Way back when, I graduated a half year early my senior year when I was 17 (graduated in January).
I lived with my dad at the time and he said once you graduate, you better get a job the next day and start paying half the rent and utilities.
So instead I enlisted in the Air Force and lived with my mom for a few weeks until I left for boot camp.
I had a friend with a similar story. For ten years, he lived free in his father’s weekend lake house. Dad died, naming the two sons as executors. Brother tried to make him start paying market rent to the estate.
When looking at fucked up families, this is fairly mild. There are some really crazy people out there.
My aunt gave one of my nephews (age 3 or so) a cookie, and then said he owed her a kiss. She was pissed when he gave the cookie back, everyone else thought it was hilarious. Sweet kid, she got a kiss for free later.
My daughter started working part time at a restaurant in high school, making about $1000/mo. Her money was hers, other then I wasn’t buying fast food, if she wanted something fairly pricey she was on her own.
When she was getting ready to graduate, I said “if you continue your education, this’ll remain the same. If you choose to work full time I would want rent”. I can’t remember if it was $200 or $300/month.
She was furious. She chose to go to (now defunct) Le Cordon Bleu mostly so she wouldn’t have to pay rent. Despite my driving 45 minutes twice a day, rearranging my work schedule to accommodate it, and taking out a PLUS loan to help pay for it- she was very bitter about it all.
Now that she’s planning her wedding, she regrets her anger. I had told her multiple times the rent would go into a savings account. She could’ve had a decent chunk of change.
My parents did the opposite, they stopped declaring me as a dependent on their taxes while I was in college, even though they were partially supporting me. They would’ve liked to fully support me, but I was too independent to allow it. So they looked for backdoor ways to give me money, since I told them I was too old to accept an allowance. My dad asked to borrow my car for a week once, and had the engine rebuilt.
And the tax dependent thing….probably not a big deal now, but in the ‘80’s there was this income tax thing called income averaging, where you had the option of paying tax on a five year income average rather than your income for that tax year - as long as you had not been a declared as a dependent during any of those 5 years. So they took a hit on their taxes in order to give me a future tax break.
I had a college roommate in 2001 in a similar situation. On the flip side, I had to go through a lengthy process to prove I wasn’t receiving any financial support and that my parents refused to provide their social security numbers so that I could receive student aid. My aid was calculated assuming I had no support. It was a bitch to do all that administrative stuff, but I came out of it better than my roommate with wealthy parents. Between that and scholarships, I graduated from what was at the time the most expensive public university in the country with only $10,000 in student loans.
It still seems to me that it’s better to be poor and smart than middle class and smart, from a financial aid perspective.
At least he waited until you graduated. The principal of my kids’ high school told me that parents kicking kids out of the house the moment they turned 18, while still in high school, was reasonably common. And I live in a middle class neighborhood where I doubt too many of the parents were about to go broke.
The kids showed up at school not knowing where to go. Some some parents are assholes.
I’ve never been able to find this term elsewhere, but a psych professor of mine in college mentioned the “Broken Plate Club.” Parents: You’re 18 now? Break your plate…we aren’t feeding you any more.
My son elected to drop out of school at 16 and go to work while couch surfing with friends–he has an independent streak. When he was 19 I decided to move to Oregon and he elected to come with and my ex, my son and I rented a place and he paid a third of the rent and utilities like any other adult would do. It helped that at the time he was working a Teamster’s warehouse job for Coca-Cola and made about twice what I did but a third of the cost is what’s fair so that’s what he paid. I’d have him as a roommate any time, he pays his way, does his share of chores and is a very pleasant person to get along with.
Exactly. Unless you’re an asshole, you don’t present someone with a poor option, and then get butthurt if they choose to do something else.
It almost sounds like they thought the kid should be grateful for the opportunity to participate in this horrible deal of staying home and paying more, instead of going out on his own and paying less.
The Yahoo story was originally covered by the website In The Know. It’s based on a real reddit thread:
Am I the asshole?
Now whether that presumptive kid’s story is true is another matter.
That’s not a similar story.
This. I have been following this thread for kicks, and have been reminded of a very famous quote:
Tripler
The OP’s link taken with a shaker full of salt.
Honestly, I envy people who don’t have first-hand experience with crazy parents, to such an extent that they don’t even believe they are real.
I have a crazy mother, but I just don’t tend to believe one sided stories from strangers without some caveats. It is a story that might be true, might be exaggerated or might be pretty much a complete fabrication. It is not a news report. That is all.
So based on what was shared the parents are asses. But we only know one side like I said above.
Thank you for sharing that song. I’ve played it like five times now.
The show is some of the best TV I’ve ever watched.
Oh, I have first-hand experience with someone else’s crazy parents, and was fortunate enough to have good ones myself. But like What Exit has pointed out, this is a wildly unbalanced “article” based on a Reddit thread. I smell a salty, red herring.
Tripler
“Fishy,” isn’t quite the word.
The problem with the purported story in the OP is that the “kid’s” parents’ ability to pay–even if they do not–for the “kid’s” education is taken into account for his eligibility for student loans. That’s a real situation affecting far too many students who, for quite legitimate reasons, no longer have anything to do with their parents. Moving out just makes the debt more dire.