<prompt> Human: I am very blessed to have amazing parents that have been huge help financially but I feel like I am not taking full advantage of it. So I need your guys advice. Me and my husband we both are 27, with 1 kid. I work and make about 60 k a year. I pay all the household expenses w occasional help from my husband My husband runs the family business. With my parents help. We now own 2 convenience stores, 1 Indian grocery store and 1 gas station its not open yet. We plan on opening it next year along with another one next year. All of my husbands income goes into expanding our business. My parents pay half every time we buy anything but let us keep 100 ownership. We have no personal debit and have 150k equity in our home. I guess my question, I am living paycheck to paycheck. Have no savings or retirement plans or emergency funds other then retirement offered through my job which I havent even really looked into yet and dont make extra contributions. How do I fix this? My parents feel I should invest every penny in businessproperties. And that if I need emergency money I know where their check book is located and can cut myself a check. That I should worry about retirement and savings once I am 40 and my kids are older because then I need to provide for them. My parents are the type if I mention needing to go shopping or buy down thing. Dad will go buy it and put it in my house before I even get a chance. Vehicles included. They do so much for us, that I dont want to go against their advice. But I dont know if its wise not to have emergency fund or retirement fund. If it makes a difference in my culture we provide for our parents when they get old, so on one in my family has ever had a retirement fund. Oh and we have a whole life policy for our 2 year old that is worth a million dollars. Was that a bad investment? Assistant: I think that your strategy partly depends on how happy you are to adhere to your parents cultural norms for the rest of your life and to what extent you will pressure your children to continue the same tradition.This is a personal choice, of course, and only you and your partner can know how important it is for you to have independence from relying on your parents for money.For me personally I cant imagine living in such a scenario - both from the vantage point of having parents who would buy me a vehiclecut me checks to buy businesses and from the point of view that they would expect repayment in the form of taking care of them when they are older.So Id take any advice here from non-Indians with a grain of salt, since we would naturally fall back on to the system we feel more comfortable with.Human: I would take care of my parents even if they didnt provide me money. Like we hope to take any my husbands parents as soon as they can get visas. Currently we send them money here and there. They took care of my husband when he couldnt take care of himself like when he was kid. If we sold all our businessproperty we would have a million plus, I dont expect my daughter to take care of us unless she wants. No pressure. Just like my parents if they felt like me and my brother were not capable of taking care of them they can liquidate their property worth couple million, plus their home is paid off. I guess culture differences make it hard to get advice.  <response>: No pressure.Yeah, right. 