Gentle Suggestions

This is not an advice column

My sister married a multibillionaire last year. Wedding was amazing, her husband and his family are all wonderful people. I’m so happy for her. My sister and I have always been close but in recent years it’s been tough to keep up with her, her travel schedule and glamorous lifestyle. I also had a baby who’s now a thriving and busy toddler, so our lives are very different. Our family doesn’t come from money and my husband and I do okay financially, but we both work full time, and paying for rent, for childcare etc has us absolutely at max capacity. We’re happy and content, but I’m going into debt monthly just to keep up with the cost of living. Shouldn’t my sister help us out now that she has access to this new found wealth? It’s hard for me to understand why she won’t offer it, and I don’t feel comfortable asking. They’ve helped in the past and gave us some money while I was on maternity leave, and they paid for us to join them on a few weekend trips (pre-baby) so I should just be grateful, right?

My first, immediate thought is do you mean an actual multibillionaire? There aren’t even 3000 of those criminals total in circulation on the planet so that’s kind of exciting.

Crème de la Crème is anti-billionaire and really frowns upon a system where a couple thousand people have basically everything and the rest of us have to vaguely hope that those people keep pushing humanity in the right direction and if they chose not to, we will not do anything about the system. I don’t like it at all. Billionaires are a threat to democracy and it is obscene that we allow people to have that much money. Late capitalism blah blah blah but you should know I’m kind of a hypocrite because I also absolutely love being in rich people’s business.

I know these two sisters who are both married to billionaires—yeah you’re not the only one with billionaires in your rolodex—and I often think about what their parents did right (or wrong?) because when I’m not being my highest self, it does feel very calculated. But isn’t all marriage a calculation anyway? And rich people marriages are the most calculated of the bunch.

I definitely was not my highest self when I first read your question because I also really wanted to know about the wedding and how much money was lit on fire for what I imagine was an extravagant affair. I love going to weddings of people with good taste and/or too much money but that is neither here nor there.

It’s very complicated this sister thing. A sister is the first woman of your generation you meet. Your first friend or your first enemy. Sometimes she is both and it’s hard. Sometimes she is neither and that’s hard too.

What we owe our siblings is very nebulous but I am not sure that we owe them financial help. In my culture they make you feel like you do but I am not sure that’s right. Consider a world in which you do not have a sibling at all. What would you do then?

I don’t know your sister so let me tell you about my sister.