Anonymous wrote:Why are you supporting your daughter in grad school? She's making money, she should be paying her rent.

Anonymous wrote:If parents are co-signers on the lease, stopping payments really isn’t an option. When my DS was in graduate school, I was a co-signer for 4 years on his lease because he had zero income.

Anonymous wrote:My 25 year old daughter has been dating a guy for about 8 months now and we feel like he is taking advantage of her and her situation. She is currently in graduate school and we have been generously supporting her, which is where the taking advantage piece comes in. We don’t seem to get all the details, but the boyfriend has been “temporarily” living with her for 4 months after something happened with where he was living. He does have a job, but contributes no rent and doesn’t seem to pay any expenses - we can tell since we are footing all the bills. We are friendly with our daughter’s best friend’s parents who have heard from their daughter that the boyfriend constantly goes out without our daughter multiple night a week.

We’ve tried to talk to her but she gets very defensive. We’ve asked if the boyfriend can contribute some rent or expenses or what he is doing to pay his share, but she makes excuses or doesn’t want to hear it -

***she claims he is saving up to buy his own place so she is trying to help him out.***

Where do we go from here - don’t want to cut her off but do we hold back money to force him into paying his own way? We also don’t want to cause a rift with our daughter since we have always had a great relationship. Not sure how to handle this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I am a PP who posted earlier that we are also supporting our 25 year old DD. She is also in medical school. It sounds like your DD is taking advantage of your relationship, or she is letting her bf take advantage of you. Have you considered giving your DD a fixed amount per month for groceries, etc.? We pay our DD’s rent directly and give her a set amount for groceries/miscellaneous. She does not have our credit card. This allows her to make her own decisions, but with the reality of a (fairly tight) budget. Hopefully, this is preparing her for real life, as she will definitely need to budget during residency, etc.

Exactly. It is important for your daughter to learn to budget (frankly she should have learned years ago.) For example, if you leave all the lights on all the time and your electric bill doubles, you won't have enough money to go out to dinner with your friends. The way you describe your daughter's judgement right now, it scares me that she could some day be responsible for someone's life, as their physician!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I am a PP who posted earlier that we are also supporting our 25 year old DD. She is also in medical school. It sounds like your DD is taking advantage of your relationship, or she is letting her bf take advantage of you. Have you considered giving your DD a fixed amount per month for groceries, etc.? We pay our DD’s rent directly and give her a set amount for groceries/miscellaneous. She does not have our credit card. This allows her to make her own decisions, but with the reality of a (fairly tight) budget. Hopefully, this is preparing her for real life, as she will definitely need to budget during residency, etc.

Exactly. It is important for your daughter to learn to budget (frankly she should have learned years ago.) For example, if you leave all the lights on all the time and your electric bill doubles, you won't have enough money to go out to dinner with your friends. The way you describe your daughter's judgement right now, it scares me that she could some day be responsible for someone's life, as their physician!

Anonymous wrote:OP, I am a PP who posted earlier that we are also supporting our 25 year old DD. She is also in medical school. It sounds like your DD is taking advantage of your relationship, or she is letting her bf take advantage of you. Have you considered giving your DD a fixed amount per month for groceries, etc.? We pay our DD’s rent directly and give her a set amount for groceries/miscellaneous. She does not have our credit card. This allows her to make her own decisions, but with the reality of a (fairly tight) budget. Hopefully, this is preparing her for real life, as she will definitely need to budget during residency, etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK i am SHOCKED at the consensus of the replies b/c I strongly disagree. Her rent has not changed...if you were cool playing the rent for a 25 year old, you can't pull it back to 50% b/c she has a BF/Roommate.

Do you know that he's not contributing in other ways? Maybe he's covering all their "going out" expenses or something else, maybe she uses his car, who knows. It doesn't impact your bills, which you were comfortable with when she was single or casually dating. I see this as 100% you trying to control your 25 yr olds' dating life b/c you don't like the BF. They may wind up married, who can know, but making her DEPENDENT on the relationship by cutting the living expenses by 50% only makes them staying together more likely. If you want to keep this relationship strong, really think carefully about how much you meddle and what strings you add to financial support. I see you as wanting to control an outcome that has nothing to really do with you, which is manipulation.

