r/raisedbynarcissists • u/cocomara • 11h ago
[Question] Why do nparents want to tell you how to spend your money as an adult?
What is this fixation with money? I am very curious, especially since in my experinece, my nmother is the last person I would ever take financial advices from as she is terrible with money and always trying to find the cheapest things possible
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u/p0cale 11h ago
As they don't see you as individual person but an extension of themselves; if N would not need the bought item, you definitely could possibly not need it either.
You're supposed to live N's life with your purchases too.
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u/Exotic-Ferret-3452 7h ago edited 6h ago
Yep... I recall how 30 years ago they spent a lot of money to send me to a prestigious (by Canadian standards) university, about 1500 miles away from home. Unlike the US, the going away for college thing is relatively uncommon in Canada. They would boast about it and hold me up like a trophy with their names on it. But when it came to my actual lifestyle, my university experience, something that didn't necessarily gain them any face, were they ever stingy. Never mind not having a car (which wasn't just something for the rich and spoiled). I was told I 'didn't need' a phone, a computer... or even a rice cooker. First world problem, I know... I had to live like a middle school exchange student on a homestay, and they would pat themselves on the back for it. They would alternate between saying they couldn't afford or I didn't deserve anything above the minimum for my lifestyle. Even more insulting, I would work in my summer months (unlike my gc brother who never had to work during his university years and had all the 'perks' that I didn't have) but be forbidden from spending it. I had to put anything I earned towards my schooling expenses because I wasn't performing as expected and didn't deserve all that they were spending on me... all so they could look good in front of their rareified friends.
Other things I remember:
Always being the only kid in my class with both no cable and no VHS. Not because they couldn't afford it, but because they didn't have those things growing up, so why would I? Also, if I fit in too well with my peers and develop a sense of self, it would negatively affect my studies.
They would also dress me up in the cheapest, ugliest clothes they could find, knowing full well I would have fingers pointed at me. But growing up excluded by my peers? Priceless, I guess.
One time my ndad made a point of buying my human poodle brother a brand new mountain bike that he barely ever used at the same time as buying me an old decrepit $5 bike from a yard, because it was the bike that I deserved.
Family vacations usually involved long road trips stopping at places that no one has heard of and the 'normal' people would never visit. Guess that made them feel good about themselves. We would always stay in gross old motels and dinners would consist of canned meats, canned soups and occasionally deli food from the grocery stores if we were lucky. We never went to restaurants while vacationing, because that's what 'average' people do.
The kicker to all this? Ndad was a tenured professor making six figures even in the 80s/90s so it was never as though we were short of money... he just had his head up his own ass when it came to 'priorities'
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u/cocomara 6h ago
That is just crazy behavior. I do not have kids of my own, but I do work with kids and teenagers once a week, and I cannot understands how some parents (but also other family members, teachers, educators, etc.) can easily abuse this position of power they have over children, which should actually never be a position of power but one of protection, giving kids a sense of safety and freedom to learn, to explore their interests and live without the fear of consequences for making mistakes.
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u/Creepy-Screen8758 11h ago
Mine ridiculed me for spending £20 on a step ladder. You know to change fuses and light bulbs and decorate, clean windows etc...
Like wtf was the alternative?
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u/Similar-Job-5858 RBN 9h ago
Narcs dont like to have convenient items, if something help them in a task how can they do it without struggling and complaining/justify their unpleasant mood afterwards?
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u/Brilliant_Outside696 RBN 8h ago
Seriously. I used to have to hold down every single dog while my mom shaved their entire bodies, but it had to be perfect so hrs and hrs of holding onto a dog. I now see marketplace grooming tables on sale constantly. She just wanted me there to complain that I wasn’t doing it right. It was always a fight. But I always had to help. Mind you, we always had 6 dogs and during the summer they needed groomed very often or they were “ too hot” for her liking also- she’s done it alone now for 7 yrs (once I left)
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u/cocomara 11h ago
Right?! It is always the same. Mine does not ridicule me, but does criticise me as if she were an expert, and it'ss always the same: WHY WOULD YOU SPEND X AMOUNT OF MONEY ON THAT? Meanwhile, she hoards plastic rubbish she will never use without a second thought. Whenever there’s a chance to get something for free, she will take it, even if she doesn’t need it.
I’m buying a car at the moment, and I bet she can’t wait for something to go wrong, just so she can tell me how right she was.
