I (30M, living in Miami) still live at home—but not for much longer. I’ve been grinding, saving, and building my own business because this living situation is beyond toxic. Mainly because of my mom.

Let me break this down:

• I pay $1,000/month to rent one room in a house.
• The mortgage is $2,573/month, and my 82-year-old grandma pays $1,000/month too—which, yeah, is insane.
• My mom doesn’t work. My stepdad makes $150K+/year. My mom made $92K last year, entirely in kickbacks from the mortgage deals I worked on.
• I worked in the family mortgage business. I was getting paid 137 basis points per deal, and later found out another 137 was quietly going to my mom.
• The deals were mine—but it was do the work or don’t eat. No backup plan, no choice.
• I helped with client amended tax returns, cleaning reports, paperwork—whatever it took to keep deals from falling apart, even when the stress wasn’t mine to carry.
• The day I had retinal detachment surgery, my stepdad literally asked me if I was going to keep working the deals.
• A week later, while still recovering with one working eye, my mom had me sign a rent check. No grace, no compassion—just “where’s the money?”
• This is the same woman who complained that I didn’t include her in my BJJ belt promotion speech—even though she’s never paid a dime for my training since 2014.
• Every time I’ve gotten a new job or made progress, her first question is always, “How much are they paying you now?” Never congratulations—just transactional curiosity.

Eventually, I had enough. I quit the family business.

And while I’m struggling a bit now as I build my own path, I’ve never been more at peace.
To me, leaving was the first real step toward freedom.

So yeah…
Is it weird to charge your kid $1,000/month in rent while profiting off their labor and guilt-tripping them for wanting peace?

Because to me, that’s not just weird—it’s manipulative as hell.

Anyone else ever dealt with this kind of dynamic?