I've always expected the expenses of supporting them to remain fairly constant while my income began to outpace those expenses. Might be bad assumptions, though.
~~~
I know what you're saying comes from a good place, but with all due respect, you don't know my family like I do. Car-less, my mom is helpless to find a job in our suburban everything-is-5-miles-away-or-more town. My uncle hasn't worked in 35 years. My grandma is on a respirator. My sister has essentially no financial future of her own because of how we treat people convicted of drug possession in America. The ship wouldn't magically find a way to right itself if I unplugged the hole.
I am very literally presented with the choice of supporting them or letting them all be homeless. The only part of any of this that I regret for a moment is that I pay for their cable bill and mom and sis's cell phone.
Everything else I see as a sobering economic reality. There really is no practical way for any of them to get on their feet without me.
This is all wrong. You have a
savior complex. Your family should absolutely not be depending on you alone to support them, and that is really fucked up that you think you are the only person in the universe that can save them.
There are programs available for every single instance you name (drug conviction/single mom, sick grandmother, caregiver/unemployed mother, mentally incompetent uncle) to help them with food, housing, utilities, medical care and job training.
Regarding your uncle, I have two aunts on full disability for mental health (and they could still technically be working!). They ALWAYS deny coverage for that and will do so several times over; there are sites dedicated to the steps to getting mental disability covered.
Your mother or sister should be doing the research with their fancy internet (completely paid for by you) for all of the government benefits they should be getting and then make the necessary arrangements for everyone to get that assistance. Food stamps, gov't subsidy for housing and transportation, WIC/CHIP, medicaid/care, job training, phones and plans, utility payment subsidies... they are all out there just waiting for them to apply for them. Why aren't they doing that? Because you're swooping in and "saving" them... and actually preventing them from taking charge of their own lives and/or cleaning up the messes they made. Why on earth should they do anything that requires effort if you are helping out constantly?
Do you understand the concept of "learned helplessness?" That's what they are stuck in, and that is thanks to you. Your help and overwhelming need to be their savior and sacrifice yourself for their wants and needs has crippled them. And it has also crippled you.
You're using your family's fucked up condition to hold yourself back as well. You can't go out and have a real life (going home to that mess every weekend? WTF man?!) since you devote most of your time and money to support this situation... so you don't really have to think about having a rich social life, hobbies, adventures... why do you do that to yourself?
Repeat this until you believe it: You are not responsible for them. I get that you love them and want to help, but seriously, this is WRONG and you need to take a giant step back and think seriously about this situation and why you feel the way you do.
Stop making excuses for all of this. Temporary helping out family in need is cool - but what you're describing is a lifetime's worth of sacrificing your own future on the altar of "family."
It's not right, and it doesn't have to be this way.
PLEASE do stop and think about this. I'm not trying to be mean, but sometimes plain speaking/bluntness can read pretty harsh.