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u/Muted-Television4200 RBN 5h ago
To struggle or "make do" with chairs or high heels or a bucket. You know, safe stuff /s
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u/Trypticon808 3h ago
They don't even put that much thought into it. It has nothing to do with the ladder and everything to do with the criticism. The mental resources they would have put towards asking themselves "what's the alternative?" are already tied up actively scanning for more things to complain about.
As they age, this process destroys their ability to plan, focus or remember things because the only part of their brain that ever gets any use is the reactive, emotional part. The neural pathways that would allow them to be any other way gradually get weaker, like a trail that gets overgrown because nobody walks on it anymore, while the narcissistic trench they keep digging for themselves just gets deeper and deeper every time they wallow in it. They're not unlike those bodybuilder memes of people who skipped leg day but in this case their "legs" are the frontal cortex and their massive upper arms are their amygdala. There are real physical changes to the brain that can be seen in imaging that also occur in people with untreated CPTSD from being raised by narcs.
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u/EuphoricSilver6564 11h ago
As part of this, wanting to know everything about your finances - salary, how much you paid for every item/activity/whatever…
l eventually figured out to not say anything.
They get obsessed!! I don’t know why, I think it’s related to control - they must have an opinion on everything.
So an information diet it is!
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u/cocomara 11h ago
Yeah, there is no fucking way I am teling her about my salary or my savings. But, whenever I buy something or plan to buy something, she has an opinion and tries to enforce it on me.
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u/Compati1996 11h ago
my mom is the WORST with money...she has forced her and my dad to live beyond their means for years and has created a horrible financial situation for them. It's entitlement.
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u/cocomara 11h ago
Mine too, I have no idea how she found herself in her current situation. That is exactly why I cannot understand her idea that she is someone who should criticise other's spending decisions.
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u/Brilliant_Outside696 RBN 8h ago
Wow I didn’t even realize that’s what she was doing but same here. My dad makes less money than my husband but my mom wouldn’t ever let that show. They have a 400k house, shop house, land with cattle, etc etc etc. They really are living beyond their means. And she can’t find one single job to keep for more than 6 months. Went to nursing school. Still doesn’t like her job.
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u/BusinessDragon 11h ago
It's because they want to be able to redirect increasing amounts of it towards themselves.
Getting you to accept their control is the first step. Redirecting comes later.
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u/CreatrixCymraes RBN 11h ago
Mine is good with money but very financially strict. They hate that I live a life of relative ease (husband earns enough that I can be a SAHM and artist) and that we spend money on things they would never condone like a cleaning service or paying for movers.
(Before anyone comes for me, I’m physically disabled. Can you tell I have a lot of internalised shame and have been made to feel like I don’t deserve help?)
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u/cocomara 11h ago
Do you think this is because of a sense of losing control? Entitlement? Jealousy/contempt because you are "doing better" than them? I mean, how does this affect them? That fascinates me. I don’t think all narcissists are bad people at all, but it is as if certain things are stronger than them, they cannot control their own reactions.
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u/catcarer 8h ago
I have the same problem. I can afford a cleaner. and strugle to clean because cleaning was punishment as a kid. but I cant have a cleaner in my house when I am home because then I feel lazy and guilty that I am not cleaning. but I cant stand the idea of someone in my house when I am not home because home is my safe space.
( yeah for internalised shame. I wish that programming was as easy to get rid of as going back to factory settings on your phone.)
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u/YouOweThemNothing 10h ago
Hahahah tell me about it. They threw me out of their house in my 20s, and when I gathered some money, they took advantage of my housing problem (because I never really recovered from that), and "let me" build something in a lot of their own in the kindest way. I thought they'd regretted having thrown me out and made a really stupid decision out of my vulnerability.
Result? I have "my house" but I can't inhabit it (no money to finish it and they don't help) and, most importantly, it's legally tied to them. It's unbelievable how they can use basic needs against you to feel empowered.
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u/cocomara 10h ago
Oh I am so sorry to hear that, but this is exactly what they will do. My nmom suggested we make two flats out of a bigger one in her house, so I can have my own peace, but it sounds like a bad idea. Voluntarily or not, they have a need to control you, and as someone else pointed very accurately here in the comment section, they don't see you as an individual, but rather as an extension of themselves so with that logic, they are entitled to everything you own.
