We paid her cash every time.
But, since this all started at the time we lost our car, obviously, I think we should be able to look back at our bank statements and piece it together. We don't often withdraw cash, especially not in the large amounts we would need to pay her. So if we add up any large withdrawals, we can sort of see how much we were paying her. It won't be exact obviously because we usually take a little extra cash to make change for bus money, but the statements combined with our memory should give us a decent idea of how much we've paid her.

We're not really in much of a position to move anywhere at the moment. Partly because of financial issues, but also because our roommate is schizophrenic and has nowhere else to go. Her mom and stepdad live here but kicked her out a couple years ago, and when she needed to find a new place when her previous roommate decided to move, they did not say she could come back. I like to think that if we hadn't offered her a room, her parents wouldn't have let her end up on the streets. On the other hand, they've never once visited her when she's in the mental hospital. Their relationship is a question mark, I really don't understand it. In any case, the three of us are pretty well tied together with the living situation. We got a two-bedroom place when the first lease was up (three people in a one-bedroom really sucks), but we couldn't afford this place without her paying a third of the rent. We can't move to a cheaper place while she's with us, and she doesn't make enough to get a place on her own. Right now we're just kinda riding it out, trying to build up savings and see what happens.

Eventually we will probably move back to my boyfriend's hometown in WA. But we don't want to move again and end up in the same situation. Our lives were supposed to be better when we moved out here, with plenty of jobs and my mom nearby. Instead we've been digging ourselves out of a hole most of the time. If we moved now, it would set us back financially even more, and we'd just have to do this all over again.

But I will not be tying myself financially to my mom ever again. My boyfriend never wanted to do it in the first place, but she basically said she wasn't going to give us a ride to work anymore, so we didn't have much of a choice.
So far the plan is to work out how much we should have left to pay if she had been putting all the money we gave her into paying off the loan, pay her that, perhaps with a little extra to allow for error and because she's my mom, and tell her that's all she's getting.

I just wish I hadn't listened to her and gone to college on loans. I never even finished my AA because we moved. We can't afford for me to be going to school and not working, and I think I'm too easily overwhelmed to do both. Certainly not while working 40 hours a week, or as much as my work will give me, which is what my boyfriend would demand if I did want to go back to school. I'm just lucky my debt is less than $5,000. My mom will be in debt for the rest of her life. It doesn't even matter how much she makes, her wages get garnished and there's no job she could get, even with a medical degree, that could pay this off.
I will never let myself be trapped that way.