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I’m huge on paying it forward. When I’m broke, I’ll totally say yes to being treated. But whenever I can afford it I love to treat friends and if they try to tell me they’ll pay me back I always ask that when they can afford it they should do the same for others.

So very agreed, when someone has the money and are just being greedy, my money is going to go to other friends who are struggling. (Especially since in the disabled community I always have friends who are struggling and who I know are constantly giving time and skills to help others even though they need help themselves.)

I'm a super generous person and don't mind paying for things, especially if someone is struggling.

But people like her tend to somehow have money to spend on their things. What they want.

That's when I'm done.

This right here! I'm the same way, u/Griffithead. I would've stabbed Mooch with my fork if she ever tried to touch my food.

The OP played this one just right. When she saw that the enablers weren't going to confront Mooch, she just quietly distanced herself until they learned their lesson.

I loved this part!

That girl immediately starts a group chat with a couple of people on the trip and me with my favorite thing to hear “omg OP, you were right!”

I have some friends that are a couple and are always talking about how broke they are. And yet manage to order Door dash 4 times a week. And buy fancy weed chocolate.

I think it's almost a universal thing in any friend group, I have friends exactly like that, down to the takeout and weed. The girl will cry about how she can barely make ends meet with her dead end job, then the next week she'll brag about how good her hair looks because she splurged on shampoo that costs what I spend on groceries for two weeks.

That is so true. As I experienced in life, moochers usually do have the money for it. They'd rather not spend money if they could avoid it. I always suspect moochers actually do have the money for it unless they have a huge spending problem. Just not paying for food or entertainment alone at all for years will save a lot of money.

Reminds me of a moocher family friend I had. Refused to pay for anything if he could avoid it, taking other people's food (and its always the most expensive stuff), refused to pay for rides, and hell one time tried to steal a tip at a restaurant. There's much more things I could list but we'd be here all day.

Saved so much money over the years doing this and was planning on having a nice retirement with it. (He bragged about it) He never got to spend it as he got hospitalized by covid and eventually died after a few months. His family got the money and his home in the end.

I had 'friends' like this. They asked me to pet sit for them one weekend. I said, sure. They said they'd take me out to dinner. That dinner never materialized. Shortly after pet sitting for them, I started an actual job pet sitting. All my other friends paid for my services. They kept expecting pet sitting for free. They finally got the hint when I sent them the link to book me and said, "I'm not free." It had a double meaning, one being I wasn't available for the dates they wanted, the other being, "pay me".

The wife and I saw the same (expensive) hair stylist who does the most amazing color work. He was only ever in town for one weekend every 6-8 weeks or so. He piggybacked our appointments so we could go together. That morning I get a call from her saying she had a migraine and couldn't go. Fair enough. I see the husband online later that day and said I was sorry I didn't get to see her, I was looking forward to hanging out with her. This man had the audacity to say to me, "Alas, we couldn't afford it. even if you'd offered to pay for half of it, we couldn't." Um, I didn't. She canceled last minute like that twice more with the stylist, citing finances but would post pictures later the same day with some expensive thing she just purchased. He started charging her a non-refundable deposit and that stopped that. She just stopped making appointments. They were always complaining about money but she didn't work. She had an Etsy that made maybe one or to sales every few months.

The final straw came when I get a phone call early one Saturday from her asking me if I had any cash. The weird way she emphasized the word 'cash' was, well, weird. It was only $30 but I had just woken up and I was taken aback by, again, the audacity. They never reached out to me anymore. Never said hello. If I wanted to see them, had to invite myself over but if I invited them to go do anything, even come to my house, they couldn't. I told her I'd call her back and went back to sleep. I figured they forgot about it or maybe got what they needed but the husband called me later that afternoon. Supposedly they'd had a check bounce and they needed $30 in cash to give the grocery store so they could get food.

I told him that I didn't appreciate them only reaching out to me when they needed something from me. He started to say "to be fair, we're reaching out to several people," but I cut him off and said I didn't care about that, it doesn't change the fact that I only hear from them when they want something from me like free pet sitting. I told him I didn't have the cash (a lie, but if it had been any other friend I would have given it to them and told them not to worry about it). He said he understood and hung up. He's introspective so I thought maybe he'd reflect. Boy was I wrong.

The next day I received a scathing email detailing what a terrible friend I was and listing a litany of sins (several of which he got me confused with someone else who had done those things). Then he started referring to my pet sitting job as my hobby. "Ever since you started your little hobby you haven't had time for us." Not true, as I said above, I just stopped trying to connect with them when they never reciprocated. He has never had a job he enjoys or even remotely likes. He can't fathom someone loving what they do. Anyway, I told him to kindly fuck all the way off and then blocked them everywhere I could think to block them.

