Emily Duprie
To have or have had a college fund is a huge privilege that the majority of college students do not have the good fortune of possessing. If your parents were generous enough and in a comfortable financial space while you were growing up, they may have been able to save a sum of money to go towards your college tuition. Most parents want what’s best for their child, and in today’s economy, getting a degree has the potential to set anyone on a higher ground than those without one.
Finding out you had a large lump of money sitting in a bank somewhere after years of financial struggle would feel like a god-send. For one young woman, that’s basically what happened. She found out through a conversation with her sister that her and the rest of her siblings had “college funds” waiting for them in case they ever went to a University. With two kids and a baby on the way, this woman (El) was thrilled about the thought of at least a little financial relief. Her mother however, had other intentions.
Read the story in full context below, along with some of the top comments from the post!
“…she was crying and begging me to let her have the funds so she could finally afford a down payment and maybe even a wedding.”
OP asked Reddit: “AITA for not letting my daughter use her college fund for a wedding or house?”
Backstory: I (43f) have 4 kids. El (22f) Katie (17f) Cam (15m) Isla (5f) and I’m also currently pregnant. Me and my husband (50m) started adding to college funds every month for each of our kids pretty much as soon as we found out we were pregnant. I won’t say the exact amount but my husband has an excellent job so it’s more than most.
We never told our kids because it just didn’t feel necessary. El got pregnant when she was 16 and ended up dropping out of school. I was very disappointed but I understood. However I was under the impression she would return later, but she has no plans to.
The dad stuck around and now they have 1 more kid (3) and one on the way. They are engaged but don’t plan to marry until they can afford it. They were doing okay financially for a while but due to the market right now they’ve been struggling because El can’t get a job since she doesn’t have a diploma so we’ve been loaning them money.
Katie is a senior and just got accepted into college, we’ve been setting everything up and obviously she knows about the fund now.
Katie and El were talking and she was telling El about the school and El asked how she was planning on paying for it, Katie responded “my college fund” I was in the room while they were talking and this made me panic. We had just planned on splitting it between the remaining four since we knew they were going to college.
El asked me if they all had one and I wasn’t going to lie, so I said yes. She got really excited and went to call her fiance and tell him the good news. I was confused and told her she couldn’t have the money, she asked why and I said it’s for school. She got upset and left my house.
The next day I get a call from El, she was crying and begging me to let her have the funds so she could finally afford a down payment and maybe even a wedding. I told her she could have the money if she went back to school and whatever money was left over she could use for whatever she wanted. She got super mad and started yelling at me and saying it’s her money. I told her that it was MY money and those were my conditions and she hung up.
Now we are being harassed by her fiances family (they aren’t as fortunate as us) calling us assholes and a lot of other names. Saying it’s all gonna go to waste if she doesn’t use it, we’re setting her up for failure, etc.. Now I’m wondering if I’m the asshole because my dad said we should give her the money as we “saved it for her after all”.
So am I the asshole?
UPDATE: ( I think this is within the rules, please correct me if it’s not) My daughter came over on Thursday and we were able to work things out. We both apologized and had a long discussion. She will be getting her GED and will be going to a trade school in exchange for me giving her whatever money is left over. She hasn’t decided which one yet, but it will probably be cosmetology. Her fiances family has apologized. We also decided to pay for small wedding ceremony and reception as a gift.
There were mixed emotions in the comment section of the post, but the general consensus was that OP was NOT the “A-hole.”
