved from school to school, over and over and never got to many friends.

I wanted to try to go to high school like a normal teenager.

Things were about to get even more abnormal.

I started 9th grade, and academically I was fine, but at the time I was very socially awkward due to not having a lot of social interaction. I had bullies and had a hard time…

I expressed my frustration and my mom simply convinced me to just dropout of high school and finish in home school.

We had gone in and out of home school several times, so I agreed and just make some friends through our church groups and my job at a restaurant to help save for college.

But he wasn’t really learning anything.

Except I never actually did any home school, my mom just let me play World of Warcraft all day.

I kind of realized it wasn’t sustainable and broke my WoW addiction myself and focused more on working, saving for college and got an associates to be a refinery technician, a popular blue collar trade in Texas.

I moved out as a young adult trying to get my life together and I found out I had several thousand in debt on my credit report that was in default that she had put in my name.

But he turned things around big time.

I paid it all off while making $15 an hour. It took several years but I was able to make well over $100,000, and even approached $200,000 after almost 10 years.

Also, my wife was an Electrical Engineer who made a little over $100,000.

We both came from no money at all, but saved and invested our hard earned money for several years, paying off a house quickly and having over $700,000 in investments which mostly consisted of S&P 500 Index Funds.

Now, my mom has made hints about how I should help them out more financially, since we have a decent sized house (2,700 sqft) but only 3 Bedrooms.

They sold their mobile home on 1 acre to my sister and her ex husband for $20K who ended up splitting up, and her ex husband owns now.

Now the parents are paying for their bad decisions.

They used that money to clear out some trees and build some big stupid storage shed and they are living in it.

I feel like almost all of their decisions and bad fortune are their own fault, and I’m not going to let that get in the way of my family (PS – we have two daughters now).

If they really, really needed help for health reasons or their house (shed) burned down, I would help out some as needed. But they set me up for failure and made their own bed.

Even my grandparents have even made comments about me being selfish.

He sounds very self-motivated, and has done well for himself. He shouldn’t throw that away to help irresponsible family members.

Here is what folks are saying on Reddit.

Exactly. They can get lost.

I have a neighbor going through something similar.

Good. This needs to be said.

No. They can do that themselves.

I agree.

I’m glad he has a nice life now.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.