AITA For "Skimming Money off the Top" from my Roommates' Grocery Share

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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:

I think I may be the Asshole since I did lie to them and keep the fund from them, but if we ever needed it for a cause (medical, family, emergency) I would have given it up in a heartbeat.

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Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.

NTA

You probably should have told them, especially if your intent was that it was a household rainy day fund.

However, I am saying NTA because I think you might be devaluing your labour costs of doing the cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping in this.

They agreed to pay you 5K each every month for cooking. They're paying you for both the cost of food and for the time you spend cooking and cleaning and shopping.

You should add up how many hours you spend a week cooking (and cleaning), then add up the grocery cost for three people. Consider whether the 1-2K a month plus one third of food costs (since you eat free - it's a form of payment) is more or less than how much you would pay another external person to do the cooking... it's possible you might actually be saving the household money even with the 1-2K left over occasionally, depending on how much wages are where you live.

I’m going to ask the questions no one else seems to have- and that’s fine you guys have a set agreement that did work with each earning 35-40k/month

What currency are we talking? USD? AUD?

Please let me know as someone earning $120k a year, that this can be just my food budget and not my yearly budget?

What am I doing wrong?

Thinking I’m doing life wrong with a microwave that isn’t worth $12k to start with/s

ESH

All of you fucked up by not talking about what happens to money that is left at the end of the month.

NTA.

They hired you to do a set of tasks; they don’t get to dictate how you spend the money you earned from doing those tasks.

NTA. You didn't skim money, as you didn't take it and spend it on yourself. They should thank you for saving a nice little sum for them! They are being the AHs here.

Wow so much to unpack here.

1. NTA
2. YTA if you only fed them Ramen Noodles lol 😂
3. They didn’t pay you only for the groceries, that also entails your services. What was left over should have been yours in my opinion, not even for a rainy day.
4. Value yourself and your services more. Not only did you keep the household managed well for over two years but your intelligence also saved you from potential landlord issues.

If I was you, I’d hold on to the rest of the money and only cook for yourself. Give them some time to do their own cooking or let them hire the maid and cook and etc. They will soon realize how expensive all that is. Also, just because you work from home that does not mean that you work less than them and that your time is less valuable than theirs. If this was me personally, I would even hold out until they apologize. You let them walk over you right now and you will teach them how to treat you in the future.

NTA, what about all the labor involved? Cooking 3 meals a day, cleaning up after 3 meals a day, grocery shopping, putting away the groceries, yikes that alone is not worth 45,000.00 for two years worth of work! They can’t possibly be mad especially after you said it you would pay for her mistake out of your income basically.

INFO about how much would it cost to hire a cook/maid

Because if it's anything more than 5K a month then you are the one being taken advantage of.

NTA. There's no way they thought you were spending the exact amount they gave you. If they didn't expect there to be money left, that means they thought YOU were covering the difference and paying more than your share, and they were fine with you being taken advantage of.

NTA. I think everyone, especially you, should reframe what it is they are actually paying you for. They are individually paying 5k/month for a live-in maid, you are cooking all of their meals, buying groceries and cleaning for a little less than the cost of a microwave oven.

On top of that, you saved any money left over as a joint fund. I would be so grateful for having a roommate that did this much for me.

Even if you technically were “skimming”, are they not saving more money from this set-up? Have you all had an agreement on what it is you’re suppose to do if there’s any money left by the end of the month? If not, I think it’s well within your rights to have kept the money for yourself, which you obviously didn’t.

I think it might be good to pause your meal agreement until they start appreciating how much work AND money you are saving them, on top of bailing one of them out when they fucked up. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you…

NTA that is your payment for buying the groceries & cooking their meals. You are taking on the extra work & responsibility saving them time & money if they had to eat out. It is a service fee. If they expect the grocery overpayment back then you need to start rotating who is buying groceries & cooking meals every week. Stop providing that service for free.

Your labor is worth any extra you saved. You should have established that at the beginning of the agreement. You could use any extra at the end of the month for more extravagant holiday meals or fancy desserts from the bakery or other treats or a great cut of expensive meat.

NTA. From the way you presented it they were paying you as a private chef for them... the grocery shopping, cooking and kitchen clean up is everything a private chef would do

You deciding not to spend it all on food is surely the point of them paying you for your service.

If they have an issue with it tell them they can buy their own food and cook for themselves from now on.

Communication is key in shared expenses. Maybe they felt left out of the decision-making process, which could have led to hurt feelings. It might help to talk openly about finances and agree on how to handle extra funds in the future.