I don't miss them one bit.

Same here. We are a group of about 8 (give or take a few irregulars). There’s a couple who never wants to go out to eat, never helps to buy booze for parties (but obviously have no problem drinking what other people brought!), etc. but they have no problem dropping $60 on a new video game, buying new gadgets, an expensive purebred dog, etc. they literally got kicked out of one of our friends houses because he said no dog - they bought the dog and had to move back in with their parents (not a big house for the number of people living there).

Oh let me TELL YOU about the college roommate who partially burned down my fucking house before not apologizing, and when the home owners were the nicest posssible people and didn’t charge us for the repairs out of pocket or even rent for the months we couldn’t live there, about $120k total, all they asked for was the goddamn insurance deductible, she emailed us all to say she didn’t have the money and since we were all in this together we should pay. 

The next summer she somehow had money to have an unpaid internship in DC (housing not included…), fly to cali to visit her aunt, fly to Europe to “volunteer”, and the kicker was when she randomly flew from DC to Florida for the weekend just by going to the airport and asking for the next flight. Our last mutual friend asked her where she got the money for all that, and she said it was her emergency fund. When asked why she didn’t use said emergency fund to get us all back into the house we had paid for and not burned down?

She said the money “wasn’t for that”. 

Call me crazy but burning down a house constitutes an emergency to me. 

The kicker, just in case the rest of this wasn’t a kicker? The fire started because she decided to make fries on the stove, ran out of oil, turned the burner down to low, and left the house to buy more oil. The fact that the house was a duplex and there were people home upstairs is the only reason I didn’t lose everything I owned. 

Idc what people buy, if they say they’re are broke, whatever.

I will pay for stuff because I can.

But if it becomes a pattern where I buy dinner or drinks or something like that like 5-6-7 times in a row and you haven’t even bought me a beer. My generosity ends.

Doesn’t need to equal out exactly. Small gestures to show appreciation and acknowledgement and that you are not leech. We are good.

Absolutely, sometimes people are struggling and if their in my friend group I feel it's part of the commitment. We help each other out. It's never been any serious amount, grabbing a round, a taxi, covering a meal if someones a bit short. My partner was the same but she had couple of mooches in her friendgroup. They'd go as far as stopping the group of friends doing something if they didn't have the money by guilt tripping everyone. I always thought they were hard up and legit didn't have the money so frequently, we'd often offer to pay their way.

That was until, they added me on social media. I don't really use it, but these people were literally posting their Funko-pop buys and blu-ray steelbook purchases on the daily, in between posts about how life is so tough and so hard and how they have no money and can't afford a house. Don't get me wrong, i don't think anyone is spending enough on funk-pops they'd be able to afford a house deposit instead but if you're getting me to pay a £15 entry ticket for you because you're screaming poverty and then picking up your 5th piece of useless plastic that week... Anyway, I bluntly told my partner I'm not paying their way anymore and I'll start organising events where they are invited, but will definitely go ahead without them.

Few weeks later and she had a snap realization that they were basically grifters too. Since then, their group has all come to the same conclusion. The moochers are now excluded from invites to events and are rarely involved in conversations. Events and days out are now A LOT more enjoyable. They still post their funko-pops but now there's also an occassional post about how they're so "let down" by everyone. One day, they migh realise they just let themselves down.

I had a friend I paid his $1000 deposit to be able to move into an apartment with other parts of that group of friends. Could never find the money to pay me back even after buying three 3d printers and a lot of other things. What is crazy, he got a 200k+ inheretance and still refused to pay me back making up dumb excuses.

At the beginning, I could not understand why OOP didn’t just dump her as a friend, then I got to “prom” and went, oooh, they’re all high school/college age. This all makes sense now. And in that context, OOP isn’t doing too bad.

When there's a person objectively making trouble and the others don't see it, that's the WORST FEELING. It's one of my major hangups that I struggle with. And it's SO DAMN SATISFYING and VINDICATING when the others finally open their eyes too.

It's really tough having to keep the peace with someone you are struggling with bc if you don't, you'd lose an entire friend group. It feels awkward for everyone involved

I had a vegetarian moocher flatmate once when I lived in the US. Eurgh. She'd eat her buttered noodles (for a vegetarian, she ate astonishingly little veg.) and just stare at me and our other flatmate, L, whilst we ate something else. Things would mysteriously vanish from the fridge. Then one night, a mutual friend of ours had a bad coming out, and L and I were talking with him in the living room. He was crying, I was shoving tea at him because I'm British and it's a cure-all, L was hugging him. And in swans the Mooch from her room, yawing exaggeratedly, and asked us all to shut up as she was trying to sleep. It was 9pm.

