My Dad owns the Coffer

After my grandmother died, my aunt and I cleared out her home. It was a very tiny place, and we liked to refer to it as a cottage. There wasn’t much space, but it took my aunt and me about two years to fully empty it due to the sheer amount of stuff my grandmother bought. The basement was filled to the brim with boxes of electronics, art, and gadgets. Most of them were still in their packages, not even opened, but unusable due to their age. Some of the paintings were covered in fuzzy green mold, even though they had never been put on display. In the end, we donated what we could and threw out the rest. My father takes after his mother in many ways; they are both extremely domineering and have a tendency to over consume. After my brother was born, my father and his family pressured my mother into quitting her job so she could focus her attention on childcare. This made my mother, and all of her children by extension, fully dependent on him. I love my father, but I’m constantly walking on eggshells around him. Sometimes, it seems like the entire atmosphere of our home is dictated by his mood. The moment he gets home from work, he barely pays any attention to my siblings and I. Instead, he plops himself down on the couch and buys, and buys, and buys ridiculously expensive things that we have no need of. But when I ask him to purchase things that I need, he starts lamenting about how expensive I am and that our family doesn’t have the money. Or at least we don’t have enough money until he wants to buy a $4000 coffee machine that will only be used once and then sits on our countertop, untouched. As more of my siblings started going to University, I tried to talk to him several times about his unhealthy spending habits. However, the moment I start bringing it up with him, he explodes with anger. He threatens to take away my tuition, saying that my liberal arts degree is purely a waste of his money and that I better pay him back when I have a job if I am so concerned about our family’s economic well-being. Though it is highly unlikely that he would not pay my tuition, I still can’t help but be afraid of it happening. I already have some odd jobs that I use for pocket money, but if I am ever cut off, I would have no idea what to do. All of my finances are linked to him; even the money I make on my own ends up in our shared bank account, so he has easy access to seeing and controlling whatever I buy. As my youngest sister grows older, I’ve noticed two things. One is that she listens to me a lot less. The other is that she is becoming more like my father when it comes to spending. I can’t blame her completely; after all, she has spent her life thinking that it is normal for our house to get at least one package delivered per day. The more she sees my father spend, the more she normalizes spending egregious amounts. In my mind, the only difference between her and my father is that the money she spends is not hers. Despite this, she has no issue splurging excessively on everything, including skincare, clothing, and makeup. Everything accumulates endlessly in her closet to the point where she isn’t even aware of what she owns, and she hardly gets much use out of the things she buys. The only person she listens to is my mother, but my mom only sees her as her baby and refuses to step in. As her older sister, I know that she is extremely bright, but I can’t help but worry about her future. With her habits, it doesn’t matter how much money she will make if she is unable to be a responsible consumer. Moreover, I’m afraid that she will cause her children to inherit this issue if she doesn’t at least acknowledge that what she is doing is bad.