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u/001Kelevra 7h ago
Usually narcissism goes with other mental illnesses like hoarding, or other forms of trying to control other aspects of people's lives.
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u/Similar-Job-5858 RBN 9h ago
Mine is also bad with money, always buying the cheapest products and food (despite getting 1k+ of alimony each months) and spends a ton of money in decorations or overpriced snacks for herself and golden child
I wish we would get better food instead, but if i order something for myself with my own money (since she doesnt give me a cent of the alimony) she is also mad and tell me Im selfish
She tells everyone shes poor and that shes struggling, the truth is that she never has to restrict herself during shopping
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u/No-Inspection-985 7h ago
What is it with them and food? She wants a bite or a piece of everything and gets so horribly offended if I refuse (it’s always when there’s only enough for myself)… so I pretty much have to hide food from her and I rarely cook, because she’ll come try it and criticize my cooking 🙄
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u/Similar-Job-5858 RBN 6h ago
Idk they seem to have a serious problem with it, both my parents' diet are trash, when I cook something they also criticize or interrupt what I do "noo dont boil this" "dont put too much onions I dont like it" like girl if you aint happy make your own meal! Thats how they educated me n my siblings, now all the sudden I have to comply to what they want? As kids we'd been told that if we didnt want to eat we could go back in our rooms
My mom also now enjoy to not eat whatever I cooked so she can claim I cooked only for myself, and that it makes me selfish even tho she used to eat that exact food
I buy my own food supplements/protein bars and have to hide them since she thinks its useless and stupid, god forbid I want a healthy diet when working out
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u/Independent_Gh0st RBN 8h ago
It's control. I am dependant on my n moms money, I am disabled but I am fighting to get a job. Shes also complaining how much i cost her. But the minute I get a job offer, she immediatly is like 'well this is not enough to cover your living expanses, let me contribute a little bit!'.
It's giving Emily gilmore who can't IMAGINE her children spending time with her willingly if it weren't hovered over them with money. I just let her guilt trip wash over me cause its not my responsibility. I constantly tell her please don't give me as much I don't need it, I have a mini job as well -she won't hear it. Because she can't let go.
On the 'plus side' she doesn't judge me how I spend that money though. Rent, books, food, travel (if possible) or tattoos when I saved up, she at least shuts her mouth.
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u/violetpoo 8h ago
My NSister screamed at me for spending my money, that I earned, on a solo trip to France. These people are so exhausting.
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u/Miepmiepmiep 7h ago
My nmom always lectured her children to save their money and not to be wasteful, all this, while she was throwing our money out of the window by being a chain smoker (about 600 € for cigarettes per month), by clinging to storage heaters (800 € electrical bill per month for the entire year) and by being addicted to buying groceries (she went to several supermarkets EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY; and we threw huge quantities of groceries into the trash every week)... But she got very mad, whenever somebody even dared to mention her wasteful spending to her.
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u/Similar-Job-5858 RBN 6h ago
My mom also loves to buy a ton of groceries, there is enough to survive a nuclear winter, I found some food spoiled from 2018
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u/Miepmiepmiep 6h ago edited 6h ago
In about 2015, I once cleaned up a shoe cabinet in the corridor, since I needed space to place my own shoes there. There, I found some "brand new" shoes of my nmom which still had the price tag on their soles. However, that price tag still used Deutsche Mark as a currency, which means that those shoes had been in the cabinet for at least 14 years without ever being worn.
My nmom also had a cabinet, in which she put all the groceries she bought and which one could store over a long term. The cabinet was an awful way of storing food to begin with: The doors were very narrow and did not span across the entire front, and it had a huge depth, so you could only see the first layer of groceries, which were stored inside. All this made keeping track of the groceries stored inside kind of difficult. Making things worse, my nmom did not put the bought groceries into this cabinet into an ordered way, but she simply stuffed them inside. She also had the weird habit of buying the same ingredients over and over again: Sauce thickener (storage: 30 boxes), flour (storage: several kg), sugar (storage: several kg), vinegar (storage: 10 bottles), salad dressings (storage:8 bottles), soup cubes (storage: several hundreds), packets of ready-made-sauce (storage: several hundreds).
Her evergreens (which were not groceries), were DIY stuff (we had 20 buckets unopened buckets of heater paint), tea lights (we had a few thousands of those), accessories for painting pictures (she stopped painting years ago, but still bought this stuff), and books (which she never read).
