AITA for telling my 72 year old mom to get a part time job when I give her money every month already?
She "retired" 11 years ago at 61 with not enough savings. She only has 40k saved up for retirement. She said it was to take care of my grandparents, but they passed in 2018 and 2020 and she hasn't worked at all since 2015. She divorced my dad in the 1990s so she was a single mom to me from the ages of 8 to 17 (although my dad paid like 600 a month in child support in the 1990s). We also lived with my grandparents for 2-3 years after the divorce, so I guess my mom and I lived on our own when I was 10-11 to age 17 when I moved out.
I'm in my late 30s right now. At 17 I moved out, my dad paid for my undergrad, and I took out 170k in student loan debt for law school. I have not lived with either parent since the age of 17 (that was over 20 years ago at this point). I have been financially independent since the age of 21.
Starting around 10 years ago (when I was in my late 20s), I started giving my mom 300-400 every month to help with bills. I also helped to pay for her current car. Plus I give her cash for her birthday and also holidays. Sometimes I give her a few hundred, it just depends. In total, I've probably given her around 50-60k cash the past 10 years (which seems insane considering I graduated law school at age 25 with 170-180k in student loan debt). In addition, when I was 17 I gave her a 20k car that my dad had bought me.
My mom started withdrawing SS early since she retired before 65. That means her payments were cut by 30% and she only gets 1700 a month. Her rent is like 300 a month. I give her 300 a month now to pay her rent. She has 1400 a month of SS left to pay for Medicare, food, car insurance, etc. She says it is not enough due to inflation. So now I told her I'd give her an extra 50 a month: this means I will be giving her 350 a month. (So she'll have the 1400 SS left after rent is paid PLUS the 350 cash I give her = 1750 a month after rent is paid.) Plus I give her money for birthdays and holidays.
On top of this, I pay for other bills sometimes for her. Yesterday she told me she needs to get a tooth extracted and didn't want to pay for it from her 40k savings. I told her ok, I will give you 400 to pay for your tooth extraction. Then she said her neck has been hurting for a couple weeks, so I said I will give you 120 to pay for a massage.
Now, my friend needs part time help at his store I told her she should help my friend out 5 hours a week, and she says she doesn't want to because her neck hurts or she had back problems. I told her about this job 5 months ago and she hasn't done anything because of "health problems." She does help pick my kid up from school 2 days a week, but I reimburse her for the gas money as well in addition to giving her the 300-350 a month.
I'm starting to get mad because I keep giving her money, but I have my own kid/family and own bills to pay for. I paid off my six figure law school debt on my own working 70-80 hours a week. How hard is it to work 5 hours a week, even though she is 72? I've given her maybe 50k in cash the past 10 years (plus gave her a 20k car when I was 17 plus helped her buy her current car) and she hasn't worked. But she is old - AITA for asking her to work 5 hours a week at my friend's store for some extra cash? (I will still give her the $350 a month plus gas money, since I said I would, but anything more she should get from my friend's job. He's willing to pay $20 an hour in cash, so she could make up to $21,000 a year in cash if she did 20 hours a week. If she did 5 hours a week, that $5,200 in cash.)