I’ll go first…after 10 years of speculating in the market (read: gambling in high risk assets) I realized I shouldn’t ever touch a brokerage account in my lifetime. A monkey would have made better choices than I did. Greed has altered the course of life many times over. I am at an age where I may recover from my actions over the decades, but it has taken its toll. I am frugal and have a good head on me, but having such impulsivity in financial instruments was not how I envisioned my adulthood. Its a bitter pill to swallow, since money is livelihood of my family, but I need to “invest” all I have into relationships, meaningful moments, and fulfilling hobbies.
I’ve experience this first hand, and watched it from the other side. My mother is extremely “Christian”, and that’s one of her phrases there. To her, people helping her became an expectation, not an act of kindness. She was a single mom, and so people around town would help her out. Like our local appliance guy, he’d give her a deal on a new dishwasher - and then she would push her luck and ask him to install it. And then start calling him directly when the slightest thing might be wrong with it. And then for other appliances. And then for random handiman stuff. She of course never repaid him for everything he did.
Because he’s a Christian, and so was she. So of course he was “happy” to do it for her. A few people eventually did tell her no, and she would immediately convince herself that they were bad people and that she “had to cut them out of her life” because of the negativity.
Reading this shocks me. This is my own Catholic mom exactly! The phrase she always throws around is “family first”, and I’ve had to help her so many times of which she shows appreciation. But when I turn her down, she throws guilt trips at me and sometimes goes as far to suggest I don’t care. Despite setting boundaries for many years, she’ll still test the waters.