My addition is costing me £100.

[Asmodean_]

As far as having meals out goes, I pay for the meal myself on the premise that my mum will reimburse me for it (I'm 15 and have no stable income). This morning I got the receipts from the past week and gave them to her, it added up to "it's about £45, I think. Not sure." She says she'll reimburse me.

Fast forward to this afternoon - apparently two of the receipts I'd given her were for the same meal - there was a "this is what you bought" receipt and a "this is for your debit card in case you get audited" receipt. I'd been distracted at the time and had accidentally totted them up as if they were for separate meals (I go to that particular restaurant chain a lot, so seeing two of them on there didn't tip me off). The meal in question was £15.90, so naturally I had to pay back...

£115.90.

I immediately assumed she'd read the price wrong, but no, apparently she had also included a "gift" of £100 for the summer holidays out of goodwill. Before this gift I had about £300 in my account so this was quite a lot. Apparently, since I'd maliciously attempted to swindle her out of £16, the goodwill was gone and I had to give it back.

Firstly, according to her she'd already given me this gift, and at what point would you ever go to someone you just gave a gift to and say "Hey I actually don't like you give me the gift back!"
Secondly, even though I said "I think" and "Not sure", she managed to take this as "I would bet that £100 I don't know you're giving me that it's 100% accurate".
Thirdly, I didn't even know this gift was a thing until I was told to give it back. Obviously now I apparently have an extra £100 I wouldn't want it to just go away.
And finally, through a series of talks just under a year ago, an actual contract was drawn up saying that she would cover my university tuition in full on the basis that there were "no fallouts" i.e. arguments between us.

What do?

[Keltest]

For my part, I would approach this from the perspective that you clearly ticked her off somehow, and you would prefer not to upset her like that again. Don't bring up the 100 euros into it at all. If you make it about the money and not "hey, I obviously upset you, please help me understand it so I don't do it again" you are putting her on the defensive. That may mean that you wont end up with the money, but frankly I think not damaging your relationship with your mother is worth it in the long term.

Now, maybe she was just having a really bad day and was taking it out on you. Or maybe you've actually been agitating her unwittingly and that was just the final straw. But I think its important to have a level conversation about that, because either way both of you guys deserve to know if theres something that needs resolving between you.

[lio45]

This morning I got the receipts from the past week and gave them to her, it added up to "it's about £45, I think. Not sure." She says she'll reimburse me.

It was only a week's worth of receipts, and your inclusion of that cloned tab represented a 50% increase in the total amount spent on food. It was negligence that you didn't spot it. If you have a grand total of £45 spent on meals, how can you fail to spot that the exact same bill of £15.90 comes twice in there? At that kind of price-per-meal, you probably have three receipts for the entire week, which would mean that that receipt of £15.90 makes up a whopping two-thirds of your receipts.

Do you have valid excuses for failing to spot it? If I were you, I'd try to make sure mom continues to trust you in spite of this... it's more important than 100 pounds.

I agree with her that you were either a thief or an idiot (the latter is less bad), so removing that goodwill £100 isn't unreasonable as a penalty. Her role is to teach you life, among other things.

[Brother Oni]

Seconding both comments above, if only for the sake of your relationship with your mother. If it's an honest mistake, own up to it and apologise.

Even a more pragmatic approach favours this when you weigh up £100 versus whatever uni tuition fees will be in 3 years' time (they're currently £9,000 a year, so £27k for a standard 3 year course).

[Asmodean_]

Re: be honest:

I am being honest. I've admitted it was just a mistake, since it actually was, I wasn't trying to steal £16, and I've apologised for it.
It's just she doesn't believe me.

[Jormengand]

Honest answer: As a young person, you have to live with the fact that your parents are simply allowed to do stupid, even abusive things, you have no real rights, and anything that they give you they can take back at a moment's notice. Attempts to change this in contexts far more serious than £100 - and that's not to say that £100 isn't a fair bit of money - have been met with ridiculously large amounts of resistance, so in a sense, you shouldn't be surprised.

Yes, it's ludicrous, and I'd completely disagree with the idea that taking your money was in any way a proportional response in any case. No, there's nothing that you can do about it. At best, you can point out that you did say at the time that you weren't sure, and that there's no possible way you could have expected to swindle her.

