Adulting someone else's kids is hard

The Sandbox General
266

Goddaughter had a breakdown over finances last night. Not like she was ignorant of her situation, but a credit card bill finally drilled in that she is “on her own” with regards to her parents. She owed about $850 monthly when, biweekly, she only earned about $260 due to bad scheduling by work combined with 2 days she was legitimately sick and called in.

She was adamant something must be wrong because there’s no way she spent $850. I walked through her bill verbally and added up, $20, $3, $250, $30, yep we are getting to $700, $750, $800…

She verbally, explicitly without encouragement, said that she is buying things to feel a sense of control and because “the things I have in front of me can’t leave me, I know that I have these things.”

She mentioned she was going to pay “part of her Discover card” which was most of the $850 across her two cards. She has something like $15,000 in the bank. She considers that “Grandpa’s money” that she doesn’t touch and is hyperfocused on her cashflow account, which is a better mindset than “spend it all”, at least.

We had a good family discussion. I explained that the “pay part of my card” thing just will not happen, and explained why, and she fully understood and agreed. I explained that one of the most upsetting things to me would be hiding these financial worries from me and I respect and appreciate that she told us. I explained that I am her advocate, her friend, her support, but I will be angry if this is hidden. We expressed our rock-solid financial backstop for her, that we want her to be responsible, but she is a college student and not expected to grow her net worth. That we will always be here, that she is not being kicked out, even post-college that’s a discussion that she’ll likely move out at some point, but that is a 2-year-from-now discussion that isn’t relevant today, and no matter what we are her friend and ally and she’s never being kicked out.

We are working on things. We are working on a budget. If needed, it may be a hard “envelopes” budget where she moves cash from A to B when it is spent virtually.

She verbally processed - actually said, “I need to say this out loud to get it out there”, “Because you’re here, it is better to have $5 in my checking account and no debt than it is to have more money in my checking and have debt.”

I explained, sometimes some people may have other valid arguments, like if somebody was just laid off and needs that money to eat for the day and doesn’t have another choice - but in this situation, absolutely yes.

We are planning a vacation next year that she’s enthusiastically part of - her suggestion, actually. She will have to pay some amount, <$1000 but nontrivial. We haven’t discussed details with her, she will pay airfare, has paid/is paying for some tickets, but since Partner and I would need a hotel either way, we are paying for the hotel. Discussion on details for a few days from now since everything just happened.

Because Goddaughter pays “rent” for her auto insurance+a bit, we discussed that I could charge her $100 more “rent” for the next few months and put this in an envelope. She will know where that envelope is, I will never spend it. She can access it at any time she wants, but it lives in my office. It is hers, earmarked for vacation. If she needs it more than the vacation, she can always have it. It’s right there, and hers.

She was late on her monthly “rent” this month, which is 60% auto insurance. I’ve told her that she won’t have any late fee, but “late” shouldn’t be a thing and will be an issue if constant. We discussed it late last night. This morning, there is something like $300 sitting in front of me on my desk including about a hundred $1s that I need to count out. Didn’t expect that, but good, fine.

2 Likes
268

Hey, will you come over and talk with me about my finances :laughing: Good job, keep it up.

4 Likes
269

Went to a Pride event with Goddaughter over the weekend with her new… romantic friend? on their first true “date” after a couple hangout/walks. What do you call a romantic partner who is non-binary? I should have asked but Goddaughter isn’t around.

Unfortunately, the friend broke up with her. Goddaughter’s bummed, but it was a new thing, and perhaps they’ll be friends. The friend had just moved from out of state and was getting into things too quickly.

It was great to see Goddaughter at Pride though. She was a little intimidated. At home before and during college she was never allowed to be openly queer, and during her first college year while further accepting she was queer, she didn’t quite dive in at the time. She might’ve been caught going to Pride anyway, since Mom would track her location on campus and badger her if she wasn’t headed to the right class, etc. With her being college-aged, most of the people there were more like 30-70 and she felt a little out of place. But she was so happy being in a place where she felt safe and accepted. We did some crafts, saw some drunk people dancing, saw a drag show, went home.