I agree with the other posters that if you were seeing grocery stores on the credit card bill and the food costs have doubled, that is totally fair game to discuss with her.

Why can't they? Because being unconditionally subsidized in perpetuity is every Americans birth right? She's an adult and her parents can stop paying the rent at any time they want, for any reason or no reason at all.

Exactly. I’m actually shocked at the replies from people who would continue to pay full living expenses. It’s not the parents changing terms here. They agreed to pay for HER living expenses and have now been roped into paying for his as well. Grow a spine, people.

Many parents pay for kids to get masters because either intended jobs need masters or because they want kids to get it done without wasting time on ho hum jobs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK i am SHOCKED at the consensus of the replies b/c I strongly disagree. Her rent has not changed...if you were cool playing the rent for a 25 year old, you can't pull it back to 50% b/c she has a BF/Roommate.

Do you know that he's not contributing in other ways? Maybe he's covering all their "going out" expenses or something else, maybe she uses his car, who knows. It doesn't impact your bills, which you were comfortable with when she was single or casually dating. I see this as 100% you trying to control your 25 yr olds' dating life b/c you don't like the BF. They may wind up married, who can know, but making her DEPENDENT on the relationship by cutting the living expenses by 50% only makes them staying together more likely. If you want to keep this relationship strong, really think carefully about how much you meddle and what strings you add to financial support. I see you as wanting to control an outcome that has nothing to really do with you, which is manipulation.

I agree with the other posters that if you were seeing grocery stores on the credit card bill and the food costs have doubled, that is totally fair game to discuss with her.

Why can't they? Because being unconditionally subsidized in perpetuity is every Americans birth right? She's an adult and her parents can stop paying the rent at any time they want, for any reason or no reason at all.

Anonymous wrote:OP, I am a PP who posted earlier that we are also supporting our 25 year old DD. She is also in medical school. It sounds like your DD is taking advantage of your relationship, or she is letting her bf take advantage of you. Have you considered giving your DD a fixed amount per month for groceries, etc.? We pay our DD’s rent directly and give her a set amount for groceries/miscellaneous. She does not have our credit card. This allows her to make her own decisions, but with the reality of a (fairly tight) budget. Hopefully, this is preparing her for real life, as she will definitely need to budget during residency, etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OK i am SHOCKED at the consensus of the replies b/c I strongly disagree. Her rent has not changed...if you were cool playing the rent for a 25 year old, you can't pull it back to 50% b/c she has a BF/Roommate.

Do you know that he's not contributing in other ways? Maybe he's covering all their "going out" expenses or something else, maybe she uses his car, who knows. It doesn't impact your bills, which you were comfortable with when she was single or casually dating. I see this as 100% you trying to control your 25 yr olds' dating life b/c you don't like the BF. They may wind up married, who can know, but making her DEPENDENT on the relationship by cutting the living expenses by 50% only makes them staying together more likely. If you want to keep this relationship strong, really think carefully about how much you meddle and what strings you add to financial support. I see you as wanting to control an outcome that has nothing to really do with you, which is manipulation.

I agree with the other posters that if you were seeing grocery stores on the credit card bill and the food costs have doubled, that is totally fair game to discuss with her.

Why can't they? Because being unconditionally subsidized in perpetuity is every Americans birth right? She's an adult and her parents can stop paying the rent at any time they want, for any reason or no reason at all.

Exactly. I’m actually shocked at the replies from people who would continue to pay full living expenses. It’s not the parents changing terms here. They agreed to pay for HER living expenses and have now been roped into paying for his as well. Grow a spine, people.

Many parents pay for kids to get masters because either intended jobs need masters or because they want kids to get it done without wasting time on ho hum jobs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know. Maybe I am different from many other posters here.

