Brought to you by CHM, a budget friendly faith based alternative to health insurance. Chministries.org budget I'm calling for some advice on how to handle my 29 year old son who's moved back home to follow the baby step millionaire program. He wants to pay off all his private student loan debts. So if you move back home, we're glad to have him.
I'm nearing retirement age. My husband's been retired a long time. We're in decent shape financially, no doubt at all. But expenses are hard.
You know, the cost of maintaining a home has increased. The cost of utilities, the cost of food, property taxes. So we're about to get stressed a little bit from time to time. Especially you know, times of the year like this when the heat's on.
And so does it cost more to heat the house with him in it? Well, not necessarily, but the cost of food goes up and you know, him keeping the lights on where that part of the house might have normally been. Dark. Sure.
The water, the utilities will bump up a bit. He'll be eating your food. So your food bill is going to go up. Why don't you tell him he needs to contribute a little something.
Something I did. So his response was, well, I asked him if he would take on one bill. I said, just one bill. You can pick out whatever one you want.
So I showed him my we have, we have your budget app. So I showed him my every dollar budget and I said pick one. And his response was, well, let me look at all of your bills so that I can see how you can cut costs so I don't have to do this. Let me tell you something.
Wow, that is maniacal. How about this? You say, you know what, forget that plan. You'll pay $300 a month if you want to live here or you can just go live somewhere else.
That sounds good to me, man. Is he working full time? Oh, he has a very good job. He's a government employee with a GS13 level job.
What is he nice? Well over a hundred thousand dollars a year and right now he's in the military, He's a high ranking officer and he's making all this money tax free because it's an active duty to pull him and he won't pay one bill. I'm sorry, how much debt does he have? He has no debt other than the student loans.
Okay, you said he has no debt, so how much debt? So I think he had well over 100,000. He's down to about 35,000. He moved back in to pay off 35 grand, making over 100.
This feels crazy. This is my son. Was he renting before on his own or what? He was renting before on his own.
Prior to that, he was. He was engaged to a wonderful woman, and he was living with her. They were supposed to get married in a couple of months, and she just got so. She got so frustrated with him being so cheap that she broke off the engagement.
Throw him out. Okay, there you go. There you have it. So this is a.
This is a character trait. He was cheap with a girlfriend. Possibly one of the reasons they were living together was so he could lower his expenses. Right after that, he turns around and moves in with you.
Do you know what? I would. If I were in your shoes, I'd love to know. I would say, he can't live here.
Say, I love you, but you can't live here. You don't need to live with me to pay off $35,000 of debt. You've got plenty of income in order to do that. And I see this as a pattern, sir.
Son, you need to move out, and you need to learn to open up the purse strings. He is not struggling financially. Now, if this guy had just gone through a really tough time, like. Like a divorce was on his, you know, had nowhere to go, and he was really struggling financially, I said, hey, let's give him along like, a little bit of a hammock for six months to get on his feet.
This man doesn't need that. I agree. And so have you had a conversation? No, we haven't had any kind of a hard conversation like that because he has just recently moved in.
We're talking just a couple of weeks. Okay. What's your husband? My husband is elderly.
He's 25 years my senior. And at his age, he's just glad to have him back in the house. I see. I see.
Yeah, he's already in the house. So I would just create a timeline and say, listen, I know how much you make. I know you can put this much more than that. So if you do it this way, here's the rules.
And if you can pay this off in, I don't know, six months, let's say. Is that possible? Probably, yeah. That's 5,800amonth.
Could he do that living at home with no expenses? Absolutely. He can. See George's.
I'm just throwing out your mouth out there. And she said, absolutely, he can, because she knows how much he makes. Yes, but I'm like, the boy must go. Yeah, I know.
I agree. But you are. He's literally made his bed. They're laying in it.
And so I would do that if my husband wasn't so thrilled to have him home. He can come over every night for dinner. You know what I'm saying? This is true.
You know, this is. We don't. Because what I see happening, because he, he loves saving money. He wants to save a buck.
And what I see happening is he pays off the debt, then the next goal comes, well, I want to save up until I have enough for down pay. Yeah. And it's gonna. The goal post is gonna keep moving.
And truly that's why I say as have this debt paid off, you're gone. And that's gonna be six months from now. And we're gonna have a meeting every month. You're gonna show us the debt balance if you're gonna be living here.
Do you think he'd do that? He would. And, and I so appreciate this advice because I know he's listening. Let me send him a message.
Sir, if you're listening, I think that you need to move out. I think that you need to learn how to handle your expenses. It's okay. It costs money to live as an adult.
It costs money to adult. That's rent, that's a mortgage. That's paying for your own life. And at the very least, if you are gonna live in your mom's house, you need to pay for the electricity that you use and the food that you eat at 29 years old.
All right, Mom's gonna apply for him to be on Scream Cheesecakes. I'm just gonna follow him around the house with the camera, watching him mooch off on you guys and his elderly dad to save a buck while he makes six figures as a high ranking official military. And also. Thank you for his service.
Yes, thank you for your service. All jokes aside, he sounds like a great young man, but he's just too cheap for his own good. He can't help it. He can't help.
He already lost a great woman over this. You know that's true. You could have had a really sweet relationship with this woman if it all panned out. Well, if he moves out, maybe he can get her back.
Now that would be a love story for the ages. One never knows. He's gonna go to those 25 cent rings to try to propose. That's why she saw that writing on the wall and said, no, thank you.
That's not good. Goodness gracious, what an interesting conundrum. I'm trying to really put myself in her shoes, I couldn't. Now, here's the thing.
This is where I'm softy. If it was my daughter, I think I'd treat it different at 29. But here's what got me. When she said, pick a bill to pay.
And he's like, instead of me paying the bill, let me lower your expenses and crunch your budget and make you like that. That got me. Yeah. The other thing that I've seen that can work decently.
If you say, hey, you're gonna pay 500 bucks a month to live here. Mom and dad set that money aside in the savings account and give it back to when he moves out as a surprise. That's a nice gesture if you don't need the money. But truthfully, they were saying it's already a little bit tight.
Yeah. So they could use the extra money if he's, you know, mooching off the house and paying. Racking up the utility bills. I think that's fair.
It's a failure to launch. For me, it's a failure to launch. He has the money, and he has the discipline. He does.
Your high ranking officially don't get there by being like a Days of so. Man, that's a tough one, but what a sweet one. I get it. She's.
She's just too sweet for her own good. He's too cheap for his own good. Christian healthcare ministries can save your family hundreds of dollars on healthcare every month. Learn [email protected] budget.