There are certain aspects of my life that are minimalist and frugal and my family is making fun of me because of it. For reference, I work in IT making 45k a year living in the Midwest. I don’t make much but that’s my salary. I try to live below my means and I tend to not buy a lot of “wants”. I am not in any debt.
I have a 2013 Prius (which is a very hated model for some reason). My parents initially bought me this car as a high school graduation gift and I kept it since then since it works and has given me no problems.
My brother (43M) pressures me into getting a new car simply because I’m too old to be driving around a car my parents bought me years ago and because it’s too “small, dangerous, and ugly”. My brother is big into tech. Any new tech that comes out from Apple he buys it immediately no matter the cost. The only difference is that he can afford to do so (I’m sure he’s making around 100k). I cannot afford to keep up with the newest technology. He’ll make fun of me saying “you still have that old phone? You need to upgrade your phone, laptop, tablet” etc. Each time I see him he brags about the new gadget he has and tells me that I need to get it. He’ll call me cheap (not considering my salary which he’s aware of) and say that he doesn’t know how I live without whatever gadget he’s talking about at the time. I’ve been blunt with him before telling him that I don’t plan to buy something or that it’s not in my budget and he’ll ignore this until the next time I see him saying how much I need it. Once he realizes that my decision is made, he’ll sometimes offer to buy it for me out of pity since I’m “missing out”.
The items that I own all work and I cannot justify paying lots of money for something just because it’s an upgrade. If something that I have stops working then I’ll likely buy a used item in functional condition (phone, car, etc).
My brother is also condescending towards buying secondhand stuff. It applies to clothing, vehicles, tech, home appliances. My other brother (46M) has a wife with 4 children. He bought a used refrigerator and stove and my brother who doesn’t have a family said that he could’ve just bought new appliances since used stuff is gross. The brother with a family also bought a used truck a few years ago and the brother without a family said that he should’ve bought a new vehicle and he could tell that it’s used. He didn’t take into consideration his finances and needing to save money to support his family.
It’s usually either my brother(s) making fun of my lifestyle or dates. Some dates I’ve gone on with guys, they’ll be condescending towards how ugly my car is assuming I’m poor for driving a Prius. I invited a guy over once to my apartment and we watched shows on TV and he said “you can afford a flat screen TV but not Hulu without commercials?”. This guy was almost 30 living with his parents working at a pizzeria...but I didn’t care about that until it because a problem how he treated me. I genuinely feel like I shouldn’t have been judged by him out of all people.
I’m not sure why family/romantic interests seem to worry so much about my finances, lifestyle, and personal choices when they’re not affected by them. Despite my brothers having money now, my family grew up poor. My brother seems to forget this and he seems like he’s overcompensating for growing up without everything he wanted and making me feel bad about not having what he has. My parents understand and they support my frugal lifestyle since they are frugal themselves (they were raised poor). But my brother just seems to either treat me like a charity case or he prefers to spend unnecessary money on me for trivial tech items rather than donating money to those in need. There are literal people without food and a home (especially now). I can’t be selfish even if he’s offering to buy me things.
I’m feeling very stressed due to my brother and also less than because I can’t have the same things. I moved about an hour away from my family for work and my brother is saying that I’m selfish for living so far from our parents.
November 29, 2020 at 01:02AM