If you can't get it back, I'll give you some money next time I see you. Probably nowhere near the full £100 (I don't have a steady source of income either!), but it'll be something.

[Aedilred]

The whole situation seems a little strange. She pays for your meals out but doesn't give you a budget? She reimbursed you on the basis of your vague estimate without checking the receipts? You couldn't remember how many times you'd eaten out in that week?

That there were two receipts with the same figure actually doesn't seem all that outlandish or that it would necessarily raise the alarm, if you eat in the same restaurant often and order the same thing each time. But I'd expect to be able to remember at the end of the week whether I'd eaten out two or three times: that's proportionally a big difference. If you were settling up at the end of the month it might be different but then the figure would have been larger. So it was pretty careless of you.

Obviously, repaying the excess money is totally reasonable. The extra £100, ymmv I suspect. This might be her way of trying to teach you the value of money, not to take things for granted, or whatever. If her gift was informed by context for <whatever reason> and she was then unimpressed with your dishonesty/carelessness/incompetence/ingratitude (delete as appropriate) I don't think it's unreasonable to retract it. If it was money she was going to give you anyway because you needed it then it's rather harsher - but ultimately it's still her money, so unless you're directly dependent on it for whatever reason it's still her prerogative.

In any case though you didn't know you were being given the £100, you didn't realise you had been given it, you therefore weren't relying on it and didn't even know you had it until, effectively, you didn't have it any more. From a practical perspective it's not unlike her using your account for clearing a cheque or a bank error that's corrected before you notice. So while it sucks, it shouldn't be that much of a sacrifice for you to give it up. As other people have suggested I would recommend discussing the situation with your mum, apologising for the misunderstanding, reaffirming that you weren't trying to scam her, and repaying the money she asked for without (further?) complaint. Handling it responsibly is probably the best way to begin to win back her trust here.

And finally, through a series of talks just under a year ago, an actual contract was drawn up saying that she would cover my university tuition in full on the basis that there were "no fallouts" i.e. arguments between us.

This puzzles me too as it's both an odd agreement to impose upon someone at your age (still completely dependent on parents) and an impossibly vague warranty. Also given that you were and are a minor you don't have the legal capacity to enter into a binding contract. Not that I'd recommend bringing that up over this issue, but it seems rather strange.

[lio45]

The whole situation seems a little strange. She pays for your meals out but doesn't give you a budget? She reimbursed you on the basis of your vague estimate without checking the receipts? You couldn't remember how many times you'd eaten out in that week?

That there were two receipts with the same figure actually doesn't seem all that outlandish or that it would necessarily raise the alarm, if you eat in the same restaurant often and order the same thing each time. But I'd expect to be able to remember at the end of the week whether I'd eaten out two or three times: that's proportionally a big difference. If you were settling up at the end of the month it might be different but then the figure would have been larger. So it was pretty careless of you.

I agree. At prices of approximately £15.90 per meal, for his total weekly bill of £45 we're talking about a number of meals that's between two and three. Not exactly an overwhelming/unmanageable amount of receipts from an accounting point of view.

How can you justify to your mom that you took the time to sum them up to that estimation of £45 yet failed to spot that a huge percentage of it was made up by you having two times the same bill in there? I could understand if we were talking about a £500 monthly bill of which a significant chunk would be the same £5.63 McD's Big Mac Value Meal with different dates on the receipts that you could've made that exact mistake of adding the duplicate version of one of these "standard" bills, but you had only a handful to tally up.

You were pretty careless with your mom's money there. There's a lesson to be learned. Make sure she knows you learned it.

[Wardog]

I agree with her that you were either a thief or an idiot (the latter is less bad), so removing that goodwill £100 isn't unreasonable as a penalty. Her role is to teach you life, among other things.

Fining someone £100 for (what appears to be) an honest mistake doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me.

And adding together all the receipts (including duplicates) sounds more like just carelessness than idiocy.


(IMO, this would only be idiocy if he had been intending to cheat her, because handing someone all the evidence needed to prove that you are fiddling your expenses would be pretty idiotic).

