My [45m] older brother [51m] lives with me. He’s never really been “good at life”.
He’s had a few jobs here and there, but mostly just stuff like supermarket, McDonald’s, and he delivered pizzas or doing GrabFood for about a month.
He’s never held down a job for more than 60 days. He dropped out of school, and never bothered to get a diploma or degree. He mostly just sits in his room drinking my booze, smoking my cigarettes, and eating my food while he plays whatever JRPG he’s currently obsessed with.
I don’t mind this, I truly don’t. I did well in life, and my wife invested our money very well. So we’re comfortable. I have more than enough resources to support him fully for the rest of our lives, and I intend to do so. He’s not taking food out of my kid’s mouths, he’s not cutting into their university funds.
It’s literally extra money that I would just be squirreling away if I didn’t spend it on him.
Last night at dinner, my wife told me that her brother lost his job (he worked for a company that recently had MASSIVE layoffs, so it was due to no fault of his own), and asked me if we could float him some cash for bills and stuff while he finds a new job. I told her to have him send me an estimate of how much he needs to cover 6 months, and that was that (or so I thought).
My brother proceeded to head over to Facebook and post a rant about how people need to be more self-reliant and not ask for handouts they didn’t earn. He didn’t mention my BiL by name, but it was pretty clear that that’s what triggered his rant.
I commented on his post, and I asked him how living off of me for the past 9 years was “self-reliant”. I told him that he is in an incredibly privileged position because not everyone has a millionaire brother to pay all their bills for them. I also asked how the allowance I give him every week is not a “handout”.
Anyway, a bunch of his friends from his video game started clowning on him in the comments (apparently he tells people online that he’s an investment banker). He deleted the post, and has not come out of his room since (there is an en-suite bathroom, don’t worry).
My wife says it was F up for me to call him out publicly like that, and that I could have been more respectful about it, and my aunt is FURIOUS with me for “airing the family laundry”.
So I kinda think I might be the asshole here. Not for what I said, but for the fact that I said it publicly.
But at the same time, I don’t feel like the asshole, because his rant was public too.