Stop Taking Money From Your Parents

4 ways it stunts your future growth

We spread the cash all over the bed. Would it be enough?

My fiancé opened a dresser drawer and pulled out another $15. I checked my wallet again. Still empty. I looked at Kate and shrugged.

We began to count.

I remember the crinkle of paper. Rough material pressed against my fingers as the running total crept higher.

Finally, I finished. Kate checked my math.

$467 dollars.

With a huge sigh of relief, I plopped down in our chair. We would make it another semester. I tilted my head up to glance and Kate, who was still holding the pile of cash.

Tears ran down her face, dodging freckles.

“Babe, it’s cool. We made it!” I said.

“But… this is everything we have.”

Where did the money go?

Five years before the cash-counting incident, my dad said a similar sentence to me in his home office.

“This is everything you have.”

He pointed at an excel spreadsheet. At first, I saw nothing but calculations. Rows of data and dates. Then I followed his finger down to the bottom right corner and looked at the number.

$29,304.50

My parents told me they’d been saving for my college. I never dreamed it would be that much. I’d never even seen $1,000 dollars. We ate out 1 time a month. My clothes came from Goodwill. Rarely vacationed. We were poor, right?

Now, all that was over. I was rich!

Dad snapped his fingers. I blinked.

“This is everything you have,” he repeated. “When this is gone, we don’t have anything left for you.”

I nodded. Who cared? I could never spend that much money. Nobody could.

As I would soon learn, your first windfall of money is hard to handle. It doesn’t matter how big it is. A huge jump in assets or income feels infinite. When you have never tasted wealth, $30 thousand may as well be $30 million.

Immediately, I wrote a check to a private university where I could pursue my dream of playing professional golf. The school loaded me up with new supplies: bags, umbrellas, shoes. Rain gear for an extra $150? Of course! I had the money, didn’t I?

Then there were books. I felt like $260 was a little steep for a single freshman biology text. It didn’t matter, though. I had $30,000. What were a few extra expenses?

Classes began. Golf began. Life began. Every few weeks, I’d drive across Tennessee to visit my girlfriend. Fill up the tank. Get the oil changed. Pay for nice dinners. Drive back.

One day, my Dodge Caravan blew a tire. Instead of replacing the one tire, the mechanic replaced all four. He said I needed them. No problem. I had $30,000. I wondered why car problems always seemed to blow up the whole month when I lived at home.

The semester ended. My school asked for another $9,000 check to continue my classes.

Reading over the bill in my email inbox, I thought:

“Oh, right. I have to pay them again.”

No problem, though. I had plenty.

Maybe it was a good idea to just check the account though.

I logged in. I read the number:

$11,540.32

My fingers trembled as I pulled up the calculator on my computer. I quickly learned that if the university asked for another check in the fall, I’d be broke. No, not broke. I would have less than zero. A lot less.

My heart floated into my throat. Where did the money go?

Taking money from your parents saves you from hard life decisions

I looked for the easy way out first.

The guidance counselor showed me a loan application.

“There’s no reason you have to leave us. You’re an asset to the school.”

I looked down at the dollar amount on the loan application. It was higher than the amount dad gave me in the first place. I would start my post-graduate life $100,000 in debt minimum, just so I could keep playing golf.

Was I willing to dig that big a hole to swap stories after tournaments with a teammate named Cowboy for a few more years?

No thanks.

I said that to him.

“No thanks.”

It was a hard decision.

But it was the first one I made without my parents’ help.

Taking money from your parents lets you take them for granted

Crushed by this life crisis of not playing golf professionally, I spent a lot of time alone in my dorm room.

The lights would go off. My sweatshirt would go on. The computer screen shone in my face. I kept checking my bank account. The number stayed the same. No act of magic refilled it.

That’s how any cash had come into my life until that point — magic. My parents were ATM machines. At times they declined my request for funds, but they cranked out enough for us to eat and sleep and have fun.

It occurred to me that we ate meals in and wore secondhand clothes because my parents valued my education over those things. They gave me and my brother everything.

Had I gone back for more money, I would have been a parasite.

A parasite can never become independent.

It just keeps leeching until the giver is dead.

Taking money from your parents keeps you from seeing other alternatives

The truth of “this is everything you have” started to weigh on me. I had to make changes, and fast.

School bills were the first to go. No more private tuition. I joined my then-girlfriend at her public university. While there, I got a job writing for the student paper. My first story paid $8. I remember realizing that in order to build back what my parents saved for me, I would have to write THREE THOUSAND stories.

The bank account went up. Not much. But some.

Kate and I started to build a life together. We ate lots of tuna casserole. When we were counting out cash on the mattress in her dorm room, we were doing so to pay the final bill on her college credits.

Later that year, we got married.

After that, we both graduated with $0 in student loan debt.

I committed twice, actually. Once to Kate, and once to writing. The latter led to a full-time job, over 1000 of blog posts, two books, and — get this — work that is fulfilling and fun.

If I keep taking money, none of that happens.

Taking money from your parents stunts your relationship with them

The other day, I got an email from dad.

Here’s what he said:

I’m crazy about what you write. I have been reading your posts. [This piece] was deeply meaningful to me. I plan to point Mom to it eventually although I’m sure she will be emotional.

I love you.

My father and I don’t have the same relationship anymore. We are friends. I am not a burden on his time, his emotions, or his wallet. Had I gone down a road many people do and asked for money, we would never be as close as we are today.

Liberated from the choke holds that suffocate many relationships between a father and son, I am free to love him. He is free to love me.

You can’t put a price on that.