7 signs that you’re treated like a financial instrument by family and friends
It is better to give than to receive. Do you agree?
While the answer is yes, and there is indeed joy in sharing your blessings with your loved ones, there can be times when you may start feeling uneasy, or even taken advantage of. You feel uncomfortable and yet, you can’t say no for fear of being labeled as a scrooge or ungrateful.
These are signs that your family and friends may already be treating you as a financial instrument! Let’s make this more fun by doing a guessing game. I will say the recurring situation and you tell me what kind of financial instrument you’re being treated like. Fill in the blanks.
1. Your children are all grown up. You sent them to college and yet they can’t seem to sustain their lifestyle. They’re always in between jobs, and every time there’s an urgent need for money, they run to you, and you always give in to their requests.
You are being treated like an _________________.
2. You are now working and earning a decent amount of money. You could have started setting aside for your own old age, but there’s a problem. Your parents are now relying on you for their day-to-day expenses. They expect you to take care of them financially and you just have to do it, for you do not want to be an ingrate child. You look at them and take pity as they are now nearing or are in their sixties.
You are being treated like a __________________.
3. You would get a call or surprise visit by this relative or friend out of the blue. He tells you the sob story of his child or himself needing to buy these expensive medicines or needing to have a medical procedure. And because it is medical and sounds very alarming, you easily dish out cash to help out.
You are being treated like a __________________.
4. This relative or friend has different reasons for being cash strapped. Sometimes he lost his job, or needs to buy this and that for his family, “Kinapos lang, pahiram muna. Babayaran ko rin.” Sometimes he pays back, sometimes he doesn’t, sometimes he does partial payments. But he would always come back for more advances. Because he is dear to you, you always make credit available to him.
You are being treated like a __________________.
5. You have a friend or a child who always has these out of the blue ideas for business. He would always say, “This is a sure win, if only I had the capital to fund this project.” Then he asks for money from you. The problem is, this is the nth time he’s asking for you to invest in something, but you have never received a single centavo from all those investments.
You are being treated like a _________________.
6. You believe in the importance of education and your loved ones know it too well. So, you are their go-to person when it comes to asking for financial help for the schooling of their children.
You are being treated like an _________________.
7. For any cash needs, be it emergency or even supposed to be scheduled expenses, they always go to you, asking for that needed cash. And they need it right away, ahora mismo!
You are being treated like an _________________.
Here are the choices to pick from for your answers to the above blanks.
a. education fund
b. health insurance
c. retirement fund
d. emergency fund
e. ATM
f. venture capital fund
g. revolving credit line
What are your answers? (Answer key is found at the end of the article, in the announcement section.)
Still, it is better to be on the giving than the receiving end. And by all means, help your loved ones who deserve to be helped, for as long as you are not putting in danger your own financial well-being, not just today but also in the future. You wouldn’t want to be on the begging end when you grow old just because you over-extended yourself today.
Talk to your financial dependents. Lovingly tell them that you are not their a to g, as mentioned above! You are not a financial instrument but a loved one who is willing to help. And remember this, real help is not an immediate giving in to repeated and sometimes unreasonable requests for money. Real help is making them financially independent from you.
Cheers to High FQ!
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
1. Real help is indeed making your financial dependents become financially independent. Start them off by asking them to take the FQ test so they know where they stand. Click FQ test.
2. After the test, make them understand the basic laws of money, understand their relationship with money, including their own money biases, so they can improve their FQ, their money knowledge and behavior. Give them the gift of any or all of the FQ Books. Go to FQMom.com and click Books.
3. ANSWER KEY. Here are the correct answers to the blanks in today’s article. How many did you get correctly? Are you being treated like a financial instruments by your family and friends? What kind? Share with me.
This article is also published in FQMom.com.
Attribution: Images from Wikihow, Freepik and Flipboard