2 Likes
270

Please get your months right.
It is Hispanic something Month and Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Time to wear pink.

1 Like
272

New FAFSA rejection, new 8 week wait. She’s been on hold for an hour attempting to talk to them again, we’ll get ahold of them today.

Objections:

  • Therapist’s letter is not written on official letterhead (It is 100% on official letterhead and wet-signed)
  • Therapist’s letter is written in the 3rd person. I need to review exactly what they mean since I didn’t closely read the letter. (Edit: Phrases like “It is the opinion of this therapist that Goddaughter’s treatment by her parents constituted emotional and verbal abuse.” The therapist needs to rewrite it more like “It is my opinion…”)
  • Not all letters describe your ongoing relationship with your father. Two of the people writing letters only ever met her mother. They need to add a sentence saying, “Her father does not interact with her” and re-print and sign it and get it to us.

Mind you, she asked very clearly in the last call, are there any other requirements? This list is everything? I don’t need to get anything else other than what I have here? There are no other requirements not listed here?

Turns out, there are more requirements.

Edit: We’re trying to get this turned back in by Saturday given the updated letters we need to collect. I’m hoping she won’t be hit by late fees because now, she didn’t turn in this FAFSA before the tuition deadline, rather technically she’s now turning it in after, again.

1 Like
273

That’s brutal. Sounds like you need to start recording all of these calls and submit the recording with your FASFA.

Or there may be the unwritten requirement that somebody who appears to have funds for school needs to demonstrate/prove their financial need by re-submitting their application at least 5 times.

2 Likes
274

With this one she is going to submit a separate cover letter detailing each time she’s called, on which days and the people she spoke to, that she was told this is everything needed.

Explaining that this is her sixth FAFSA attempt, that each time they add a new requirement they didn’t explain that she needs to go collect updated letters from each person because they added one irrelevant thing.

1 Like
275

This, or one of the prior attempts, is probably where I would have asked (via certified letter, cc’d to relevant congresscritters) for a copy of the published standards the application was being reviewed against, and an indication of precisely where in those standards the prior application failed.

After all, surely that should be possible if they aren’t being capricious in their review, and having the full published guidelines apparently seems necessary to submit a good application.

2 Likes
276

Ah, I didn’t quite explain this well enough.

We recently learned that each individual attempt at the application can be reviewed by a new person, there is no guarantee we get the same person.

We’ve also learned there is really no set list of guidelines. The issue with the therapist speaking in the third person? The next person from the Financial Aid Office had never heard of somebody requiring that.

There are some hard requirements, but very few. Everything else is “whatever that person felt like was needed that day, according to them.”

That’s why we’re submitting a cover letter this time, also touching on that.

Edit: How it was described to us is there is an area where FAFSA money is divided into pools. Over here is “normal FAFSA money” and things are pretty tightly regulated. Over there is “special circumstances FAFSA money” and the government says “everybody handle it how you see best” and is pretty hands-off. It’s up to the college if they want to handle things competently or not.

277

I had a suspicion that was the case.

Part of the reason for making the request is, for someone who can read between the not-really-subtle lines, is to convey the messages that the inconsistent, ever-evolving requirements is the sort of thing that judges react poorly to.

It’s not Karen-eqsque asking to speak to a manager or throwing an “I’m calling my lawyer” temper-tantrum, but it is one way to possibly get someone to consider that some of the :cow: :poop: really is :cow: :poop:.

The reason for cc-ing a government official is because they sometimes have higher level contacts, folks who, when alerted to bureaucracy having turned into a hamster wheel, can ask the minions to cut the crap and actually do something. (Although thinking about it…if it’s the school making the determination, rather than federal bureaucracy, a state AG’s office might be a better resource.)

1 Like
278

Thank you for the thought. I’m taking this seriously into consideration. Right now, we think if we flip this back around to being resubmitted no later than Monday (though we’re hoping Saturday) with a cover letter explaining her many attempts, maybe it will get us there.

But we might have to pursue your method… perhaps concurrently with resubmission. Perhaps it’s something to bring up in her next phone call with the Financial Aid Office, to get their ears to perk up and actually assist.