For most of my childhood, my mother said the same thing about my father: he couldn’t hold money.
Not that he didn’t make money. He did. Sometimes quite a lot, actually. My father was the kind of person who always had some way of making extra cash. Sometimes from the stock market, sometimes from buying and selling things, sometimes from opportunities that just appeared through friends. Money came in waves in our house. It wasn’t stable, but when it came, it could be a decent amount.
The problem was that it never stayed.
The pattern became almost like family folklore. Every time my father got money, something would happen. Not a bad investment. Not reckless spending. Just… something.
One time he made a good profit trading shares. I remember my parents talking about it at the dinner table. My mother looked relieved. Finally, some breathing room. A few days later, our washing machine broke. Not a small issue either. Water leaked all over the floor and the technician said the whole motor needed replacement.
There went the profit.
Another time he sold his old car. It was one of those deals where you suddenly get a decent lump sum in cash. For a brief moment the house felt lighter, like maybe things were about to get easier.
Then a week later he got scammed.
It wasn’t even one of those ridiculous scams where people send money to a Nigerian prince. It was subtle. Someone convinced him about an investment opportunity that looked legitimate enough. By the time he realized something was wrong, the money was already gone.
My mother just shook her head and said it again.
“Your father cannot keep money.”
After hearing this enough times, it starts to sound less like an opinion and more like a law of nature. In our family, it slowly turned into something almost supernatural. Not officially a curse, but close enough. Whenever money came in, everyone would wait for the thing that would inevitably take it away.
And somehow, something always did.
The fridge broke. The roof leaked. A relative needed urgent help. The car needed repairs. There was always a reason the money disappeared.
By the time I was older, even my father joked about it.
“Money doesn’t like me,” he would say.
The strange thing is that he wasn’t irresponsible. He wasn’t the type who gambled everything away or bought luxury items he couldn’t afford. Most of the money just vanished into problems that seemed unavoidable. Bills that needed to be paid. Repairs that couldn’t wait. Situations where you didn’t really have a choice.
So for years, I believed the story too.
It really did look like a curse.
What started changing my mind wasn’t one big realization. It was a slow irritation with the idea that the universe had some personal vendetta against my father’s bank account.
The first crack in the story appeared when I moved out and started managing my own finances. Suddenly I noticed how many “unexpected” expenses actually weren’t that unexpected.
Things break all the time.
Water heaters fail. Pipes leak. Electronics die at the worst possible moment. Cars constantly need maintenance. Life is basically a long sequence of things that quietly wear out until they suddenly demand money.
When you have savings, these things feel annoying but manageable. When you don’t, they feel like disasters that arrived out of nowhere.
Then I realized something else about my father.
He didn’t have a financial cushion.
For most of his life, money didn’t arrive in a steady monthly salary. It came in bursts. One month could be quiet, and then suddenly he’d make a large amount from a trade or selling something. During the quiet months, the family just managed with what was available.
So when the money finally came, it wasn’t really “extra.” It was the first moment in months where all the delayed problems could finally be dealt with.
The roof repair that had been postponed.
The appliance that had been making strange noises for weeks.
The car issue he kept ignoring.
From the outside, it looked like the problems appeared after the money arrived.
In reality, the problems had been sitting there the entire time, waiting.
The scam incident also made more sense the more I thought about it. When someone suddenly has money, they start moving it around. They talk about it. They look for opportunities. They answer calls and messages that promise even better returns.
That’s exactly the moment scammers are looking for.
It wasn’t a curse. It was exposure.
Once I started noticing these patterns, the whole family myth started falling apart in my head. The “money curse” wasn’t some invisible force targeting my father. It was a mix of timing, coincidence, and the simple reality that life is expensive when you’re always catching up.
But the story had already taken root in the family.
Even today, when my father makes money from something, my mother still jokes about it.
“Let’s see what breaks next.”
Everyone laughs. It’s become a harmless family line by now. But underneath the joke is the old belief that money just doesn’t stay with him.
The funny part is that once you start looking closely, you realize how easily people turn normal financial chaos into mythology. Humans hate randomness. We need stories that explain why things happen.
So when money comes in and disappears a week later because the air conditioner dies, it’s easier to say there’s a curse than to accept that this is just how life works when you’re operating without a safety net.
My father never actually had a problem holding money.
He just had a life full of bills waiting their turn.