[Murk]

Honest answer: As a young person, you have to live with the fact that your parents are simply allowed to do stupid, even abusive things, you have no real rights, and anything that they give you they can take back at a moment's notice. Attempts to change this in contexts far more serious than £100 - and that's not to say that £100 isn't a fair bit of money - have been met with ridiculously large amounts of resistance, so in a sense, you shouldn't be surprised.

Yes, it's ludicrous, and I'd completely disagree with the idea that taking your money was in any way a proportional response in any case. No, there's nothing that you can do about it. At best, you can point out that you did say at the time that you weren't sure, and that there's no possible way you could have expected to swindle her.

Sadly, I really really have to agree with this.
Until you turn 16, 18 or 21 (depending on your country), don't really expect to have any rights. You're a glorified pet at best. Sure, your mother probably loves you and I'm sure she has good reasons for this, but you're simply not seen as fully human yet, no matter how stupid or silly that might be.

The only thing you can do is learn your lesson and handle all finance issues with your mother with the utmost care from now on. She's proven not to be really trustworthy in financial relationships, but at least now you know. Don't ever give her access to your bank account, for example.

With that in mind, I agree with other posters: if you're not getting the money back anyway, try not to sour the relationship too much. Sure, this was rather unfair, but damn, there's so much more unfairness she could get away with if she wanted.

[Starwulf]

Meh, crappy parenting technique on the part of the OP's mom. As a Dad myself, I can safely say I would never "fine" my child $100 just because they messed up on such a simple mistake. Yeah it was kinda dumb on the OP's part considering he only had 2-3 receipts to count, but hey, **** happens sometimes, maybe he was distracted by something else. His mom shouldn't be being such a gigantic [self-censored] about this. All she's doing is fostering seeds of dislike that's going to cause the OP to not want to have anything to do with her when he's older, likely stretching throughout his 20's and early 30's before any sort of reconciliation happens(if it even does, if she's being such a [self-censored] about this, I imagine she's being even worse in other areas, giving OP plenty of reasons to never talk to her again when he's older).

[Asmodean_]

Update: I'm allowed to keep the £100 if I complete a list of summer holiday chores, including painting a fence, improving my fitness and completing an entire Higher Project Level 2 (equivalent to half a GCSE, and is supposed to take 60 hours) by the 26th.

Of August.

This was almost certainly her plan all along. Goddammit. At least I got some civics knowledge out of it.

[lio45]

Fining someone £100 for (what appears to be) an honest mistake doesn't seem particularly reasonable to me.

I don't see it as a "fine", but rather as the loss of a bonus that could've been available.

He showed he was very careless with the management of his mom's money, therefore his mom decided against adding that 100 pounds of hers to the pool of funds he'll be in charge of managing.

[Murk]

I don't see it as a "fine", but rather as the loss of a bonus that could've been available.

He showed he was very careless with the management of his mom's money, therefore his mom decided against adding that 100 pounds of hers to the pool of funds he'll be in charge of managing.

That would be fair enough if it was a bonus that "could have been available" rather than a bonus that had already been given, and possibly already (partly) spent.
Deciding you don't want to give someone a gift anymore: fine.
Deciding you don't want to give a gift you promised anymore: fine, to some extent.
Giving a gift and then using your authority by age to take that gift back later: not fine.

[Brother Oni]

Update: I'm allowed to keep the £100 if I complete a list of summer holiday chores, including painting a fence, improving my fitness and completing an entire Higher Project Level 2 (equivalent to half a GCSE, and is supposed to take 60 hours) by the 26th.

Of August.

This was almost certainly her plan all along. Goddammit. At least I got some civics knowledge out of it.

Given that you're currently on summer holidays, it doesn't sound too onerous (a large number of people fit all that work in around a normal 40 hour work week and juggling family responsibilities), but I concede that I'm used to that level of work (I used to help out in my parents' takeaway during the summer holidays - you get used to 60 hour weeks after about the first week, plus I could snack as much as I needed to).

