'AITA for finding out that one day I'll inherit millions and being pissed off about it?'

"AITAH because I found out I’ll someday I'll inherit millions of dollars and I’m pissed off about it?"

Recently, my (40’s F) parents (65 F, 73M) asked me to come over so they could go over their will with me. I’m an only child, and I knew they recently updated everything due to retiring, so I wasn’t surprised by this.

Everything was fine, we were going over lawyers, accountants, etc when they started springing numbers on me telling me about investments, land, accounts, etc. I knew they were well-off. They buy their cars with cash, don’t seem concerned about money, etc, but I had no idea how much they are worth.

The inheritance will be worth 10’s of millions of dollars! I was stunned. Like an amount of money I can’t even fathom. I muddled my way through everything, asked some questions, made a lot of remarks about how I probably wasn’t going to need to utilize this information for a couple of decades, etc, but inside my mind was spiraling.

In the drive home, anger and resentment started to build. Their income off of their wealth (just interest on the money) is hundreds of thousands of dollars. Multiple times that of my husband and I’s yearly income.

My husband and I are struggling financially. We always have been. We’ve had 4 kids. 2 are now grown. We still have student loans, groceries are killing us. Medical and dental care is often unaffordable. 2 kids have moved out, but we still struggle every day to make ends meet and have lived paycheck to paycheck my entire adulthood. We’ve never even been able to afford a family vacation.

My youngest is now 16, oldest 26. I’ll just never get the chance to do for them what I wish I could have. Idk. When I thought they were just normal wealthy, I wasn’t angry. I don’t begrudge them a good life or taking care of themselves.

I didn’t expect them to take from themselves to give to me, but all these years of watching our immense struggles and knowing they could have fixed every one of them and not even felt it financially, it hurts.

I look back at everything now with a whole different perspective, like it’s insane to me that I’ve gotten a crisp 100 dollar bill for Christmas and my birthday for the last 20 years and felt so damn grateful for it when it literally was way less to them financially than a dollar is to me. I’m struggling to make sense of this new reality.

AITA? I feel like an @$$hole for being hurt and angry. I feel weird around them now. Help me gain some perspective here.

What do you think? AITA? How would you feel in this situation? This is what commenters had to say:

295Phoenix said:

NTA but for the love of all that's good, please don't let your anger fuck this up. You can buy therapy later. I don't often recommend to other adults to hide their true feelings from family, this is one time I will.

If it helps, I don't think your parents acted out of malice. Rich people are often clueless about the reality the rest of us struggle with.

shyfidelity said:

Resentment will only hurt you and your family in the long run. If you have a good relationship--however you'd define that--with your parents, and you need financial assistance now, I don't think it's entitled to ask if they can help you.

Whatever their answer, think about how you might be different in the future when it comes to taking care of your family. I can't imagine sitting on wealth while my loved ones suffer. Not always a popular position lol

poorpeoplepastasalad said:

nta but why on earth did you keep having kids if you’ve been paycheck to paycheck your entire life.

WookieeForce said:

YTA, they don’t owe you their life savings. Money makes people change… look at how it is already affecting you. Don’t let it fester. Move on and go back to how things were.

Savings_Income4829 said:

Not sure if YTA - you're pissed hey your feeling are your feelings. If you take it out on your parents then it for sue become a YTA.

My wife and I have 2 kids. We're not well off but our kids would get some money and the house should we both untimely meeting our maker. One thing we did intentionally in the trust for them was to specify at what age and for what reason they can remove money.

Reason is simple in that we wanted to instill the skills of balancing a budget, making tough decisions at times etc.