Point taken,
I would say that most parents don’t feel guilty spending money on their kids 99% of the time.
I do, however, tend to feel guilty when I spend money on stuff for me when I could always get something useful to make one or more of my kids’ lives better.
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Yeah. I have a very hard time spending on myself.
My big treat- A snickers bar! One of the big doubles! 
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If someone gave up that much and said it was worth it, that must be a hell of a payback that they’re getting
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Take this from someone who has achieved some level of success prior to having kids. By 27, I had a six figure income, no money worries and a house bigger than I needed. I did whatever the fuck I wanted and bought whatever I wanted without thinking twice. Just married and enjoying freedom.
8 months ago, I became a father to three children who have endured more trauma, neglect and fuckery than you can imagine. (Seriously, imagine the most fucked up thing you can, then realize you aren’t close). Despite how much trauma they have, I wouldnt trade a moment with them. This includes dissociative episodes that last 5+ days, where they are vacant and have no idea where they are. Lil lives change you.
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Life is not a zero sum game. Your gain is not your parents loss and vice versa. Treating it as such relagates the relationship to a purely transactional one.
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I think this is the best non-lifting thread I’ve read on here.
I’ll add two, one of which I think some won’t like.
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Individualism is a sucker’s game. I’m an individualist in a certain framework but believe the sort of warped individualism one sees today Is a sucker’s game. Which leads me to …
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Team makes the dream work. Of course I didn’t come up with this but it is a principle I follow.
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I really think the value of these two is underrated. To me, it’s best summed up by Steven R Coveys idea that people move from dependence to independence and then on to interdependence where they are capable of living independently but recognise the benefits of mutual collaboration.
Every so often i like to take the idea even further by trying to recognise all of things in my life that wouldn’t have been possible without other people. Once you’ve removed all the things in life that were made by other people, discovered by other people or provided by other people, you don’t end up with much.
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happy wife, happy life!!
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Surely, rectangular? Side-note: wombats shit cubes.
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Best fact I’ve learnt this year, no joke.
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It gets better,
The marsupial then stacks the cubes - the higher the better so as to communicate with and attract other wombats.
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It took my dad 20 years to figure that one out 
I’ve been on vacation visiting a good friend. We spent a bit of time talking about this. Our focus used to be on a family unit and due to prosperity and availability of resources, our shift has been to individual self. I recently signed up for a $3M life insurance policy. When reading through it, I saw that after 12 months, suicide is a covered cause of death. So for $1,200, I can guarantee financial freedom for my family. Offer this same policy to someone in another country and it’s an easy decision.
If you’re saying you care for your family more than a stranger in another country then that’s how you should be.
I’m not sure I get the gist of your post.
Imagine offering such a policy to someone in Venezuela or Burma.
Pay $1,200 for one year and then off yourself. Your family will receive $3M. Insurance companies recognize that people value their own life more than their families, in the west. We don’t think multigenerational.
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I think this should be looked at from a different perspective. These people are held back and remain poor because of over adherence to cultural, religious or social norms, most of which are overly collective in nature. There aren’t enough “deviants” willing to defer from such norms to prop themselves up which, in turn, leads to not having enough people propping up society as a whole.
So you remain poor because of societal expectations, and by fulfilling these expectations you begin to consider offing yourself to give your family a good life a valid option, which defeats the purpose of having a family in the first place lol.
What about other countries? 3M USD would be enough to ensure financial independence in some other nations that I’d reckon don’t fall into your view of either poor or overly collective. Invest and live off the dividends.
Who would kill themselves for this in these countries unless they’re already suicidal to begin with?
Here’s one I heard on a podcast a few days ago and made a lightbulb go off: be generous with your money but stingy with your time
Social stigma of suicide aside, I’m quite sure my parents would and if I’m honest, I probably would too- my family gets well off and I get to escape a really crappy situation