My suggestion would be to sit down with the list then plan and organise everything out into manageable chunks. Try and make each chunk modular so you can swap things out if circumstances don't suit it (eg if it's raining the day you're supposed to paint the fence) and make sure that anything that has pre-requisites is properly timelined (eg sanding the fence down before painting it).
Since you're really unlikely to have access to something like Microsoft Project and doing everything on paper is a chore you really want to avoid, I would suggest a spreadsheet - Open Office or Libre Office are good free software if you don't already have MS Office. In addition to proving to your mother that you're being responsible and can time manage yourself, you're also teaching yourself valuable software skills.

I know it seems incredibly unfair and it probably is (I definitely think your mother should have been upfront with what she wanted), but you essentially have two options - suck it up and get on with it or resist it and further antagonise your mother. Without knowing more details of your relationship, I can't judge the risks of doing the latter.

[lio45]

That would be fair enough if it was a bonus that "could have been available" rather than a bonus that had already been given, and possibly already (partly) spent.
Deciding you don't want to give someone a gift anymore: fine.
Deciding you don't want to give a gift you promised anymore: fine, to some extent.
Giving a gift and then using your authority by age to take that gift back later: not fine.

Actually, no. Per the OP, that £100 never got a chance to exist outside his mother's head. He learned of its existence when she told him he wasn't getting it anymore.

I immediately assumed she'd read the price wrong, but no, apparently she had also included a "gift" of £100 for the summer holidays out of goodwill.

... according to her she'd already given me this gift, and at what point would you ever go to someone ...

... Obviously now I apparently have an extra £100 I wouldn't want it to just go away.

[Jormengand]

Actually, no. Per the OP, that £100 never got a chance to exist outside his mother's head. He learned of its existence when she told him he wasn't getting it anymore.

Well, a gift only exists within the minds of the people who accept that that £100 was a gift. If neither of them thought it was one, then it wouldn't have been, but the point is that the gift, such as it was, had already been given.

[Murk]

Actually, no. Per the OP, that £100 never got a chance to exist outside his mother's head. He learned of its existence when she told him he wasn't getting it anymore.

Hm, I assumed she put it on his bank account and that he simply hadn't noticed yet, in which case it's already given.

Anyway, that's technicalities. There's nothing we or OP can do about it except for following her rules. There seems to have been some talk about it, lessons were learned, mother-child bonds were tested, the unfairness of human society laid bare, et cetera et cetera, so we're all good.

[Lethologica]

Update: I'm allowed to keep the £100 if I complete a list of summer holiday chores, including painting a fence, improving my fitness and completing an entire Higher Project Level 2 (equivalent to half a GCSE, and is supposed to take 60 hours) by the 26th.

Of August.

This was almost certainly her plan all along. Goddammit. At least I got some civics knowledge out of it.

I would be wary of assuming she planned this. It's a little weird either way. First the hundred pounds was a gift, then it's a punishment, now it's a bribe? Well, whatever. The money aside, those are good suggestions for keeping busy during the summer. Don't feel tied to them if you have different good ideas for your summer.

[Asmodean_]

I mean there's no saying it doesn't work. I'd be much more inclined to put effort into something if not putting effort was going to cost me money, as opposed to if putting in effort was going to get me money.

[EarlGreystoke]

whistles
How odd. Although it sounds fishy, I'd also caution against assuming she had intended this all along. That could get uncomfortable very fast, and given the loose conditions of your contract, I'd be wary of causing any unnecessary drama.

[AMFV]

I mean there's no saying it doesn't work. I'd be much more inclined to put effort into something if not putting effort was going to cost me money, as opposed to if putting in effort was going to get me money.

Well think about like this... As an adult you might say get a ticket, and then you're making money just to get to where you were before. Or in an even more accurate example, let's say that you file your taxes, then you find out that you made an error and added one number twice, the IRS comes and audits you, in a month where you have more expenses, now you have to pay them back, and then work to get to the amount of money you need to cover your expenses. Once you're an adult, it's never just money-in, in the same way it is for you now, where money you make is kind of like spending money, it's always a need to make a certain amount to stay afloat, so just think of this as training for that, it's an unexpected expense caused by a mistake you made... which is a lot better than when you have unexpected expenses due to something completely out of your control (particularly if it's one that could repeat without you knowing about it).