Continuing off the title, I’m a sophomore in college coming from a middle class background and my family has been consistently terrible at managing money. This is amplified by the fact that my dad has suffered pay cuts and has struggled to find another job. Over summer, it got so bad that he started driving for Uber and had to borrow money that I made from my summer internship to pay bills. Also, my parents are in the process of divorcing (mainly driven by financial reasons) but are still living together because they can't afford two separate places and they’re on good terms. Naturally, their lifestyle has been pretty modest.
As for me, I'm currently a student living in the dorms of an in-state public university. Last year, after scholarship and need-based aid, my family took out about $10,000 in student loans which left around $8,000 on the table and we made it through the year. Altogether, my parents put forward under $2,000 of their own money toward my education last year. Coming into this year, I let my parents handle financial aid then went on to check a couple weeks ago and saw that my mom had taken out an abnormally high amount. After running some calculations, I saw that the total loan amount was $20,000, nearly double what we needed. I approached her about it and broke down the math then she said that it was what we had done last year. I'm not sure if she actually believed that or if she was just getting defensive or whatever, but she said that the interest on the loans didn't start accruing until later so I figured that there wouldn't be much harm in having the money out right now.
So I left back for college a bit over a month ago and just kinda put that behind me. I know that despite my parents' best intentions, their promises to pay back my student loans are empty and I'll be paying them back myself. I'm confident in my job prospects out of graduation so I’m not too worried. They're going through a lot, I got this.
Anyway, scene cuts to a couple days ago and I have lunch with my mom for the first time since I moved in. She suggests a rather upscale place and says not to worry about it because she's paying. She also dropped $400 for her and my sister to go see a show then realized that they missed the date so she dropped another $400 for the right tickets. Then she was talking about going out with her friends for drinks and such like she was doing it multiple times a week. I thought it was abnormal but didn't think too much into it.
It kinda dawned on me the next day that the lifestyle change almost perfectly coincided with the deposit of my student loans. I’m not exactly sure how each loan works but I know that at least around half of the $20,000 is in my parents’ name. I don’t know for sure if she is using my student loans for these purposes and she has been working full time, but I can’t imagine where else the money would be coming from because I know she hasn’t gotten a raise in at least the past year. Is this something that can happen with student loans? Should I approach her about this (and how)? Any advice would be appreciated.
Edit: Just to clarify, there's absolutely no animosity between my parents and I. We're still a family.
Edit 2: It sounds like my mom is drawing from the Parent Plus loan pool which isn't in my name. Still not a good situation but at least it's not affecting my credit I don't think?
Edit 3: Appreciate all the responses, it's good to hear that this won't fall too heavily on me no matter what happens.
Submitted October 25, 2017 at 03:35PM by MomsSpaghettiGuy http://ift.tt/2yJgRAy
