THE GIFT THAT COSTS

On his 19th birthday, he was handed a "gift" that came with a $40,000 car loan.

What should have been a celebratory new car, a 2022 Nissan Sentra, had turned into a long-running financial trap. The poster says the loan was tied to his mom, who was 40, and he started paying it off when he was 16. At the time, he says he never asked how much she had signed for. He assumed her financially savvy boyfriend had handled the dealership deal properly.

He was wrong.

The original MSRP on the car was around $20,000. The loan, however, came in at about $40,000. There was no money down, and the interest rate landed at 10% because his mom had bad credit and no job. The monthly payment was $510. The arrangement, he says, was supposed to be split between him and his mom's boyfriend.

That lasted three months.

After that, he says he ended up covering the full payment himself and has been paying ever since. About a year ago, he and his mom went to the bank in an attempt to transfer the loan into his name. They backed off once they saw what would happen: the interest would be recalculated and add roughly $10,000 more.

So the loan stayed where it was.

Since then, life has changed. He moved out at 18 and now lives with a roommate. Bills are tighter. His girlfriend's mom suggested he look for something cheaper, and he found a used 2025 Corolla with 10,000 miles for $18,000. He told his mom he planned to get a new car and said that if she wanted to sell the Sentra, that would be her decision.

His mom didn't take it that way.

She got angry and told him it is "my responsibility" and that the car was a "gift." She also said she had "saved" him $10,000 by not transferring the loan.

He says his mom is freshly divorced and trying to find work to support her two younger daughters. He told her she could probably sell the car for around $14,000 to $15,000, but she refused. Instead, she wanted him to dip into his savings and keep making payments on a car he says he never agreed to finance in the first place.

Now he's stuck on the same question: whether he owes her for the car he was given, or whether he's just been carrying someone else's bad financial decision for years. He says, "I don't feel like I owe her anything," but he also feels guilty about, in his words, "kicking her while she's down."