Some people like to live vicariously through their children. The children become athletes or painters just because their parent wanted to but was thwarted in their attempt.

You've got a case of the reverse. Not so widely known of but still a thing.

Not about money in my case, but similar stuff happens too. I just stand my ground and say as calmly as I can (with varying levels of success) "I'm sure X happened this way" we don't discuss it often, my dad usually just keeps up believing stuff happened his way, and we leave it at that.

Gotta lean hard in the other direction to flip the gaslighting onto him. If he says he paid for your college then start insisting you never went to college. If he says you owe him for keeping your car running during X-Y years then tell him you didn't even own a car.

More seriously, though, my mom was the same way. Hers was due to being extremely manipulative instead of memory issues. Either way you aren't going to get through. Better to start distancing yourself now until you've reached a level of contact that isn't detrimental to you. If that eventually means no contact then so be it; they bring it on themselves and you owe them nothing.

I don't know if this helps but i had a similar experience. My mother would bring it up all the time. It was many years after I had just given up the guilt of it. It finally came out. She was afraid noone would take care of her. Deep down she's knew she never did anything to help me and now that she was losing her independence in her age. She is desperate to believe she has leverage to make sure i will take care of her when she's unable to. It's sad and pathetic but once it came to light my anger turned to pity.

There reaches a point in human stupidity that it suddenly becomes impossible to realize one's stupidity. These people cannot be fixed and cannot be helped in anyway that benefits anyone else around them. Even therapy won't do anything as they've become so stubborn and self righteous that they'd never believe the therapist, or bother to improve.

There is a reason this saying exists. "You can't fix stupid".

Ive been dealing with something similar to my mom. She's extremely abusive and entitled. She insists that I "owe her"

It's repeated a lot but rings loud for a reason. Cut them out.

If you can, ignore it or dismiss it as "old man yells at clouds".

Either way, unfortunately, you have to find a way, somehow, to deal the issue so that it stops causing you problems. It's hard and it sucks.

IMHO as a parent, my kids owe me nothing and I owe them everything. I created them after all.

This is kind of rubbish advice, sorry.

You could ask him what he expects you to do about it. Force him to follow through on his line of reasoning to the conclusion. Does he want it paid back? Does he want to estrange his children?

That can work because, rather than ~~contacting~~ contradicting him you're facilitating him reasoning through his position. Hopefully for the best.

My family is exactly like this and my sister keeps her distance and advised me to do the same.

I petulantly refused and got it rubbed in my face 15 years later when I saw the trump flags flying outside their homes during Xmas. I have no intentions in seeing any of them ever again.

I have seen this quite a few times in young and old. Which makes me doubt my own memories bt I do get corroboration from other folks. I am sorta obsessed with truth and I am convinced that when you lie you essentially can't help but believe it to some degree and I truly believe that every time you lie you will limit your ability to see reality. This is very disturbing because no one can avoid lying 100% over decades of life it means that pretty much none of us can live 100% in reality. I mean maybe but its impossible to tell how well one can avoid their own dishonesty in life from warping their own memories. Anyway its why I try as much as possible to be honest. This is all my own beliefs though. There is another thing I have heard and im not sure how much study is behind it but supposedly every time we recall a memory we alter it. Ugh. My thought is the more you lied around the event the more likely the alteration will be towards the lie.

Does this actually affect your life? Just ignore him when he brings it up. Convincing him will likely not materially affect your life.

Your statement of old enough to not remember things that well, implies memory issues.

Has he always been this way or just recently? If it's recently then have him see a specialist about his memory. There could be a bigger problem there. Memory problems can show up earlier then you realize.

Did his memory of events change recently?

For me, I came to terms with this by learning more about human nature and behavior and realizing that, in essence, we're incredibly flawed beings with only a minimum of accidental rationality. That it's absolutely not natural for us to "make sense" in a logical way, that truth doesn't matter to us, that we are all incredibly selfish.

And that working against this nature to a "better" (in quotation marks on purpose, who really knows what's better) state of mind and behavior requires massive amounts of dedication, conviction and constant effort, which most people simply don't understand or can't be bothered to do.

That humans/I have a natural desire within them/me to band together for survival purposes. This includes loyalty to family and feeling bad about being estranged to them.

That our emotions are just motivators making us do things that were/are useful for survival.

That we also have a great capacity for adaptation, which also helped us to survive.

And finally, to put it all together, that I can use my skills of adaptation to change my feelings about things after understanding them and deeming them not beneficial to me. So in other words, I use mindfulness techniques, my natural propensity for rationalizations, training/practice through repetition, my selfishness, etc, etc, to change my behavior/thoughts/feelings to a state I'd like to be in.

This is imo only possible with serious study of all these interactions and years of reprogramming yourself, which you have to decide how worth it is for you. In my opinion, it's ultimately worth it for everyone, because I went from a state of deep unhappiness to a state of deep happiness/content, which is a massive quality of life improvement.

However, I also realize that because of all of this, I myself could just be talking bullshit and be just as or even more flawed than anyone else, so you can probably safely disregard any advice I give or things I say :D

Edit: oh yeah, and to give a superficial answer: fuck family/people, stupid people are not worth having around and making your life worse just because of some arbitrary tradition/feeling of loyalty/peer pressure. My dad is nowhere as bad as yours and I still don't really care about interacting with him, and I like it that way.

lifes too short to deal with assholes. blood relative or not. fuck that shiit

Sounds Like dementia to me. You'll have to come to terms with the fact that your father isn't the person he was any more. Arguing is entirely futile.

Nothing you can do but go no contact (0%). He needs a time out and to reevaluate. You must be ok with whatever outcome that lays ahead since you cant control others, you can only set a boundary that says you won't be discussing this or tolerating anybody who continues to revisit it.

They won't like having control (control of You) wrestled away, particularly if they're accustomed to that, so it might take them a while to adjust their behavior but it is necessary to resolve that dynamic. Make it clear that there will be no money talk or transactions flowing between you and if it comes up again, you will be taking a break for a month and then everyone can circle back and try again at that time.

If it happens again after you've had to enforce a month timeout, you have to decide if you want to do escalating consequences or if you want to start a full and longer-term no contact regime where they are completely blocked and unable to communicate with you any longer

If its escalating consequences, start at a lower threshold like say a week, any violations that happen after they've been welcomed back, adds to that or doubles it. I suggest doubling so

1. 1 week
2. 2 weeks
3. 4 weeks/month

If they refuse to respect it after that I would consider strongly making it permanent. They are adults and that is literally an extended tantrum they are and continue to throw to your detriment and without seemingly intelectually recognizing that they are not going to win this or beat you into submission somehow. Do not depend on them for anything or give them any bargaining chips. Once you impose a consequence, do not falter or they will sense weakness and persist or get worse.