He Made A Budget For His Teen Niece To Show Her How Difficult It Would Be For Her To Get Married And After His Niece Ended Her Engagement He’s Asking The Internet If It Was Wrong
A man has a 19-year-old niece, who just got engaged to the boyfriend she has that she has only been seeing for 4 months now.
His brother made it very clear to his niece that if she went through with marrying this guy, he was financially cutting her off for good.
His niece is living something of the high life, and he described her as very “spoiled.”
Anyway, his niece came to his place to visit him a few days ago, and he suspects the intention behind her visit was to get support from him for her marriage.
He noted that he was also financially cut off by his parents after he said he would never divorce his current wife, and since his niece was facing the same situation, he thinks this is why she wanted to come see him.
“She was telling me who she knew it would be difficult but she could manage because she loved him,” he explained.
“I asked her if she had a budget she said she didn’t. I offered to help make her one and she was enthusiastic.”
His niece had no clue how much her groom-to-be made, so she sent him a text asking about it. He basically avoided the question, so this man figured he had to make around $16 an hour.
He modeled out the estimated salary for 12 hours a day, and 6 days a week. He added in $10,000 annually for tips, and he thought his niece would be making around the same.
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His next step was making it clear to his niece the price of everything she would need to spend money on, and he helped her see that she would need to make huge adjustments to her style of living.
Once his niece understood she would need to change her life considerably to live within the budget he showed her, she began to doubt her relationship.
“She broke up with him and has moved back home,” he said. “It appears she asked him about his salary and it was lower than my assumptions and that freaked her out and she broke up with him.”
“She is upset and she said I scared her and she really misses him. My wife said that I was a bit manipulative with my assumptions as I did know they were more generous than normal and she would freak out when she tried to make a real budget. I did know that and It does make me feel a bit bad. I feel like I played her here.”
Here’s what the internet had to say.
“You didn’t play her. You gave her a badly needed dose of reality. You showed her how to make a budget, which gave her a rosy picture of how her life would be with him financially.”
“It was a much lower standard of living than she is used to.”
“It forced her to look a the financial ramifications going forward if she stayed in that relationship. She decided that her standard of living was more important to her than “love.” Thanks for taking the time to explain to her how things work in the adult world.”
“I wish my parents had done this with me in general. I feel like I was never taught how to be an adult and have been making it up as I go along since then.”
“This is the thing. Until you’ve actually paid bills and been out on your own or even had to worry about money, you just don’t understand until someone puts it into perspective for you or until it’s forced on you.”
“Budgets are often generous too and usual spending can easily exceed that if you’re not careful. Real life is pretty expensive.”
“Lol how dare you manipulate her with facts and logic!”
“Honestly – books and movies can generate unrealistic expectations on love and marriage. Marriage is a legal lifetime partnership.”
“Love makes it wonderful, but if you base a marriage off of love alone – you’re gonna need a lot of luck too. Life goals need to align, how you handle conflict, financial tendencies, even work ethic.”
“I dated a guy briefly who I was really into – but he was a 3rd shift stocker at Walgreens making a little above minimum wage.”
“Which is totally fine for some folks – but he had zero ambition beyond that. That’s absolutely fine for him.”
“I had graduated from college, I wanted to own a house, I wanted to retire someday. My goals and his didn’t align. Probably would have had a lot of fun, but I wouldn’t have been happy long term with someone unmotivated.”
“My husband and I clicked on every level, he has a good blue-collar job as a machinist, and we love the hell out of each other. All of the big pieces were there, a lot of little ones fit too.”
“Middle class, sure, but I’m fine with that. OP’s niece is used to upper class (probably), and if this guy wasn’t worth downgrading to a lower class of living well, can’t blame her. Maybe that makes me a snob, so be it.”
You can see the rest of what the internet had to say to him here.
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