I am absolutely ok with my 25 yr old DD, allowing someone to stay rent-free with her. Why? Because for me the question of who is financing her is immaterial. It does not matter if I am paying rent or if DD is. The cost does not go up if she lets someone live with her.

For me, what matters is that she decided to let someone live with her. With me DD, I believe the following things - I have raised her well and she makes good decisions, she wants to invest in this relationship, she is committed to her studies and career, she will confide with me because she is close to me, she will never let some man treat her poorly because she has a loving dad.

My DD is allowed to be generous with others and give a helping hand to her friends and bf, as long as it does not impact more important things in her life.

You must have missed OP's latest post. The spending did go up. OP's DD's "generosity" is taken directly from OP.

No. The rent cost has not gone up. The cost for expensive dinners have gone up. It is quite possible that the guy buys her several nice dinners and every once in a while she pays for a nice dinner. It is a romantic relationship, they are having fun and dining out etc.

OP should care that the BF is loving and kind to her DD and not care if they are eating sushi too often. I am not hearing her say that there are any red flags that she has observed with the guy - he yells at her, she cooks and cleans while he drinks, he cheats on her, he is 15 yrs older than her, he has several baby mamas etc, etc.

So I don't think the focus should be on the slight increase in cost of eating out because that increase is normal. Why? When you are dating and young, your entertainment cost goes up. If OP has any concern, it should be that her DD is happy and safe.

Is the OP financing her DD? Yes, she decided before the BF was in the picture to finance her DD's medical college and she cannot go and change rules now on her DD now. In fact, that will leave her DD more vulnerable and isolated. That does not make sense at all.

I think that the communication channels between OP and her DD is broken because there should have been no reason to post this on DCUM. Instead, OP should talk to her DD and find out what she thinks about the guy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Let me guess, op, books before boys was how you raised your daughter? There’s a reason she’s putting up with this nonsense, are you sure she isn’t into drugs or bad stuff, or isn’t supporting someone who is? Why would she want to “help him” “buy his *own* place”, that’s the kind of nonsense you teach your kids about at hopefully a much earlier age. Why didn’t this happen?

You need to be concerned with your daughter and why this is attractive to her, as well as seeming like a good idea.

I hope too that you haven’t run off every boyfriend she’s had because “she’s too young” “she needs to get an education” “she’d better not even think of marriage and family yet”, you need to do a deep dive into why this guy is who she wants.

Since she’s an adult, you can’t stop her from dating him. You also can’t kick him out, not unless you own the property and are renting to her, and even then, she’s allowed legally to have overnight guests, you can’t show up at noon and say “time’s up, John”.
You really screwed up on this, op.
You also have no way to make him give you or your daughter money, not unless you own the property and add him to the lease. Be careful that you don’t come off as trying to extort him, I did get that vibe from you, and yes, I think this guy is bad news, people don’t just leave a place and not tell you why. He probably got evicted or his previous girlfriend kicked him out. Your daughter is feeding you a line about why he’s there. Does she really believe it?

I also wasn’t a fan of “my best friend says..” maybe your best friend is right, but you come off as an extortionist who needs to pay up if your best friend tells you something you don’t like, which may be why other more respectable guys have ran, I would have. I wouldn’t want to date someone only to have you wonder who I hugged last week because “my best friend saw you do it”, a best friend I probably don’t know, and who probably made hugging my mother sound sleazy.

How exactly do you expect your daughter to support herself if you just stop paying her expenses? That’s the school solution, pardon the word choice, but what exactly do you expect her to do? She’s probably set up her classes and study time counting on your support. Did you formalize this support? You aren’t serving your daughter well if you didn’t, something you should have thought about and something that you should take care of today if you truly want to do this right. Set up a trust, it doesn’t have to be a large trust, but a trust so that funds will be dispersed to her.

As of now, you sound like a controlling mom (or dad) who has driven the daughter into the arms of a looser.


Please, for the love of all that’s holy: it’s “loser”.