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The reactions have been divided.
By Nia Tipton — Written on Oct 20, 2022
A mom and dad wonder if they're in the wrong after admitting to their daughter that they'd spent her college tuition money.
Posting to the subreddit "r/AmItheA--hole" (AITA), the father explained that he and his wife spent the money after their daughter initially told them she didn't want to attend college.
When their daughter asked about going back to college, her parents said they didn't have money to pay for it.
In his Reddit post, the father wrote that his daughter, 20, "recently decided to go back to college after taking a year off."
"She dropped out of college a few months saying it wasn’t for her. We adamantly advised against it but she ended up moving in with her boyfriend and started working in his family’s restaurant business," he continued.
The father shared that there had been almost $30,000 put aside for his daughter to attend college, but when she told her parents she didn't want to go, they decided to use it to remodel their kitchen.
"Well now my daughter has decided to go back to college because it didn’t work out with her boyfriend and she didn’t like any of the jobs she had following that."
When she approached her parents asking about the tuition money, she was shocked to learn that they'd spent it all.
The father revealed that his daughter had previously asked for the tuition money "before she moved in with her boyfriend" which her parents denied, telling her the money was only supposed to go toward college.
Her parents also told her that if she left and didn't attend college, they'd use the money for something else.
"She said she thought we were bluffing and didn’t actually mean it and that we need to help her pay for college since we are still paying for her younger brother’s yearly tuition," the father wrote.
He told his daughter that if she was serious about going back to school then she needed to get a part-time job and enroll in a community college instead of an expensive state school.
Since learning that her parents spent her tuition money and wouldn't be paying for her to go back to school, the daughter has been angry and refuses to speak to her mother.
"Her mother has said maybe we can still help her out financially but we’re nearing our retirement age and a little behind our retirement goals so I don’t want to take away from our savings just because my daughter made some bad choices," the father added.
He even offered his daughter to stay with them for free while she attended college so she wouldn't have to worry about having to pay rent and pay her tuition.
The majority of people who commented on the father's Reddit post deemed him "Not the A--hole" (NTA).
"She made a decision to drop out, and with that came you telling her that you'd use the remaining college fund money for something else," one user wrote.
Another user chimed in, writing, "You laid out what would happen, and it happened. I understand her sadness over it, but I also don’t think it’s insane to have her complete her associates at a community college, then maybe revisit the matter?"
However, a third user didn't quite agree with the parent's decision.
"If you truly meant the money for her education, you could have held it for her in case she returned to school in the future."
Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics. Keep up with her on Instagram and Twitter.