I may have screwed up by not telling them about this fund but that is because Nikki and Leah have a tendency to not save and spend every coin they get, plus it's not like any of us make a large amount of money anyways (we all make like 35K to 40K a month). If I told them about it, anytime there is a concert or a sale, they would demand it and spend it.

This is quite patronizing in my opinion. YTA.

NTA. You doing all the shopping, all the planning, all the cooking and all the clean-up for a flat contribution and they’re complaining? You jolly well should be making money off of them. Tell them to eff off and hire a cook. Don’t so much as prepare either of them a slice of toast in the future. They had a good deal but it’s over.

NTA but if they don’t like it, you can stop cooking and cleaning up after them.

Let them either do their own shopping and cooking or hire somebody.

If they want to hire someone, don’t contribute and continue to do what you’ve been doing.

It might be time to look for a new living situation when the lease is up.

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I (24F) share an apartment with my two roommates/close friends - Nikki and Leah, we all make around the same and split rent equally. Nikki and Leah need to go into work everyday and I am mostly WFH, and, I happen to be a pretty good cook. So we all agreed that instead of eating out or hiring a maid/cook, they would each pay me 5K a month for groceries (so total 10K) and I would not contribute towards the household groceries cost, instead I would cook 2-3 meals daily for all of us, handle the kitchen cleanup, buy groceries etc. This has worked well for us for close to two years at this point.

Now, sometimes in a month, there may be 1K to 3K left over from the 10K they Leah and Nikki have given me, sometimes I get a good deal, sometimes we just eat less. Instead of transferring this money back to them, I have been keeping a "rainy-day" apartment fund, to be used in case of emergencies.

I may have screwed up by not telling them about this fund but that is because Nikki and Leah have a tendency to not save and spend every coin they get, plus it's not like any of us make a large amount of money anyways (we all make like 35K to 40K a month). If I told them about it, anytime there is a concert or a sale, they would demand it and spend it.

Now over two years, this fund has grown to be about 45K, although it isn't life changing money, it is more than any of our monthly salaries and as fate would have it, the rainy day arrived yesterday. I am not very sure what happened but from what I gather, Nikki had been trying her hand at microwave cooking, using recipes from some 5 Min Crafts-esque video and completely sparked/burnt our microwave, which belonged to our landlord.

Now we have to replace the same at out own cost and it is around 12K, and obviously, Nikki will pay for it as it was her fault. Nikki started to panic as she hasn't gotten her salary yet and she is broke. I told her and Leah that it was fine and I had a fund that was about 45K, Nikki could use her half of it to buy a new microwave.

They went ballistic and accused me of making money off them and skimming money of the top. Neither of them are talking to me, I gave them all of the money. Was I really TA??

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HOW MUCH?!

You don't contribute to the groceries but were you getting paid for the time it took you to make a list of needed supplies, go grocery shopping, transporting yourself and the groceries to home, putting the groceries away, cooking, and cleaning? 10K a month for 24 months and you only had 45K in this fund? Yeah, you were definitely getting the short end of the stick here. Call off the arrangement and buy your own groceries.

NTA

NTA. If you can afford to give them the extra, do so. Be very apologetic, admit that you guys should have discussed what to do with the excess.

But be honest about the toll that this has taken on your personal time and work time. Do the math. I don't know the conversion but it looks like they are paying maybe a hundred to $150 each a month towards food. You are saving $150 a month but probably spending 14-20 hours a week cooking and cleaning. Probably an additional 4 to 6 hours meal prepping and shopping. So how much an hour do you get paid? Do the math and see how much ~25 hours a week works out to. Chances are, you'd be better off just cooking and cleaning after yourself and could cut that time into a third.

Show them the numbers and if they still disagree, say that you would like to adjust the arrangement for a few months and see how that works.

NTA the mistake is looking at it as a rainy day fund and not your money. How is it fair for you too cook and clean and do everything just to eat. That money is yours. Just stop cooking and then when they want the deal back do it for 6k each.

NAH no one specified the details of this arrangement. Are they paying you to do this cooking, or do you just eat for free because you're doing all the cooking? No one thought to determine how leftover money or additional costs would be handled? It was nice of you to save it all for a rainy day, but I can understand them feeling weird that you've had this money sitting there they didn't know about.

Straight up, you should have told them about your saving the money. It’s still within their rights to know what happens to the money they spend. Your deal overall sounds fair, but it should be a group agreement how that extra money is dealt with.(Also, I’m guessing you’re not talking USDs cause I about had a heart attack over the numbers lol). I think your heart is in the right place and it’s a good idea, but you simply cannot fuck with people’s money like that. You HAVE to loop them in on that kind of decision. They are not your children.

