If you read my previous posts, I haven't been here since 2021 and my, did I NOT take anyone's advice and just make the situation worse for myself. I divorced my husband and needed financial help. I let my dad help me pay bills until I found a better job. He wanted me to work for him until then. I thought that was fair but should have seen that I was not going to be able to leave to a better job. Everytime I would look he would offer more money. But, he can't pay enough for me to live on. I eventually had to move to Section 8 apartments where I can't sleep because of upstairs neighbors. I ended up with a slew of medical issues and no insurance. He tells me it's all in my head. I am barely managing my conditions. My medicine costs 150 a month. I need alot of tests and specialists but on 11, 000 a year I have put it off for 2 years. I cannot get gov insurance because I don't make enough. I cannot get medicaid because I make too little. I just lost foodstamps of 630 a month. His response was well I guess the kids will have to get used to eating rice and ramen. I went plenty of days with very little to eat when I was young. When that happened, something in me just snapped and I started looking for a job. I have a couple of jobs I am applying for. I'm just not sure how to go about telling him. He has been used to me for the past 2 years being at his house every Monday through Friday for 4 hours. Wheather Im sick, exhausted, the kids have things, on any holiday I would normally have off from most jobs. When I get a job I am just going to tell him it is absolutely NOT ok that my kids get used to eating rice or that I go without medical care. He is now 74 and hasnt budged on being social outside of me. But, he is going to have to learn. I had really thought by now he would have passed away. He seems fine though and I think he has another 3 years even more. I can't believe I dug myself this hole with him. I am 35 with a 16 and 12 year old. We've given up so much this past 2 years to do things his way. At least I have kept the boundry of not moving in with him but I fear when I tell him I wont be there for work he will say I need to move in with him so that he isn't completely alone and I don't know how to respond to that besides NO.
WALK away. Better yet run.
Help yourself first. Help your family first.
You and your kids should be your top priority.
Do you want a better life for your kids? Of course you do. So start now break out of this toxic situation.
You know yourself Dad is restricting you.
I, like Alva, late 30 divorced from alcoholic, enough said, decided to enroll in CPA. 5 years of working full time and more, studying until I could not comprehend anymore. Every evening and weekend.
Benefits? Endless. Confidence restored, knowledge gained, never mind financial stability and independence.
Staying with Dad will result in stagnation.
And Texas has very low unemployment. What really prevents you from leaving?
Give notice.
Go.
Thank you Dad for the time he helped you after your divorce. Acknowledge you helped each other out.
A gift to each other.
You rowed your canoes along together to help each other out for a time. But now the river forks. You are different ages, at different life stages, time to row your own way again.
So give Dad your notice, like you do with any current job.
Hand him the collection of home care brochures you have pre-collected from a local Aged Care advice service. Offer to help set up the initial interview.
Then keep in touch. Be a daughter again. Move towards the relationship you want with him. Where adults can speak openly & honestly to each other.
Try to not let worry or fear of others' reactions shape your actions.
Best of luck!
His daughter (the OP) is a grown woman who should be depending on herself too.
I know you feel hopeless, but a day at a time you can dig yourself out. I wasn't an RN until my 40s. I spent many a day taking classes and working, sitting studying cross-legged on the bed until I thought I couldn't anymore. Then, close to the end of my getting the RN I got Cancer instead and set myself back with it for another year. I just want to tell you that YOU CAN DO THIS. And that I wish you luck. And that your warning here serves to help others.
I feel for your Dad but you have 2 children you are responsible for. You are 35 and you need to get your earnings in for SS. SS only goes back 35 years from the date you apply. U can collect 100% at 67. That means SS will only go back to when u were 32 for earnings from that point on. Lets say you don't work for 5 of that 35 yrs, your SS will only be based on that 30 yrs you worked. You should be trying to make the most money you can now. So sub at much as you can. If you haven't gotten your degree get it. There is help out there for single mothers. Your 16 yr old is old enough to have some kind of job even if just the Summer months.
My GF lived in NM. She told me if they could have proved her childrens American Indian heritage of at least 18% her girls would have gotten free College educations. This was 25 yrs ago. So when you can, maybe be something to research.
Burnt may have seemed harsh but she is right, you are the only person who can do for you. My husband and I were from the lower middle class. We were given the basics but worked for the xtras. My husband and his brothers worked to get thru College with very little help from their parents. Everything we have, we worked for. And I was a single mother for a while.
You are enabling Dad or can look at it your disabling Dad. You cannot be his everything. He could live till he is 90 or 100. He needs to make his own life.
Who provides for your children? You don't on $11,000 a year in the United States.
Please let me tell you something. If your income is only $11,000 a year and you have two minor children, the only way you're getting cut off of food stamps is if you failed to resubmit your periodical paperwork to the state. Or you're not being truthful about your income sources and they found out.
You already have Section 8 so your rent is basically free. Unfortunately the upstairs neighbors are going to be something you will have to deal with in any Section 8 approved housing. Your father is not the reason why.
When people pay nothing or next to, they care nothing. So you're likely not going to get quality people in the building. Of course there are always exceptions and I feel sorry for you if you're one of those exceptions.
I'm guessing you're a single-mother. Does your baby-daddy (or daddies) pay child support for the kids? If not, then you should go make a court date. The $11,000 is your cash income which is aside from the government subsidies you receive or child support payments.
Your kids are not surviving on ramen or rice. Texas may not be the best state for government programs, but it is not a third-world country.
You have two children who of course should be a higher priority to you than your father.
You say lower in the thread that your father pays you $325 a week and really doesn't need any care. He's actually doing you a favor. He can pay the $325 a week to anyone to sit there and watch tv with him.
Do you expect to get an easier job than basically doing nothing? Take it from a person who's never gotten anything for free. There's a lot of us who have to bust our a$$es to make 325 dollars.
Grow up for your kids' sake if not for your own.
Accept that you can't get by without your father's help, so it would be a good idea to try and work with him for the sake of your children as well as yourself.
Also, I am appauled that you're trying to work an angle off your son's Native American descent to try and collect off it.
And yes it takes hard work, sometimes so unbelievably hard like Alva and I described working, studying and dropping at 2 am from all this and getting up at 6am to start again!
Nothing comes without making lots of sacrifices.
Simply being companion to Dad will get you nowhere.
Amen to that.