why am I expected to pay for someone else’s own life decision?
For context, I am in my mid-40s, single with no plans on entering any relationship. I chiong a lot during my younger days, with very prudent spending and have reached the stage whereby I have my own house, can survive on the passive income from my early investments and am basically retired now.
There is this guy, whom I knew when I was still a kid. Our parents knew each other and meet up sometimes. Apart from the meetups that occur because of our parents, I don’t interact much with him so I wouldn’t consider us to be close friends.
During one of the meetups when I was around my mid-20s, there was casual chat and my parents brought up how much I don’t like to spend money as if I was torturing myself. I just brushed it off but later, this guy came up to ask me the same thing when we split off with our parents (as they wanted to look at some stuff in the mall that we children aren’t interested in).
I explained to him how I just wanted to spend less now so I can work less in the future, and also told him that maybe he should control his spending, especially seeing how much he splurge on his then-girlfriend.
He just gave me the response “money is meant to be spent, it can always be earned back”. I just moved on since that was his choice and who am I to interfere with it.
Over the years, he’s been doing the same, splurging on his family without a care in the world, until the pandemic happened. He lost his job and is now struggling financially. He asked me for help, saying that I have extra money that I do not need and that I can always work again to top up my own fund.
I rejected, saying that he has to be accountable for his own life decisions. Somehow my parents caught wind of this and chastised me for not helping since even without working, I can still afford to spend on leisure.
Is it reasonable to expect me to dig into my own funds and interrupt the lifestyle which I have planned to enjoy over many years to help someone who has never invested or contributed to the success of my current lifestyle?