A mother turned to Reddit for perspective after realizing that years of financially supporting her adult son had pushed her into serious debt and left her feeling overwhelmed and taken for granted.
In her post, she explained that the situation began several years earlier, when her son moved back in with her after his daughter was born. During that time, she said she covered “literally everything” while he tried to get established as a fisherman.
She shared that she even drained her savings to buy him a boat and pay all the associated costs. “I paid for bait, traps, for his fishing license, for literally everything,” she wrote, adding that he also came to her for extra money for “smokes, weed, gas, clearance products at Walmart” and pretty much anything else he wanted.
He had promised to pay her back once he was consistently working, but things fell apart when he damaged parts of the boat that were too costly or complicated for him to fix. “He stopped working again, and I kept supporting him and the baby,” she said, noting that by then she was already “deeply in debt” and struggling with serious health issues.
Three years later, she helped him launch a landscaping and handyman business and even connected him with his first clients. Despite that, she said she was still paying for his car insurance and phone bill and buying healthy groceries for the household.
“I’m 27k in debt, and cannot get my credit card balances down to a manageable level,” she wrote, adding that her son still wasn’t contributing to the household bills.
She described trying to set boundaries by asking him either to pay her a set amount regularly or to put in a few hours of work each week for her cleaning company. Those efforts, she said, went nowhere. “At this point, I feel like if I don’t cut him off I’m going to drown,” she admitted, explaining that one of her credit cards alone was charging her “$200 a month in just interest.”
Although he had repaid a little, she emphasized that it barely made a dent. “He has paid me a very small fraction of the money, but probably not more than 2k,” she wrote, adding that even that figure “might be generous.”
One commenter was blunt, calling her son a “deadbeat” and telling the mom she was “YTA (mostly to yourself)” for allowing the situation to continue. They also wondered aloud if he might be dodging child support, suggesting that she could be unintentionally helping him avoid his responsibilities.
The mom responded that there was “no child support order” in place and that the custody arrangement was private. The real difficulty, she explained, came from his work hours on the boat, noting that “fisherman go to haul at 4am” and that no daycares are open at that time.
After her clarification, the same commenter softened slightly but didn’t change their core message. “You are still definitely YTA to yourself for putting up with this,” they wrote, advising her that she could absolutely help with her grandchild if she chose to — but that she needed to “stop giving this dude money.”
“I’m 47 years old, with health issues, and don’t know how long I can continue to do this,” the original poster admitted, capturing the exhaustion and fear behind her plea for advice.
