A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:My boyfriend is fairly poor. He lives with four other people but his rent is still around $350 a month. He makes a little more than minimum wage at a dead-end job and generally has little spending money that he uses for money and gas.Now let me note, I don't care at all about how much money he has, or what he does/doesn't buy for me. I know it's perfectly normal for anyone in their 20's to be low on cash. Money doesn't matter to me at all. I pretty much live paycheck to paycheck ontop of having crappy hours at work and possibly on the verge of being laid off.We've been dating for 6 months now, and for the past like, 2 or 3 months, I've been paying for mostly everything we do. Usually it's going to the movies, or getting dinner. Which again, I don't really mind, but lately it's getting to the point where I feel like he's just being a mooch. It's like things are getting hazy between him being poor and him just being cheap.Another thing that factors into this is that ever since I was little I've been overly nice to people, a pushover. I was overly nice to the extent that I would be taken advantage of. As I got older I recognized what was ok and what wasn't ok as far as people taking advantage of my kindness, and I guess now it's something I'm a little paranoid about. It really infringes on my trust and confidence when someone seems like they're taking advantage of me or what I'm offering, so when my boyfriend asks me to pay for the tickets, or pick up the tab at dinner over and over again, I can't help but feel a little suspicious.It also doesn't help that he owes his friend $200 and is very, very bad at making little payments to him when he has the funds to. He owes my mom $60 for tickets to a play that we all went to together, he said he didn't have the money at the time and would pay her next paycheck...and that was back in September.So I guess I'm just asking for an outsiders opinion on how this looks. If it looks like he's being cheap or I'm just being too defensive. My mom is the only person I really talk to about this, and she already thinks he's a loser, so she's very bias against whatever I have to say about him. I assume the best way to go about this would be to talk it out, but I'm REALLY bad at putting my feelings into words and I don't want him thinking I'm nagging at him for not having money, or coming off as bitchy or high matience. Is there a better way I can go about talking to him? Or even showing him how I feel?
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at work, cheap, confidence, money Reply to this Question
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (27 November 2009): Hi well you seem good at putting words on paper so try writing him a note! Expain you find it easier than talking about this problem. If youre both on a low wage its maybe fair to expect to take it in turn to pay for things. If you feel you are picking up the tab too much then its a reasonable worry and should be addressed.
A
male
reader, baddogbj  +, writes (27 November 2009):
 He is looking kind of cheap to me. He should really pay off that loan to your Mum as soon as possible if he has any self-respect.
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