I’ve become my boyfriend’s own personal bank because his mother uses his bank account. How can I tell him I don’t want to loan him money anymore?
I’m being dragged into my boyfriend and his mum’s financial situation and I’m close to losing my sh!t. Help!
I’ve been with him for two years, he lives at home while I have my own place. For the last year, when we made plans, he’d started to ask me to cover and he’d pay me back later (he always did) so I figured he was short before payday. No. One day we went to the cinema, and on the way in the car he asked if I was all right to cover as he didn’t have his card and I asked him what was going on? That I don’t mind but I couldn’t work out why he didn’t just bring his card?
His mum uses his bank account to pay all her bills from, out of his money, and she pays in her money after to make up the balance. She has her own account for getting paid, but for reasons I don’t understand short of her not having online banking, her stuff comes out of his account. She then takes his card to pay cash in at the bank. With the amount of transactions going in and out, she regularly takes his card to do this so he rarely has his own card.
Each to their own I thought… Until it started to affect me. As time has passed, I now by default pay for anything related to us and he pays me back after. This was fine for a while, but my circumstances are very different now. A couple of months ago, there was a problem with her pay, and I offered to pick up some groceries as she said she could pay me back in a couple of days. A couple of days turned into a week, then another week, then I had to wait until the start of the next month…
We’ve recently been talking about moving in together and eventually buying a place. But in the last four months, he’s had a number of his own direct debits returned unpaid, had to pay charges, and had orders rejected because things he’s ordered from his own money haven’t been able to clear due to his mum’s payments coming out. His credit record is going to take a hit but he doesn’t seem to appreciate this.
She checks his online banking and can see his money and anything he buys, and will frequently ask what a payment is and it feels so intrusive when some are for us. I’ve been asked twice by him in the last month if I can pay for something he’s planned to buy but can’t, and not small amounts either, until his mother balances his account.
I’ve somehow become a third party in this arrangement and I want to extricate myself but I don’t know what to say. My trouble is I don’t want to overstep where it’s not my business and I’m fully aware he’s good for the money but I never know how long it’s going to take to get my money back and I’m starting to feel a little bit like his parent rather than his girlfriend! What can I say to him to explain why I don’t want to do this anymore?