My mom has never been good with money. I've only really realized it in the past couple years, because I used to be like her. My parents were my only financial role models because public school didn't teach personal finances. But my mom has over $100k in student loan debt. I don't know how much credit card debt she has, but I'm assuming some, which is more than we have, since we don't have a credit card between us.

Let me go back a little to explain where things stand. Nearly five years ago, I was 20 and living with my mom in Washington state after having spent two years in Minnesota with my grandparents. Within a year my mom was moving to Denver Colorado to take a job at a hospital. If she works in a hospital she gets some loan forgiveness. I was single for the first time since I was 13. I was planning on moving with my mom and stepdad when they left. I'd never lived on my own, and certainly never in a state where I had no family.
Since I knew I was moving soon, and had just gotten out of a serious relationship, I decided to try dating casually. I didn't go out much, especially since I barely knew how to drive and didn't have a car, so when I didn't meet anyone I liked at community college, I joined a dating site. That's where I met my boyfriend. The only thing we had in common was a love of video games. We were total opposites in every other way. But he seemed smart and funny, and it was just supposed to be a fling anyway. Well, you see how that worked. We quickly fell in love, and before long I decided I was staying in Washington. He was living with his parents in the house he was raised in, but unlike me he had lived on his own, and had moved back in to help his parents while his dad was going through chemotherapy. He had a well-paying full time job though, and his father's treatments had recently ended, so we got an apartment together just before my mom and stepdad left. I hadn't had a job in over a year, but I got one at Burlington coat factory. My boyfriend was the sole production tech at a two-man wine cork processing facility. He ran production, the other guy managed the accounts. It was really just a satellite of a bigger company out east, whose owner really liked my boyfriend. His job was assured, until the owner decided to close that facility. He actually offered him an even better job in Connecticut. We thought about it, but I've lived out east before and hated it, and the cost of living was ridiculous. We tried to struggle along in Washington, thinking my boyfriend's wide range of work experience would get him another full time job. But there just weren't any good jobs to be had. After about another year, we finally gave in to my mom's persistent nagging that we should come out to Denver. They had bought a new house and said we could stay with them until we found steady work. So we set out in the dead of winter with a U-haul, trying to drive more around the mountains than through them. It was still a hellish trip, I don't recommend it.
When we arrived and settled in, we soon found we were trapped. My boyfriend's '81 Mustang wouldn't have made the trip, so we were counting on the extensive public transit to get us to work until we saved enough for a cheap used car. What we didn't realize is my mom's new house was in a new development next to the air force base, and transit didn't come there. And it turned out my mom had some plan for me to get certified as a medical transcriptionist or radiology tech and work at her hospital. But the thought of working in a hospital repulses me, and I'm not even sure the certificates would be of any use in the future. The first jobs we ended up getting were at the roller coaster park, Elitch Gardens. I made minimum wage, my boyfriend got a slightly higher one for the hellish job of park security. It was just a stopgap and a seasonal job, but my mom soon started complaining about having to drive us downtown, and basically said we had to get a car. She wanted to cosign for us on a car off the lot. But my boyfriend, who unlike me had been observing my mom's financial habits for some time, was leery of it. As the best solution in a pinch, we bought a little car from a guy who posted on Craigslist. The transmission fell out a few months later before we had saved enough to move out.

That's when we were forced into the decision that I learned yesterday to regret. My mom traded in her Hyundai and at the same time cosigned on one for us. I know nothing of car sales or insurance, so it was my boyfriend who ensured that we had gap coverage. He even asked the agent if the gap coverage would remain even if the loan were refinanced or consolidated, as he rightly suspected my mother would do this. The agent said yes, once you have gap coverage it stays for the duration of the loan. The loan is in her name I think, maybe that means my boyfriend was actually the cosigner? I don't know, like I said I'm clueless about this stuff. Anyway, the best way to avoid processing fees was to give my mom money and have her pay the car payment and insurance, because she actually belonged to the bank that financed the loan. This worked fine until we totaled the car last August. When the dust settled, my mom said we still owed $3500 on the car. My boyfriend says this doesn't make sense because we had gap coverage, but she insists that's the remaining principal after the insurance went through. My boyfriend suspects we're actually paying off some other loan of my mom's, but eventually agreed to pay it.

Here's where the trouble started. The monthly minimum payment was only $125, or so she told us. We wanted to pay the car off more quickly than that so we can get a new one. We already resigned ourselves to taking the bus all through the winter. As I write this I'm on the bus, heavy snow swirling outside. So we gave my mom extra for the payments every month. The first time we gave her $600 and made it clear we wanted to take a big chunk out of the loan so we could get it paid in less than a year. The second time we gave her at least $400 and said it was for two months. My boyfriend thinks we gave her $600 that time too, but I can't remember. I never thought I should have written it down. Last time was the only time we paid her the minimum, the holidays and less work had cut into our savings. So total, we've paid her $1200-1400 and should have around $2000 left to pay.
Yesterday my boyfriend spoke to his mom on the phone, and she offered to give us $5,000 to pay off the car. He hates taking money from his parents, so he declined, but she asked how much we have left to pay on it. He told me to ask my mom, thinking he might at least let his parents help us pay it off. So I asked her, and she said $2700 and change. I said that didn't seem possible, we'd definitely given her more than $800 over these months. I asked her to e-mail me a statement, and she did. And I cannot understand why she did without a fight, because it clearly shows that she hasn't been paying extra all the times we've given her extra money. It shows that we've paid the minimum ($115 incidentally, not $125) every month until November, where there's one for about $300, and she says there's another $250 that hasn't posted, which doesn't make sense either because last month we only gave her $125.

I just can't understand why she'd do this to us. We've been working our asses off, making our way up through crappy security and food service jobs, resisting the temptation to get a credit card, and now trying to dig ourselves out of the hole left by the car, which we're not even sure we should be paying.
While she has hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and goes on weekend vacations every month, and buys dinners on credit. And now she's been taking the extra money we're giving her, probably using it to pay off her credit cards.

The only reason I can come up with is that she thinks she's due that extra money from us for the times she's helped us out without demanding payment. I can't deny that she has, but it's usually taking us out to dinner, buying us omeprazole because we both have acid reflux and it's expensive. My boyfriend's parents, on the other hand, have sent us money a few times, and offered many more times, without ever asking for anything in return. In any case, it's a cold logic to use on your family.
But I can really only hope that's the reason, because the alternatives are worse. Either she doesn't remember how much money we gave her because she went out and spent it immediately, which means she has more of a problem than even I thought. Or she knows she's essentially robbing us and just doesn't care.

I just can't believe she did this. I didn't even say anything to her after she sent me the statement, because the next time we talk about it we're going to have to tell her something along the lines of, "We're giving you this much more, and that's it. If the balance still isn't paid, it's because you haven't been putting all the money we gave you on it, and we can't afford to pay more than the loan."
I have no clue what she's going to say, because I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that she did this. I can guess it's going to be ugly though.