SO's oldest DD is 15. She has an entitled streak and while she is a good kid in general, she does NOT understand or know the value of money. I blame both SO and BM for this, but mostly BM for her outlandish spending habits and inability to budget.

here is basically the deal... BM and SO were still married legally while he was deployed to Iraq. She was getting all his money which she was promptly spending on things other than the household bills. He was not spending anything. She bought the girls all kinds of expensive new toys and failed to pay even the mortgage for a large chunk of the time he was gone and wrote bad checks to a local business signing SO's name and he had to go to court and prove he did not write the check b/c he was DEPLOYED on the date it was written to clear his name and save his military career. BM was suspended from doing the finances for the church daycare where she works b/c she is suspected of stealing money from the daycare. She was in business with SO's BIL in the past and did some *ahem* illegal things and ended up stealing a few thousand from this business. SO did not know any of this until this year when the divorce was done and his family finally told him why they stopped talking to them. WTF??? ANyways... all that said, she only has that part time job at the daycare and has some health issues. He let her take some extra time to find a job (she has a degree that he paid for) and gave her his entire paycheck minus what he needed to get to work and back and to eat to make sure the girls and the house was taken care of. She chose to not use the money for those purposes. He did that for 2 months before he said "she's had time, this is no longer going to happen" and got an atty separate from hers (they did the divorce through hers) and SO and BM agreed on a specific amount based on state guidelines for CS and he gave her an extra $500-$600 a month to be considered "alimony" on top of that. It's about half of his paycheck going to her. During this time I was supportive of him doing this short term and was helping him what little I could with his own daily expenses. Once he stopped doing that, we now pay bills together (separate accounts. We are not married and do not live together per se) and we are still not well off, but we make it. She is getting plenty of money to pay her bills and get by plus she gets her money from her part time job. She has been "looking" for a job but keeps having excuses why this one or that one is not acceptable to her. Whatever. You take what you can get when you need money to pay bills!!!

So anyways... the last 2 paychecks of his were the first ones that he started giving her the CS and alimony out of instead of the whole thing. She apparently did not plan appropriately even though she knew it was coming. She has cell phones for all of them, plus a house phone, plus dish network with premium channels, plus internet through the cell phone provider, and then her normal bills which are lower than mine even though she has a larger house than I do which the bills thing is a whole other story.. my point is, she can turn some things off to save money just like I did when I started being on my own on bills and I didn't even have my ex paying CS like he was supposed to (working on that through my lawyer... whole other story). She is doing fine but is not budgeting. SO has offered to pay for part of the girls' pageant dresses that BM just bought as well as SD13's softball fees as they agreed if BM would give him a number. She was askd this twice last week and still has not told him how much. She must not be too bad off.

Well, the second time he went to pay BM, she was already calling the morning she knew his pay came asking for the money. He put it in by noon that same day just like he agreed to. That night, he got a message from SD15 on text. Her exact words were "Thank you for paying us. Seriously. Thank you." WHAT IN THE HELL IS THAT ABOUT???? SO he calls BM that night and she starts her ducking and dodging that she does when she knows she messed up and she "had to go".... Seriously. Talking to a teen about money and stuff is one thing.. making it clear how much is coming in, what is going out, and what you can afford is fine.. but something is WAY not right about how she said that. First of all, it appeared before this that BM was trying in some ways to make their family separate from SO for the girls... that she was their family and SO was a visitor, basically.. which is consistant with this text. She has in some ways been very helpful with SD11 and encouraging with her seeing her father and I and is supportive of that relationship, but some things she has done lead me to believe she is trying to pull a fast one. I told SO I think he should do damage control with SD15 and SD13 since their mother has already opened the gate on this discussion. They need to know exactly what is going on with finances and that he and I are not living high on the hog while their poor mommy gets nothing. We are broke too but we have a budget so we can afford to do fun things with them when we do have them (SD15 and SD13 refuse to come, though... so we just take SD11 as of now).

So, how would you approach this with SD15 if you were SO? He is a little lost here LOL. I don't know what to tell him b/c my kids understand money basics and I don't tell them specifics yet b/c they are too little. I think SD15 needs to know the truth since she seems to think we are rolling in the money and are "paying them"... this is the same child that asked to get a blackberry added to my phone plan with a data package and that thinks she is entitled to $3k for a car the moment she turns 16 just because (her mom contributed to that.. she tried to get SO to say he would pay 3K for SD15's car, BM would pay 3K for SD13's, and then they would split SD11's when she was old enough... but SO says not coming for visitation with daddy equals no money from daddy for a car)... She threw a FIT over us saying no to paying $50 a month for her to have a better phone than her dad when she already has a better phone than him through her mom's cell service.