Man uses kids' college funds for early retirement, they say their kids deserve it. AITA?
Money always inevitably brings out the worst in families.
'AITA for using my kids college accounts for my retirement'
I’m confused if I am being a d*ck, so my friend pointed me here.
I have a college account for each kid, they all have like around 50k at the moment. Now my oldest went to trade school and we used his account to pay for that, it was relatively cheap. My daughter went to a small cheap community college before she dropped out. She’s now married and a stay at home mom.
So both of the accounts still have a ton of money in them and the two kids are well established at this point. The oldest makes 6 figures at this point and my daughter married well off and if they did divorce she would get a lot. So I emptied the accounts to use for my retirement.
I mentioned it at dinner and they were p*ssed, saying they still deserve the money even though it was for college only and they never put a cent in. They both called me a d*ck.
They asked why I could retire early, I told them the reason. I wasn’t going to hide it, they knew money was in the account and it would have came up eventually, if not for them but they would have been asking if they could use the extra for their kids.
Here were the top rated comments from readers:
NTA. You paid for their education with your money. What ever is left over is yours to do what you want.
'I mentioned it at dinner'
Mother of God, why? Stop telling people stuff. Put people on information diets. Oversharing put you in this position.
Information diets.....lol, perfect!
I've finally realised 'Where there's a will, there's a way' is a great phrase unless an inheritance is involved.
Yep, they obviously didn't know what money was in there, otherwise they would have asked for it before now. Big mistake, BIG.
NTA because you used the money for its intended purpose.
But why on earth would you tell them there was money left over and you were going to take it??
NTA. It turns out that you oversaved for what they actually spent. It’s silly, particularly for the college dropout, to sincerely believe that they should get the leftover money.
If my parents told me they'd saved money in case I needed it, but now that I'm well established and didn't that money would help them to retire early, I'd be nothing short of overjoyed for them.
The level of entitlement and lack of appreciation of your kids is pretty shocking.
NTA. That’s your money. You saw them through their education, they are done with that, clearly, are all grown up and financially stable. You can spend that money on bonbons and ribbons, it’s none of their business because it’s not theirs.