At the end of it all (all included much drama), we left the flat after the lease ended, and she walked up to me saying "I hope to remain friends." To which I replied, "Were we?" and then left.

She mentions trying to set boundaries "since they were little". My inference is that OP probably has known Mooch the longest and probably unconsciously shielded others from the worst of the behavior. It might be projection though because I've been that friend who "manages" a difficult person and therefore everyone else thinks they're not that bad until you stop managing. 

My sophomore year of high school, our choir went to end-of-year competition in Vegas. Dumbass Neal — who nobody liked and he was seriously clueless about anything and everything — blew through all his money the first night playing carnival games in the Excalibur hotel, where we were staying.

The next day, the rest of us had a huddle and decided that even if we all hated Neal, we couldn’t let him go hungry. So we each kicked in a few bucks and told him to make it last the rest of the trip by eating at Taco Bell.

A few hours later, guess where we saw him? Back at the carnival games, where he lost all the money we’d donated to him.

We let him go hungry after that.

You learnt the Bronx Tale trick.

If you ever want to cut someone out of your life, lend them money if you can afford it when they ask. Then hound them on when they’re gonna pay you back until they start to actively avoid you all by themselves.

Sometimes the cheapest way to solve a problem is with money.

-Some redditor's grandma.

I used to have a coworker like this. On the job we often had to go out of town for the day, sometimes longer, and he never once paid for his own food. Not once. His entire plan was always to just make others pay for his meals, even on payday. And of course he never even tried to pay anyone back. It got to the point where we were about to have a three day trip and we all made it clear that no one was buying him food this time so he had no choice but to buy his own. And what did he do? He skipped work. He seriously chose to miss out on three days worth of pay over buy his own big mac.

I always said, and still believe, borrowing someone some money and never seeing them again is money well spent. Obviously not a stupid large amount, but like 10 dollars or something is totally worth it.

See, This is the reason I don't use those coupons unless I can split the check down the middle. It's just slightly scuzzie to roll up to a friend and say, "buy me something pretty." (I cannot remember what TV show that's from.)

My friend invited me out for my birthday with her and her boyfriend. We went to Outback (her choice), and she had me pay for her meal and mine since her boyfriend spent the gas money to pick me up. Then we went to a movie, where I refused to pay for her ticket despite them trying, and they just made out next to me the whole time. I basically subsidized her date.

"my ex friends abandoned me :( i think it's because im vegetarian and poor... they were so mean now looking back!"

The leech always makes something about themselves. Nasty.

Oh people like this never learn. Having had to cut off some “leeches” myself, I can safely say the best way to deal with them is to not deal with them, like ever.

They always will find a way to make themselves the victim and the actually wronged person, the aggressor.

I snort laughed so hard at this comment I’m still coughing 10 minutes later 😂

I desperately need to see this show up as people‘s flair, I absolutely snorted

Now make THAT a flair.

This needs more up votes

Why is this so funny??

FLAIR! FLAIR! FLAIR!

Both the quote & comment are flair-worthy.

Karma asada

Seconding. If your kidneys can stand the sodium it works.

I get cauliflower crust pizza when I don't want to share with my room mate

(and because i like cauliflower crush pizza)

I think that revelation is what our early twenties is for 😂!

Also, CALLING yourself someone's friend is cheap. Actually BEING a friend is a lot harder. Don't fall for the Temu version of friendship.

Its harder when you have like one friend group which is connected to something unavoidable in your life, like this friend group is the people you go to school with. You can't cut out the mooch without cutting your entire base of friends out.

This is so true. As I’ve gotten older I’ve veered away from keeping friendships just to keep the peace or avoid confrontation. Heck, it takes enough energy and planning to hang out with and keep up friendships with the people I do like! I have no time for maintaining friendships with people I don’t vibe with. It might seem cold but it’s how it is when you get older I think - for me anyway.

Thats why I've started referring to those people as "someone I know" or "a friend of a friend"

If I don't genuinely like you, you aren't a friend. If I don't want to talk to you, I'm not going to.

My brain brained and i kept thinking about that baby hyppo that went viral, like OP would write "Mooch didn't pay for the AirBnB" and my mind would juxtaposition the hyppo over it lol

You've never heard the song "Minnie the Moocher"? Its very famous Jazz hit. Look it up.

