F*ckin Kid
Vulchor
Posts: 4,848 ✭✭✭✭
So heres the deal. Im 31 (32 tomorrow to be exact) and married to an older woman. I have 2 step kids, 17 & 19. Both great kids...no drugs, no booze, blah blah. 17 year old is not the issue----she is doing great, already in college so this is about the 19 year old. The kids father died when he was 13 and left him 80k life insurance he got when he turned 18. So here is my issue and question...
Kid went to college one semester and came back home. Bought and sold 11 different cars and other money wasted. He is now living at home, turns 20 in October. Not in school currently, claims he will be in the fall. Been unemployed since Decemeber but supposedly starting part time job on Friday. Has spent the entire 80k to the point he needs money from my wife and I for anything........She is 100% behind him and says I am freaking out and being unreasonable with the kid
Please give me comments, suggestions, questions, ect. so I can hear some points of view before I shove a lit cigar in my @sshole.
Kid went to college one semester and came back home. Bought and sold 11 different cars and other money wasted. He is now living at home, turns 20 in October. Not in school currently, claims he will be in the fall. Been unemployed since Decemeber but supposedly starting part time job on Friday. Has spent the entire 80k to the point he needs money from my wife and I for anything........She is 100% behind him and says I am freaking out and being unreasonable with the kid
Please give me comments, suggestions, questions, ect. so I can hear some points of view before I shove a lit cigar in my @sshole.
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Comments
There are few enough things I've done right in life. It's hard to tell whether this is one of them, but...
Bearswatter was a widow when I met her. Two daughters and a son. Son lived with his grandparents; daughters with us. I laid down the law: everyone out by eighteen. Girls got jobs and moved to apartments shared with their girlfriends, and got started on their lives. The son came home, took advantage of us once, had to split. I strongly believe that your real learning begins when you leave home and get out on your own. Rent is how you learn to earn.
Of course, all that was easier to say back then. Right now, it's a different landscape. There just are no damn jobs. And if you go to college, chances are you wind up with no job and debt. So I dunno what I'd do today. I see too many people with children with an MBA living at home working part time at Home Depot.
If you don't see him changing his ways then you really are in a difficult situation, especially if his mother doesn't agree with you on what to do next. Tough love can really be a pain in the ass. It would really piss me off to see somebody close to me blow 80k like that, but he will be the one that will ultimately have to come to terms with what he's done.
If your wife is 100% behind her son, that is troubling. How would she deal with you if you started acting as irresponsibly as he is? How about coming home drunk from payday and saying you blew it all at the casino? I'm not saying to do that but I think you get the idea. Freaking out on the kid is probably not going to fix anything, but laying down the rules in your house might.
I will tell you that if I had acted like that (meaning dropping out of college and blowing an 80k annuity in one year and coming home to live with mommy and daddy) my parents would have probably given me a swift kick out the door. They certainly wouldn't keep giving me money! Sounds like he needs to enlist in the military. Good luck
That would probably be is the correct thing to do.-- the easy thing to do? Likely not.
Good luck with that. Tough situation all around.
If they choose not to stay in school they had to get a job. Any job, so they knew what it takes to be productive members of society. They got waitress jobs, or jobs working in clothing stores during the summer because I would not let them sleep all day. When they were back in school they no longer had to work.
Needless to say, they stayed in school.... I would insist that young man seek any type of job, and it should be a courtesy that he do something around the house because he is a member of the household. Cut the grass without you asking, do the dishes, anything he sees you or your wife doing he should jump up and say "i got that".
I would hope your wife understands the importance of teaching this young man a lesson on values, and stand with you on insisting he works or returns to school, and not to expect everything is just given.
Nothing can be done about spent money, move past that. The lesson that can still be learned is to not just provide things freely. I pisssed away a lot of money when I was young, and now think about how hard I have to work for things.
As difficult as it may seem, you and your wife need to sit down and discuss your expectations of him. He already knows, but hearing it makes him sort of embarrassed into doing the right thing.
It worked on my kids, and on me when my parents sat me down when I was eighteen.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
Lot's of great comments and advice here buddy. I think Kas and Amos come as close to what is a hard reality as possible. There is the aspect of what taking a stand may mean between you and your wife, if she is not on board. So you need to have that discussion first IMO. Then there is the reality of explaining it to your son. Since he is not a child, this should be fairly easy. He may not like hearing it, but he can hardly argue against some realistic expectations being placed on him just like every other adult out there has.
Then there is the final reality of what Amos mentioned, and this may help to convince your wife (if needed) that this is for your son's own good. What happens when you are not around? Since he would HAVE to learn some hard lessons then, it makes sense that it would be easier, both for and on him, to learn some now.
Like Kas said, this is just my opinion Vulch. and you know how I can be
I like Oliva and Quesada (including Regius) a lot. I will smoke anything, though.
Just tell your wife she's lucky she's not with someone like me. I'd ring his fuc&ing little neck, beat the bag out of him and drop him off on a corner in a rough neighborhood with a $20 bill strapped to his back. Show him how tough life can be. Some people will only grow up when faced with a sink or swim type of situation. Others, just never grow up.
Either way, sorry bro. I feel for ya.
I agree with others--tell him he has to start paying rent. NOW. Make him do chores but don't let him do chores instead of paying money, because at some point he'll stop doing them and he'll be back at square one. Make him get the lowest paying crappy job, take a few hundred bucks in cash from him each month, and you'll see how fast he'll get motivated to go back to school.
Of course, none of this will work if your wife doesn't support this. If she's working, you have every right to tell her that she needs to spend her money buying food for him and paying his expenses. Once she sees how much this is taking out of her income she won't have a problem paying his own way. If you're the only breadwinner, then you have the right to lay down the financial law---but you'll probably get into a gunfight doing so.
You said he lost the 80k? was that for college like a college fund or something?
I dunno man, seems as though you might have to put the foot down on this. I'm no father but I do know what it is like having to deal with a lazy ass. hard to do if your wife isn't on your side but you need to do what you feel is right. letting him feed off the **** while mooching isn't going to help him in the long run. But you know him better than I do -- meaning sometimes that hard line stuff backfires.
Of course, this all presupposes there is anything in my estate for them to inherit other than student loan debt! JK, the life insurance will cover that.
I like Oliva and Quesada (including Regius) a lot. I will smoke anything, though.