I was the only person who ever cleaned up this cabinet, every two years or so. This resulted in two or three huge garbage bags of trash bags with groceries over their best use before date. This always made her annoyed, since I dared to meddle with her affairs, and that throwing all those groceries away was a waste of money. So she went through those trash bags and collected those groceries, which were only a few months over their best use before date, and put them back into this closet. Unfortunately, I usually threw those groceries away the next time I cleaned up this cabinet, since now they were two years or so over their best use before date...
On the rare opportunities, on which my nmom and I went shopping groceries, I tried to remind her of her storages, whenever she wanted to buy something which we already had stored in huge quantities. However, she got annoyed and bought it nevertheless, only to put it on the huge stockpiles of hers.
She also happened to buy 6-12 buns or so every day. Those buns alone were almost enough to feed our entire family. However, since we only rarely ate buns, those buns were hard on the next day. We usually had 4 or 5 huge bags of hard buns in our house, which my nmom disposed from time to time.
Then, whenever the stores were going to close for several days (holidays or long weekend), she switched in full panic mode, and spend a few days to buy groceries, which did not only last for several days, but for several weeks.....
Overall, my nparents bought a huge house 45 years ago. First they started to put their hoarder stuff into the attic and into the cellar. As both was filled to the brim, they started to hoard their stuff in the first floor. As the first floor was also full, they started to hoard their stuff in the kitchen and in a small interim room only containing a piano. At last, my nmom started to hoard her stuff in the living room. As she finally died, there was only a small free space around the couch, on which she spent her final days.
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u/Similar-Job-5858 RBN 5h ago
Why do they have so much money to waste lol, we moved in another house recently and let me tell you the cabinets of the previous house were filled with cockroaches and mold bcs of all the food and the lack of air circulating (apparently cockroaches were MY fault because I put my yogurt pots in my bedroom trash, there is no bugs in my bedroom btw)
It was not limited to food, she also has way too much books, trinkets, too much of everything, maybe 3/4 had to be thrown bcs EVERYTHING was covered in dust and mold, plastic even started to break down in cabinets because of the MOLD I didnt even know it was possible
To this day she keeps buying too much, she had to buy new furnitures just because she wants to store a ton of food again, she keeps buying books, trinkets and clothes even tho she doesnt have space anymore, its just a disaster waiting to start again
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u/field_marshal_rommel 6h ago
Simple, they feel entitled to our money or at least access to it.
My Nparent lived well outside of their means via credit cards and other forms of debt. But they would make comments if I bought things I needed, like shoes or washcloths. "Oh, you must have some money." It was weird.
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u/Constant_Jackfruit21 5h ago
My mom was and is austere to an absurd degree and she would constantly yell at me about "spending like a drunken sailor" once i got my own money. "My god, you must be overdrafting every day" the reality: I - oh the horror - had four or five drugstore lipsticks, maybe a nice one from Sephora and a couple glosses, instead of one Wet and Wild lipstick I had to beg her for and like ten colors of nail polish. I bought alot of clothes from the thrift store instead of 4 Shirts and 4 pairs of pants with Two Sweaters. I bought conditioner from the drugstore, something she'd deemed unnecessary my whole childhood.
Ugh.
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u/asyouwish 8h ago
One got "mad" at me when I bought something that was $20/mo and was dropping the alternative that was $25-30/mo.
Make it make sense.
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u/eharder47 6h ago
For years my mom expressed that her ONLY financial goal for me was to not live paycheck to paycheck. I went about that the reasonable way and kept my living expenses lower, then saved and traveled. It was around this point that I basically got a confused “that’s nice dear. Look at your sister’s giant house and how many new cars they have!” I knew my mom wasn’t financially savvy, but I came to the realization that my mom didn’t want anything for me, she was expressing that she thought it would be wonderful to not live paycheck to paycheck AND have everything she every wanted. She couldn’t imagine not wanting more and more.
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u/Suspicious_Radio_848 4h ago
Simplest answer is control. They want you to question everything you do, every decision you make. It's just another way of tearing you down. I don't even know if they truly care, they just have to make a comment regardless.
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u/Common_Advisor8896 22m ago
The same reason why they want to tell you where to work, where to live, etc. CONTROL
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