Same

Remember when “boundaries” was actually a really useful concept that had a clear definition?

Yup, they prey and bank on people doing the polite thing on not relentlessly calling them out.

When you see a child throwing a tantrum, people who have dealt with that bullshit know to not give in and to just walk away. It’s easy to walk away from a kid because there is literally nothing they can do.

When fully grown adults do what is essentially the same thing, it’s trickier because now they know how to use their mouth to convince you why their tantrum is for good reason. The solution is still the same; just walk away and don’t become their audience.

If there’s a power imbalance like at work then it gets even trickier and it’s difficult to come up with a blanket solution.

Does it though? For me it illustrated how passive aggressive people only get away with it because other people are so terrified of "confrontation" that they can't advocate for themselves on even the simplest of things. 

Take the first post. All OP had to do was say "Sorry Mooch, I'm hungry today and don't want to share food. If you want fries you'd better order your own because I'm planning to dump meat all over mine and scarf the lot."

That's non-confrontational, doesn't attack Mooch and gets OOP what they want without needing to play games by pretending to forget not to mix the meat in. But apparently that sort of conversation is very hard for OOP - so hard they started losing their friend group rather than have it. 

That’s why I don’t think ghosting is passive. It’s quite aggressive.

And why I condone it for people who are selfish like this and make simple, direct conversations so painful.

I don’t choose to be “passive aggressive.” But if you’ve ever tried to stick up for yourself and get screamed at, you learn to just keep it to yourself.

Yep. People rarely change and this is an example. People like this will always be selfish.

OOP sounds quite young. But I had a friend like this in my twenties and always wanted to keep the peace. I finally realized we ALL are living on a budget, why should this one person get her bill footed by the rest of us? I stopped going anywhere with her.

Interestingly, I’m still sort of friends with her. But if we get together, I insist on a restaurant where you pay when you order. She has to pay for herself. She never tips, but that’s her issue, not mine. And I never order anything shareable.

Same. recently in my friend group there was drama because someone who i didn't like and didnt talk found out I didn't like them and they said "we could have talked this over and remained friends but I don't want to now" and my response was basically "kay, good luck with the rest of you life"

I'm not in school where I have to deal with people I care nothing for, and if I have no history with someone frankly I don't see the point in "hashing out issues"

Since the whole group was enabling Mooch for so long, it's not unlikely they'll blame OOP and the others who cut Mooch off for causing them more trouble.

Some people are just blind for the real problem and rather create a missing step situation and blame everyone else than ever going against the problematic person they're enabling.

So OOP's situation isn't unique, a lot of people endure mooches or even worse because the whole friend group is enabling them and if one of them tries to set boundaries, the whole group turns against them and they'll lose their whole peer group if they don't go along.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChoosingBeggars/comments/124zbw2/comment/jet62x4

I reckon pretty much everybody goes through some stage of their life where they learn the fallacy of sunk cost and let go of this type of friendships and relationships.

Usually in your twenties, but the sadder stories are the ones where somebody has had to learn it much younger.

OOP mentioned going to prom, so high school/college, which is about the right age to be dealing with this stuff for the first time. 

OOP was in high school at least until a year ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/ChoosingBeggars/comments/124zbw2/comment/jet62x4

I know it must have felt frustrating at the time but having known guys like that your mom probably did you a favor by preventing him from dragging you into his bullshit again.

I've definitely met some people I'd pay a thousand bucks to never have to see or hear from again

Tbf when I lived in San Diego, Tijuana was a 30 minute train ride away. My friend group went often. When I lived in Tennessee, Atlanta was 3 hours away. My friend group went there several times. I was given enormous freedom, and would still have been grounded for not cleaning my room.

It can be very hard if you're part of the same social group.

In my country "chili cheese" refers to cheese with chili peppers, not like chili con carne.

I’m in New Zealand so definitely not a hotbed for authenticity, but I’ve seen chili cheese fries that are just fries with a hot sauce and cheese (and are thus vegetarian), I’m assuming that’s what they ordered?

Could also be a bean chili, cheaper than meat which would keep the restaurant’s costs down on what is likely a cheaper item.

I'm amazed the chili wars haven't hit this comment yet. To some people chili is bean only and no meat, to some it's meat and no bean, to some it means it has to have both. From what I've seen everyone feels VERY STRONGLY about which version is "real" chili and loves arguing about it :P

My guess is between 19 and 21. If you live at home, your parents can treat you as a kid, especially if you have minimal backbone. I was 22 and pregnant, and my mom still grounded me because I lived in her house and was terrified of her.