Motivation and Money

I am at a motivational crossroads. With work, with running and exercise, with cleaning the house, with taking my weekly pictures, with my blogs, with everything. Some days I am fully loaded and ready to go and others I just want to crawl in bed and pull the covers over my head. (I have taken to getting a nap in on my lunch breaks!! What the hell is wrong with me?!). I have a friend who berates himself all the time and it is awkward and gets old quickly so I don't want to go on and on. In my experience if I put it here, I am usually able to do something about it and move on. Speaking of moving on...

My Dad is my biggest hero of all time. A couple of years ago he was diagnosed with hepatitis and had to take six months worth of weekly shots that could have led him to remission. Millions of people find themselves in this situation; the shots work for some and for some they don't. For my Dad, the shots did not work. He had the option to go through another round of shot treatment, but because of how ill the shots made him, he opted to live as long as his liver will allow without the shots.

Let me back up a little. Daddy drove a truck for years and years until my sister and I came along and then he went into construction so that he could be home with my mom and us. Construction is the only thing I have really known him to do, although I grew up with stories of his truck driving days. When Daddy was taking the shots, construction was too physical to keep up with (I bet age had a part in it too. He is getting old!). Really, it made him so ill that any type of job was too much. He struggled through and worked most of the time even though he was dragging and in pain.

Anyhoo - I am telling this story for a reason... When he got over the shots, he decided to go back to driving a truck because it is not as physically demanding. I thought it was a great idea and he was excited. I co-signed for a loan for him to go back through the school and get his commercial license. He graduated and got a job right out of school with a company and went to driving. A few months later, we all find ourselves in the mess we are in now and he is laid off. There is still a few payments left on the loan so I picked up the payments. I did it for two reasons. One, to protect my credit rating and two, so that he did not have to worry about the expense until he found another job.

Fast forward a couple of months to the present. Daddy finds out that I have been paying the loan and we get into a 'discussion' about him paying me back. I explain that I don't need him to pay me back, but if he wants to then he can when he gets another job. Until that happens I am in no hurry to get the money back. The way I see it, if we are both making payments then the loan will be paid off early and we will save that much more on interest. Truth be told, I would like to pay off the loan entirely, as I see this as the same as making payments on a car we have already sold. I would never bring up paying the loan off though.

My Mom and Dad have always been the best parents that I know. Of course, I am biased! But, they always put me and my sister first and have done everything they could for us. I realize that that is part of the job description as a parent, but they did a hell of a job. I know a lot of parents who may say they agree, but their actions don't really support the theory of living for their kids like Mom and Dad do. I admit that on my list of reasons to not have kids, one of those reasons is because I don't feel that I can live up to the excellent job my parents did. I saw this loan as a way I could be there for him (and Mom) the way they have always done for me. Of course, this is only a fraction of what I owe them.

Was this an insult? Was it demeaning? My intent was not to make anyone feel bad or embarrassed, I was just trying to help. My parents are the type that won't even let us pay for dinner if we all go out. Or if I drive the 200 miles to see them, they want to give me gas money. I dropped the discussion and Dad will continue to pay the loan and if a month comes by when he needs me to pay it, then he will let me know. I am fine with that. Like I said, I wanted to help, not make them unhappy, therefore, however he wants to do it is fine with me. As long as he is content.

What is the best way to handle truly humble people? I want to show gratitude and they want to argue back and forth about them being my parents no matter how old I get (Don't get me wrong, I fully know that they will be my parents, even if I live to be 245!) My actions are a product of how they raised me - to put others first!!! For now, I will lay off of this.