My son turned 18 in March. I've always taken out a percentage of his pay to put aside for his college fund. Most likely he'll be in college this fall, and that's when I'm going to put the saved money back into his account. Until then, I plan to hold it. It's something my son has known about since he started working at 15, and he didn't have any issues with it.

To teach him to budget by experience, with the safety net of me and his mom still being around, since he's turned 18 I've put him in charge of paying for his own food. Fairly low stakes, and since he works evening shifts now most likely he would have had to start handling his food situation himself anyway.

It was working fine, no complaints from him, but the other day we got into a big argument over it. Started with me finding him really drunk when he got home. He tried to hide it from me, saying he was just tired, long day at work, etc. But I've been around the block and I know drunk when I see it. I asked him why he'd been drinking and he said he always drank a beer after work, but today he bought two bottles since they were on sale. I asked him why he was spending his money on booze when he should be budgeting it for his food.

He got kind of annoyed and said he only has enough money to buy himself breakfast due to how much I'm taking out of his paychecks, and since beer is cheap at the cornerstore he just drinks after work. I get he doesn't make that much money but I doubt it's so little he can't pay for three meals a day. I told him he needs to start budgeting better and he said I need to stop “stealing” his money.

I reminded him the money isn't going to me, it's literally going to be his money when he goes to college. He got all snarky and said, oh maybe I don't wanna go to college maybe I wanna eat. I should've just let the conversation go but we just got into a huge argument over whether he should have the money or not. I reminded him we'd already agreed the money was going to be saved and that I wasn't backing down since he's likely going to college in just a few months now.

I thought maybe he was just being obstinate because he was drunk, but even the next morning he was still pissed over it. AITA for saving a percentage of his paycheck for college? It's not like we're rich, the money isn't going to come out of nowhere.