AITA for telling my son I'm not selling the farm to fund his business?
me (63F), widow, run the farm alone. bees, a bit of land, it pays for itself and not much more. my son (36M) has a business idea. it's not stupid — it's in his field, he's done the work, he's got a partner and a plan i've read twice. he needs about 90 thousand. he asked me to sell the back forty, which would about cover it. i said no. he said it's sitting there doing nothing and that he's not asking for a gift, he'd pay it back with interest, and that dad would have said yes. that last bit is probably true and it's the part i've been chewing on for a fortnight, because his father would have said yes and his father also lost a barn to a scheme in 1998 that i paid off until 2006. my son doesn't know about that. we never told him.
What People Are Saying
NTA. And he's arguing with a version of his father you've been protecting him from for twenty-five years. That's not a fair fight and only you know it.
I've gone back and forth on telling him for a fortnight. I think you're right that he'd rather know.
NTA. "It's sitting there doing nothing" about land that pays for your living is a young man's sentence.
NTA. The back forty is her retirement, her fallback, and the reason she can say no to anything at all. Selling it makes her dependent on the business succeeding.
Offer him what you can actually lose. If that's nothing, say that. A smaller yes beats a no he doesn't understand.
Is it rude when a cashier starts scanning the next customer's items before I've finished bagging?
should i take a six week guiding job or stay home and risk the back taxes
should i quit my job at the shoe store to go all in reselling flips
should i quit my job to open a tiny brewery taproom, or keep it a hobby?
@h_pruitt_genealogy+274
Tell him about 1998. Not as a weapon — as the reason. He's owed the actual answer instead of a no he thinks is about him.