37 year old male here
... for the TLDR skip to the bold section. My father and I did not get along at all from my teenage years through all of my 20's. He hated what I was doing with my life and I hated him.
I became immensely successful (by our standards) and i'm fortunately in a place where I have 10k+ a month of disposable income after everything is paid, retirement investments are made, and our door dash itch is filled.
I live in a nice, new modern home in a great area, drive a nice car no debts and i'm not ready to retire, but I could not do anything for the rest of my life and get by. My family was always VERY poor. I didn't have running water in my home until I was 12 and I walked 6 miles each way to school in high school. I hated that. I demanded of myself that I was getting out of that, no matter what.
I started a business in 2019. It did very well it's first year and covid put me into working 100+ hour weeks for $200/day. I made it to the other side, and business picked up and i'm now pretty comfortable. I'm growing heavily and after I pay myself, i'm left with about 150k/year of disposable income. This life style made me want to invest more into personal relationships. Primarily with my father.
For the last year, things have been going great between us. We go out to eat together a lot, we watch shows together at his place a couple times a month. On our last visit, I was edging back and forth on a small sports bet / pediction market.
I bet $200 on the Dodgers to win a baseball game. I asked my dad to put it on. He was insanely interested for me. I lost the bet in the end, we laughed it off, he gave me a pat on the back for losing and I went home with a smile.
Today he asked me if I had any bets going. I had $1,000 on a game and an additional $600 on a specific way the game would unfold. The game did not pan out that way and I lost maybe $1300.
My dad majorly shamed me. $1300 would be life changing to him. How could someone wager that on an app on sports? To him it was immense money. to me, it was 10% of left over money for the month after my adults things were done.
My dad sent me a long winded messages, about how i'm fucking up my life. I'm gambling it away and how I should be doing things. This pisses me off soooo bad.
I bought his house. I did not buy his car, but ive spent 5kish fixing it that he believes was only $100-200.
I agree that spending money on sports bets is irresponible. But I have irresponsible money. Money that I earned. Money that a dug with my bare hands when nothing was going right. Worked 100+ hour work weeks for years and now things are going great. I want to breathe and enjoy that and my dad is shaming me for it. I hate that so much. I'm successful, spending a little money and my old man is treating me like I burned my house down. How would you guys handle this?