Super stingy

[Danie]

I am curious about how my UBPD mom acquired this trait. She has a severely unhealthy relationship with money. When I was a teenager I lived with her and my two sisters. She wouldn't give us a penny and I could tell she didn't feel a bit guilty, rather she acted like it was very brazen for us to ask for money just for bare necessities. It was very painful and very damaging to us. I remember being 14 and looking in the newspaper for a job. I would also always scour the ground looking for coins. Needless to say she never provided anything for any of us. She never worked and always acted like it was someone else's problem to provide for her.

She's 81 now and lives alone. Money comes up in every conversation. She is very frugal and cheap even though I don't think she needs to be. She never reveals how much she has (it is her business) but she likes to converse about it without talking about dollar values. She'll bring up how much a grocery items costs at one store and how the "other" store is so expensive, like they're purposefully evil. I know that she forged signatures when her mom passed to steal half of our inheritances and she now has 5 bank accounts. She lives like it's the great depression and is out of touch with how much things cost. She overreacts to normal costs to things like her furnace repair.

She's has never purchased me a birthday or Christmas present. Last year she gave me a packet of dry soup mix she got from the food shelf. She even wrapped it. Plus she re-gifted a bottle of hand soap that someone gave her. She said "I don't like the smell".

So I kind of understand people being frugal and even cheap, but I have a hard time wrapping my head around how she is this way to her own children? She really believes that helping and providing for her children was not at all her responsibility, nor does she find any joy or satisfaction in providing or helping them.

I no longer need her, I've worked since I was 15, but I just want some more insight into this.

[MamaDryad]

I don't know if money anxiety is a BPD trait, but it certainly intersects with it in interesting ways. In my mom's case, it's clearly connected to growing up with her uNPD mother, who is tremendously cheap, quite well off, and uses money as leverage in really blatant ways. It manifested a little differently in my mom.

She didn't deny me the necessities growing up, but she never stopped reminding me how much money she was wasting on my basic needs. The first time I remember really wanting to die, I was around 7 or 8, and it was because I felt like such a burden. Predictably, this has persisted, and I still struggle with that feeling and that need to make myself and my life smaller and smaller so I don't waste resources.

The other thing she did about money was weirder. I don't know how much of it was legitimate anxiety, how much was a method of control, and how much was because coming from a wealthy family didn't fit her self image, but she basically acted as if she had no safety net. If my room wasn't clean enough for her liking, she'd tell me that we were going to get evicted and be homeless. If I yelled back at her during one of her rages, same story. It didn't occur to me until I was an adult that her parents had plenty of money, and my grandmother, while a dreadful person, would never have let her daughter and granddaughter become homeless-- what would people think?

[scapegoat/caregiver]

i'm sorry you are going thru this.  I know it is confusing.
how can a parent allow and let their children struggle when they could and should clearly help them.
my NM and NF always have been very wealthy....my parents talked about money and possessions and material things all the time.
but they used it to manipulate , control and or impress people.  they held money as being MORE VALUABLE THAN PEOPLE
including the family members.
I told my NM who I am VVVVLC with now " I will NOT talk about your money, or MY money or things or possessions" end of story
(she always wants to talk about her money...her will ...my investments...my business what i'm doing with work , my money... )

puts me down if she feels I am too successful  (jealous)
VERY manipulative and controlling with money and her will  (carrot on the string) 

when I was very young I left home... it was a big struggle... at one point I lived in my car.. they knew but, did nothing to help me.   

as I got older I was a single mom, with no money,  struggling mom with kids ...they would invite me out to dinner and make ME pay the entire bill.
( I was still in the FOG)

I have come to the point in my life...I take NOTHING...  we don't go out for lunch because of the bill ...
NM will say "let me know if I can help" even though she doesn't mean it...If  I said ok she would
be angry that I took her up on her offer. ... and make an excuse of why she can't help us financially...she is the same with my children to

perhaps you can tell her not to talk about money?  some people are just so selfish

[p123]

I can relate to this. I know how much my Dad saved. £40K (about $50K). Why?
His apartment is falling to pieces, furntiture is old and worn but he "doesn't like wasting money".

Says he saves money "just in case he needs it"

Went months without washing because he couldn't use the bathtub. I got him a government grant for an adapted shower but he had to contribute a few £100. He swore blind they were ripping him off and he couldn't see how a shower could cost £300. (it cost £8000 he had to pay £300 towards it - are you serious?)

So like I said, he didn't wash for months until he gave in...... The smell was BAD

[notrightinthehead]

Danie, my uNPD mother in law was like this. She never spent any money on her kids or grand children. I remember the confused look on my kids faces when they unwrapped her gifts and found second hand puzzles with pieces missing from the flea market. She used to buy the cake from the previous day when we came to visit, because it was half price. She did spend money on herself though.
My NPDh regularly would use her gifts to explode and rant and rant and then left them behind or took them, whatever was the greater drama. All very unpleasant.

[Danie]

Thanks for sharing your stories. I will work on changing the subject if she brings it up ---  trouble is, I don't have too many safe topics with her. I was thinking, today, if this is a "Witch Mother" thing. From Understanding the Borderline Mother. I am going to look at that chapter and see if withholding basic necessities is one of the things a witch does.
I can relate to the "carrot on a string" treatment. A couple relatives have said they had us (siblings) in their estate for when they died, but it never panned out and I got shamed for bringing it up. I've decided to expect nothing.