Not the asshole. You weren't trying to do this to keep the money, weren't trying to defraud anyone, you were thinking of the greater good and the "oh shit" moments that can happen.

Where you are at fault is that you did this without telling them. Since you didn't tell them, they have no reason to trust that your skimming has done nothing other than sit for rainy days. They're going to think back to everything you've ever purchased and wonder "Did we pay for this?" regardless of whether or not that actually happened.

Had you suggested it, had you kept a log of what was skimmed and they could see it whenever they wanted/needed reassurance that it really is for rainy days...you might have had a better outcome.

When they calm down and are ready to talk with you again, try bringing it up again this time with transparency in mind.

NTA. I'm assuming the currency is yen or something.

You didn't spend the money. Whilst you should have established what happened to the change when the arrangement was made, what's done is done. It's not really skimming when you haven't spent it or concealed the true cost of what you've been doing.

Well, it is not like you used it to buy taylor swift tickets. Mostly NTA

NTA tho you really should have discussed this when the arrangement was drawn up. the second best time to have that discussion is now. i don't see anything wrong with keeping the slush fund in your name and you shouldn't have given them all of the money that you were savvy & thrifty enough to collect

NTA give them the money and inform them the deal is off and they're on their own to cook and clean.

Enjoy them crawling and begging after they realize how much work you actually do also inform them that making money of someone is whe you actually keep and use the money yourself and considering the amount of work you are doing you aren't repaid nearly enough.

Seems like you all had discrepant expectations on how the remainder would be used each month (rolled, credited, or pocketed). It doesn't sound like you had any intention of defrauding your roommates, so I don't think your an asshole in this situation, but neither are your roommates. It's always best to communicate and be transparent with these types of arrangements so everyone is on the same page and there isn't any ambiguity.

NAH

NTA. They're not just paying for actual food costs but also your labor in the cooking and clean up. That's your money and you're very generous to be saving it for apartment emergencies.

NTA - but clearly this system is unlikely to work long-term given the responses of your roommates. They should have known all along about the emergency fund. One way you can do this was used in a workplace of mine - the organizer split up the extra money once a year and started again. We didn't build up much of an excess for emergencies, but we knew there was an excess, and what was going to happen to it.

I think now you need to change things going forward - you've given them back the extra, it sounds like they're both unwilling to allow any left-over money to be kept month to month, so everyone does their own cooking and shopping. They might decide that after all it was worth it too them to have someone to cook and shop for them, but you don't need to tolerate accusations of theft, and don't need to continue the arrangement.

Thanks for the clarification about the currency. I knew instantly it wasn't my local currency, nor USD - unless you all have an extraordinarily high amount to spend on food!

NTA Its time to get a helper. Since you are doing the cooking, shopping, and cleaning, they are starting to treat you as if you are the helper and act as if you stole from them. Their classism is showing and that is why they are acting this prissy!

NTA

It sounds like they agreed to that amount and if there’s extra, that’s yours anyway. Your labor isn’t free. I’d hate having to always cook for 2 other people. I wouldn’t have told them, it’s your money, imo.

NTA

this is not skimming - this is providing a service at an agreed upon price. Your time is worth a lot, too.

Dude. The deal isn't they pay for groceries and you cook. You do a LOT of labour in that kitchen and grocery shopping, you deserve compensation. It's not skimming. That money is 100% yours. ESH including you, to yourself.

NTA

NTA

But it might be time for them to find out what it costs them in time and money to cook for themselves.

Everyone can buy their own groceries and you just cook for yourself. You will probably find this is something that doesn't last very long before they are begging you to go back to what you were doing.

What would it cost to hire a maid?

I think I'm going with a small YTA. I understand where you are coming from, and having something set aside is always a good thing. However, if I was your roomate I would be kind of pissed by this. Because saving those money was a decision you made without even telling them. And it was your roomates' saleries that contributed to the savings, not your salery. Besiddes, if this small microwave emergency never happened, would you ever have told them about the savings? Maybe your roomates' now wonder exactly that and if there is anything else financial you are not telling them.

Another thing is, you don't mention each roomates financial situation, so this is only speculations. But what if one of them is in a really thight spot because of student loans, car debt or whatever - then those extra money you saved for them could have made a huge difference for them.

Lastly, you say you made the decision to have this savings account, as both your roomates are restless with money. Your roomates are two adults, who you have no responsibility towards other than you are sharing a house/apartment. I don't think it was your place to use this money - money from their saleries - for anything at all other than what was already discussed ang agreed upon. Not even for savings.

