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Her dad made the wrong move here.
By Isaac Serna-Diez
Last updated on Dec 23, 2023
At an average of over $20,000 per year, the price tag for a college education makes attending out-of-the-question for some families.
Fortunately for one high school graduate, her father set aside $70,000 to help her afford her "dream college."
“My dad promised to pay for my college education, I made all my plans based on his promised aid and I applied for early action for my dream college. I got in!” the daughter explained in a Reddit post. “It will be expensive but I will be able to graduate with a manageable amount of debt based on my dad helping me.”
However, when the time came to discuss details regarding her college career, her father shared some unfortunate news.
"Yesterday, He told me that he wouldn't be able to help me at all and he will help me get student loans," she revealed.
Her father lost $38,000 of her college fund in the stock market.
“I asked him what had happened and he was deflecting before he admitted that he had invested the funds in some stocks and that he had lost money,” she continued. “He had promised me 70,000 dollars and now he has something like 32,000 dollars.”
The stock market has always come with countless risks and rewards, and there are many different types of investments that can win you big — or lead to losing it all. But the biggest rule of thumb that anyone will tell you is: don’t invest more than you’re okay with losing — because you could lose all of it.
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Hurt by the new knowledge that she'd graduate college with more debt than expected, the daughter told her father that she'd take the $32K that was left of her college fund and go from there. Unfortunately, her father had different plans.
"He said he was not going to sell as he expected the prices to recover and I should just take student loans until it goes back up," she explained. "I was crying and he was going on about how he was right and by the time I finished college, he will be able to pay off everything."
In response, the daughter called her father a 'loser.'
I told him that he was being a loser right now and it wasn't fair that he lied to me for so long when he was just hoping that it would go back up," she wrote, adding that he expected her to grateful for an additional $20K her parents set aside for her in a mutual fund as well as the $32K he still had "because he made the right investments."
The mother argued that most kids don’t even get their parents’ help for college and that she shouldn’t call her father a loser for offering $32,000 to begin with, leading the daughter to feel "really ungrateful and spoiled."
People on Reddit reassured the daughter she wasn't wrong for being upset by her father's actions.
Though some people accused the daughter of being entitled being that many students don't get any help at all from their parents for tuition payments, others noted that there's a difference between being entitled and hurt by a broken promise.
"People use the word entitled like its an insult with no meaning," one person said. "But quite frankly, sometimes people are entitled to things - like expecting someone to keep their word."
When someone makes you a promise — especially when it’s a parent whose role as a parent is to care and provide — you expect them to keep it. As such, she made choices based on the promise, and now she’s going to suffer the consequences of her father’s risks.
To further support the daughter's feelings, one person in the comments even noted that there's a legal concept that theoretically supports the daughter's feelings.
"There's an entire concept in contract law called 'promissory estoppel' that acknowledges exactly this idea," they wrote.
"Simplified--if you promise someone something, and then they make decisions based on that promise, and then you yank that promise back, you may be liable for damages that arise from that decision."
It's possible the father does feel like a loser for draining his daughter's college fund, making her words cut even deeper. But her feelings are valid, and her father's need to continue trading to recuperate his losses, which some researchers have identified as pathological trading, or a type of gambling addiction, are even more cause for concern. Hopefully, the family can work together to find a path forward.
If you or someone you know is struggling with a gambling problem, help is available. The National Council on Problem Gambling provides a range of resources, including answers to commonly asked questions, a gambling behavior self-assessment, information about treatment and the National Problem Gambling Helpline (1-800-GAMBLER) to help connect you with local resources.
Isaac Serna-Diez is a writer who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics.