Published
So I asked my mother if she could co-sign on a loan with me today because she has great credit and because I just got an e-bill in the mail yesterday saying that I still owe the school $5,234 for my tuition and fees. It was a pretty big surprise and a setback for me because I thought that my two scholarships would covered it all.
Nope, I'm in the hole. But long story short my mother told me she will absolutely not co-sign on a student loan with me because it will garnish all her wages and she doesn't want to go into college debt for me. And I have no one else to ask in my family because my grandmother has bad credit and my father is not in my life to ask him.
I don't have a job and never had one before, so I'm just freaking out now on what should I do.
My mother has always been this way( she didn't even want to fill out the fafsa for me because she didn't want them having her SSN). I tried joining NROTC a year ago when I was still in HS so they can give me a really great scholarship, but my mother wouldn't allow that either. I couldn't even get a job because my mother had let my driver's permit expire so I wasn't able to obtain a car to get to work everyday, even though I had about 3 job offers at the time.
Now I'm afraid she's trying to take away my future of becoming a nurse as well. She even suggested for me to wait until I'm 24 when I can become independent to apply for the fafsa or just go get a bachelors in early education and wait to become a nurse. But I don't want to wait.
What should I do?
(I'm sorry for my long post and me renting as well).
Did any of your babysitting gigs last 4 days? The OP should not be expected to sacrifice her education to raise her siblings.
I completely agree. If you cannot be there to parent your children, then don't have more children and force your existing ones to babysit so much so that they cannot go about starting their own lives. I babysat my younger brother for four hours max. If you're not the parent, you shouldn't be expected to fill the role of parent.
This is what I would do, set up a payment plan with the college. They basically will divide your payment up and you will pay a certain amount every month. In the mean time go to your financial aid office and apply for subsidized and unsubsidized loans to pay off your previous debt. Those loans don't have to be paid back until you quit or graduate. Work on getting at least a part time job. Have you applied for a pell grant? that is money that is funded through the government so you can further your education. Also apply for lottery tuition they pay like 75% of your bill. Check out to see what scholarships you can apply to. Good luck I hope things work for you.
I completely agree. If you cannot be there to parent your children, then don't have more children and force your existing ones to babysit so much so that they cannot go about starting their own lives. I babysat my younger brother for four hours max. If you're not the parent, you shouldn't be expected to fill the role of parent.
THANK YOU !! I understand having one child and struggling. A second one ? Maybe. But to just keep popping them out when you can't take care of the ones you have is irresponsible. As I read the OP's post I saw a mom trying to cripple her daughter so that she will be stuck there making her life easier. Since everyone is screaming responsibilty, if her mom didn't have a built in nanny anymore I bet she would make sure she doesn't come home knocked up again. You only get ONE chance to be young and free and no one has the right to steal that because they are too lazy to protect themselves. And yes I meant that with full judgment, snarkiness, and plain ole pissosity.
I'm going to date myself again here but for anyone growing up in the 80s, how many of you were latchkey kids? It was an extremely common thing. Did I raise my siblings, no? Did I watch them constantly, yes? In the summer we were home alone pretty much all day. My dad got home at 4, my mom much later depending on her jobs at the time. During the school year, I got my siblings off to school and watched them after until a parent arrived.
To the posters making a big deal about me mentioning being responsible and then cutting the OP's mom, just stop. We don't know the OP's mom. The OP felt obligated to stay and help out. Her mom suggested she should maybe wait until she is 24 for the to get grants. The OP felt it was for other reasons. None of us know the true situation as we are seeing one side of the story.
I think the OP got prematurely upset thinking there was an issue when there wasn't. It freaked her out and to her the world was ending and she saw her dreams up in smoke. She needed to vent, needed some reality and she figured it out on her own. Don't cut on someone's mom you don't know and what they may or may not be doing. I was a little shocked at a couple comments.
No, I won't turn 18 until December. And I needed my mother's consent to join NROTC at that time when I was only 16.My driver's permit expired because she didn't trust me to drive her car, so I didn't have a car to do my driver's test in. And as far as I know a permit cannot be renewed once it's expired because I had it for two 1/2 years and never used it.
Ok. If you really WANT to join ROTC, you can join once you turn 18.
It is not your mommies responsibility to pay for an adult to go to college. I was thrown out of my parents house at 16. Finished HS and went into the Military. Used the GI Bill to get my BSN.
Uou are not going to get me to feel sorry for you. And "figuring" your scholarship covered the costs...well it is YOUR responsibility to see what is paid for. Good lesson that you are an adult now. And a good lesson if you plan to be a nurse. DETAILS MATTER.
So, you think it's wrong to try to get your kid's to be independent and grow up, especially once they have graduated high school? My life was not hard growing up at all. My parents were poor. They got married when they were nineteen because my grandfather was an alcoholic and would beat the crap out of my mom. After he beat her, she would go to a phone booth and call my dad to come and get her. Then he took her to my other grandparent's house so they could help her heal. They had been together since high school. My dad gave up his dreams to go to college and become a lawyer so he could rescue my mom. They lived in a tiny apartment my dad's dad owned until they could afford a tiny house. They still live in that house today and raised 3 kids in it. I never wanted for anything growing up. I now see though, how resourceful my mom could be when making different meals when they didn't have money, usually right before payday. My mom stayed home with us until my little sister started kindergarten. Then there were many times she worked 2 jobs for us. Especially at Christmas. We all could play any sport we wished, I still remember my first pair of guess jeans. We only ever had one car, and my dad took the bus to and from work. I appreciate my parents and what they sacrificed for us.I also appreciate the lessons I learned. I lived 2 blocks from my grandparents (my dad's parents). My grandfather taught me so many lessons about life. He taught me how important family was and about work ethic. I learned most of my lessons not because my parents were trying to make my life hard, but because they had no money. I wanted a car at 16. They did not have the money to buy me one, so I did. I was required to pay my own insurance and gas for it, which required me having a job. That's not unreasonable. I wanted name brand clothes in school. I liked the Gap and the Limited so that is why I paid for them. I was in high school when all of that stuff mattered to me. I loved shoes and probably had 50 pairs of them. It would have been unreasonable to ask my parents to pay for that many.
Me moving out so early was my choice, not theirs. I had a full time job in retail management. They asked me if I wanted to move to a different store out of state for a job promotion. To me it was was exciting to get to be on my own and finally have privacy for once in my life. I was tired of there being 5 people, and only one bathroom. So I went.
I hope that I can teach my son these lessons. My parents never stood in my way of anything in life. They may not have agreed with some of my decisions, but they let me make them, and let me learn my lessons the hard way. My life was not hard. But if I wanted something I had to get it myself. I've always been a fashionista. To this day, I have two closets full of clothes. My son has more clothes than any boy I have ever seen. I am though starting to teach him some lessons. He has chores to do. He pays for his toys from the money he earns doing chores. If he wants electronic time, he earns it. He will be given more responsibility as he gets older. His dad and I have started experimenting with leaving him home alone for short periods of time. And hopefully, if I do things the right way now with him, I won't have him living in my basement when he is 30. I hope he gets to experience his life to the fullest. I don't think he will be if he's still depending on me when he is an adult. How will he travel the world and see what all it has to offer if he's dependent?
I never said that teaching independence is a bad thing. I'm saying that just because OP is a teenager and her mother is a single mom does not mean that OP is wrong and the mom is only doing what's right.
Being a parent does not mean you make the best decisions.
Her mother is setting her up to let her life pass her by all because she decided to have a bunch of kids and now expects her oldest daughter who has gotten scholarships and college acceptance, to wait until moms kids are old enough to go without a babysitter so she doesn't have to pay for it.
My mother was a single mother who used me and the rest of the family for babysitting, but she NEVER prevented me from getting a job, or a car, or moving away from home for college just because she didn't want to pay for childcare!
It is not your mommies responsibility to pay for an adult to go to college. I was thrown out of my parents house at 16. Finished HS and went into the Military. Used the GI Bill to get my BSN.Uou are not going to get me to feel sorry for you. And "figuring" your scholarship covered the costs...well it is YOUR responsibility to see what is paid for. Good lesson that you are an adult now. And a good lesson if you plan to be a nurse. DETAILS MATTER.
Good for you. Contributed nothing but snark.
Hello, I was a financial aid officer before I switched to healthcare. The $2,500 from the FAFSA does not make sense unless you are talking only about the Pell Grant. My numbers may be slightly off but generally a student can get $5,500 in federal student loans without any parental help. The pell grant I'm not so sure about, but you can call the hotline off of the fafsa.ed.gov website and ask a rep. Also, how expensive is your school that $18,000 in scholarships doesn't cover it all? Was the e bill from before the scholarship is applied? You can apply to ROTC now without parental permission, you just can't sign the papers until you're 18. You can apply for a nursing scholarship. Also NROTC is not the only way to go the Navy has a nursing program where tey pay for the last 2 years of nursing school and you get a stipend and have to do a PT test during the year and are free the rest of the academic year. You can join the reserves or the national guard which offer various programs for nursing. You can join the active Army as a medic and later apply to their LPN school. Or you can do 3 years acrive duty and get the post 9/11 GI Bill to pay for school after your service. Keep in mind too that in nursing school you will have to do clinicals which can be up to 12 hours some days including coursework and studying which will leave little time to babysit your siblings. Eventually, you'll have to take a less active roll in childcare. Also, there are a few nursing homes/ skilled nursing facilties that will pay for your LPN or RN in exachange for a couple years of work as an LPN/RN.
I was 16 when I got my first real job at McDonald's. I did not have a car, so I caught the city bus. Some of the passengers were seedy people, such as the guy who sat next to me and attempted to hand me a $20 bill while he snorted cocaine.
My parents also refused to provide information, so I was unable to complete the FAFSA. Although I had been accepted to several regional state universities, I could not attend without financial aid, and the proceeds from my minimum wage employment would not have been enough to cover the tuition.
Although I was sullen and bitter about my parents' refusal to provide information to complete the FAFSA for many years, I now realize that no one is entitled to an all-expenses-paid college education.
I entered the entry-level workforce immediately after high school graduation and didn't attend college until age 23. By that age, I was a homeowner who lived on my own and had a solid enough credit history to qualify for a private student loan to fund my tuition. I still could not obtain federal student loans or grants at age 23 because, even though I lived on my own and supported myself, I was under the age of 24 and still legally considered a dependent student.
My feelings on the OP are mixed. I can definitely sympathize with her. However, we were not all born in equal circumstances, meaning that some of us had to be creative and unearth roundabout ways to get through our lives.
75 percent of all graduating high school seniors in the US do not qualify to enlist in the military due to one of three reasons:You can join the reserves or the national guard which offer various programs for nursing. You can join the active Army as a medic and later apply to their LPN school. Or you can do 3 years acrive duty and get the post 9/11 GI Bill to pay for school after your service.
1. They cannot attain a qualifying score on the ASVAB due to having received a horrid K12 education.
2. They have a chronic health problem (asthma, congenital heart disease, epilepsy, cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, juvenile arthritis).
3. They are overweight or obese.
Not_A_Hat_Person, RN
2,900 Posts
Did any of your babysitting gigs last 4 days? The OP should not be expected to sacrifice her education to raise her siblings.