A 22-year-old Indian man based in Canada says he sends Rs 70,000 every month to support his parents and younger sister back in India, but claims his parents funnel Rs 50,000 of that straight into chit funds each month and then come back to him asking for more money to cover everyday bills.
According to him, the maths simply does not work, and he says he has been unable to get his parents to see it that way.
What happens to the Rs 70,000
He says the split is straightforward and that is precisely the problem. His mother puts Rs 25,000 into one kameti every month and his father puts Rs 25,000 into another. That is Rs 50,000 locked away before a single bill is paid.
What remains is Rs 20,000 for a household of three, covering groceries, electricity, water, and his younger sister's school and admission fees. According to him, that amount has never been enough, and the shortfall lands back on him almost every month in the form of a top-up request.
This month, he says, that top-up was Rs 25,000, pushing his total outgoing for the month to Rs 95,000 and disrupting his own finances in Canada entirely.
His argument and theirs
He says he has tried to explain the basic problem to his parents more than once. A chit fund locks money away for the duration of the cycle. If something goes wrong at home, that money is not available. Paying bills first and saving what is left over in something accessible makes more practical sense.
His parents, according to him, do not see it that way. They consider the kameti a form of forced savings and have refused to stop the contributions.
He also shared that the last time a chit fund paid out to his mother, she received Rs 5 lakh. He says he asked her to keep it in savings for emergencies. According to him, his father invested it in the stock market instead. His father is 56 years old.
The Rs 25 lakh that keeps coming up
According to him, he has sent a total of Rs 16 lakh 68 thousand home so far. His mother, he says, regularly raises the figure of Rs 25 lakh on video calls, referring to what the family spent getting him to Canada and helping him get settled there.
He says this number surfaces specifically when he raises concerns about the financial load he is carrying. When he recently pushed back and said the arrangement was becoming too much, his mother told him, "Tu hi hai, hor kon hai hmara kameti ke liye," meaning: you are the only one we have for this.
When he said no, he says the response was a demand to immediately return all the money the family had invested in him.
The sister question
When someone online asked why his married sister was not contributing to the family expenses, he says his mother's answer was simple: daughters do not send money home after marriage in Indian families. According to him, that expectation falls entirely on him.
He says he lives in Canada with his sibling, which is the only reason his own rent is manageable. Moving out would cost him at least CAD 1,200 a month in rent alone, on top of everything he is already sending home.
