In my house, the heater basically stops working every year and my dad put some like “bandaid” solution over it with manipulating some wiring, idk what they do. But like, every year, the heater would stop working like several times throughout the winter and constanly needs to be fixed. But this year it just stopped working completely. Like I google it and those heaters are like $2000 to $2500 brand new, so yea, I get it, parents want to save money, but like, having the heat stop few times a year feels like living in a developing country tbh 😓. So now I’m basically just relying on those portable heater things to stay warm, and my cat is feeling too cold so she’s staying in bedrooms most of the time because its where the portable heaters are at, when she normally just wanders the entire house.
Sometimes it’s like that, especially if they grew up in poverty, even if they’re pretty well off now. It sticks, you’re just conditioned to save as much as possible. Which they very well could be: they could have plenty of income but be far behind on their retirement accounts and would rather put money for their upcoming retirement if they can. There’s a lot of factors there.