I wondered how the hell there was more money being spent on groceries and home cooked meals than most roommates even make. I'm glad you cleared up the currency exchange rate

NTA. Now that I know you are not talking US dollars (the number you quoted was mind boggling if so) I believe it makes sense to establish this sort of account. There are going to be months when you spend more, others when you spend less. The case of the microwave illustrates why this fund is sensible. This is simply good money management. If half the fund is all it takes to purchase a microwave, this is not an exorbitant amount.

You could offer to give any person who moves out of the apartment their share of the reserve, but I don't think that is necessary. It might appease them though.

Here you can purchase a microwave for approx $100, so if a microwave cost half the amount of your reserve, that is not a huge amount when purchasing food for 3 people. Do they compensate you in any way for the huge amount of work you do for them?

YTA. I would consider this stealing.

If there was extra money, you should have spoken to them about what to do with it.

ESH, though with the understanding that all of you were foolish but not malicious.

First, you all should have discussed how to dispose of any extra from the 10K, as it's beyond belief that you'd spend it exactly down to the rupee. Should you keep it as a reward for doing all the work? Should it be given back to the other girls? Should it be kept as an emergency fund? Any of these options could be valid, so long as you talked it out ahead of time.

As it turns out, it's just as well you kept it as a just-in-case fund, right? Nikki should be lighting candles for you.

Talk to the girls. They heavily overreacted, and nobody has cheated or deceived anyone. There's just been a failure to deal with the question of surplus. OP your only mistake was in not bringing this up the first time there was a surplus.

ESH. I mean, you should have told them about the fund but clearly you weren't stealing if you told them about it when the need arose. But it seems now like it was a prudent thing to do.

I'm just really hoping this isn't £, $ or € lol, because £45k is not much below what I earn in a year xD

N T A for not spending it yourself, but maybe you could have made it more obvious that any extra money each month is going into a household pot strictly for communal use only? I think they're only angry because it seems like you were squirreling it away for yourself, and if this kitchen disaster hadn't happened you wouldn't have told them about this rainy day fund and would have walked away with it.

If this wasn't your intention then obviously N T A but kinda you're the TA because why wouldn't you tell them? Or give them the money back? If they're handing over 5K a month and you don't spend it all, why don't you give them the change? Unless you have a mutual agreement that it's going into a pot?

eg. if I gave my friend £10 to go buy some groceries and it cost £8, I'd expect £2 change, not for him to keep the £2.

[edit: tough one. NAH. You had good intentions I *think* but that's not clear to them and they're rightfully angry that you kept money they could have been using]

YTA for not discussing with them about the extra money. I understand wanting to look out for them but ultimately they are adults who can make their own decisions. If they decide to not save the money and blow it they can. The right thing to do would have been to have a conversation about what should be done with the extra money.

This is really something that should have been addressed the very first time there was extra money.

It sounds like the deal was that they pay for the groceries. In exchange for you not paying anything for groceries, you buy the groceries, cook, and clean the kitchen. If that is the case, any extra money still belonged to them.

If that agreement was that they each pay you 5k, and this money was meant to compensate you for both groceries and your services, that money is yours and you don't have to give them anything.

It seems like the first situation applies here, from what you've described and how you still think of it as their money. Like I understand keeping money from months where you spend less in order to use it during months where you spend more. Grocery prices can fluctuate. But you've basically been hoarding their money... you've been making financial decisions for them based on what you perceive their spending habits to be. That's not your choice and they're right for being annoyed with you. The best you can do is apologize and explain your reasoning, but your lack of transparency may be the end of your relationships with them.

3 people are spending $10,000 on groceries?

Sometimes there's a little left over?

YTA this is straight up theft.

Edit: disregard I thought this was US dollars. Now, this sounds fine to me although I think you should have told them.

YTA

WHat form of currency are we talking here? I know it's not England or the U.S., or Canada for that matter. In the U.S. we spend approximately 250-350 USD ($) per person to eat pretty well. That's not take out food all the time either. 40K would be a lower tier salary for a YEAR.

Anyhow, without knowing the true value of your money or country of redidence, there is still the issue of Are You the Asshole.

Yes, you are. YOu were given carte blanche and you took advantage of it. Even if you were squirreling it away for emergengies, THIS IS A GROUP DECISION. You have betrayed their trust, even if it did pay for the microwave.

YTA It's not your money. Each month you should go over the food bill and carry over what is left of in the account for food to the next month so they pay less that month.

YTA it's a rainy day apartment fund. Use it to buy a new microwave

YTA.

Your roommates gave you that money for food and it's preparation. Not to save for a rainy day. Not your call with other peoples money.

YTA. Your intentions were good but you were still takin their money without their knowledge