Sometimes the truth actually hurts more than a lie. There are times when secrets spare someone’s feelings.

In today’s story, we’re not sure if the secret should be kept hidden, and neither is the woman who is considering keeping the secret.

She doesn’t like lying to her mother.

Read the whole story to see if keeping this secret is a good idea or not.

AITA if I don’t tell my mom about money my aunt is giving me for college?

So a little backstory, my (22F) mom, 44F, has never really been in a good financial place.

This is not due to her not having a good job- she makes bad financial decisions.

Here are some examples of her bad financial decisions.

For example, last year she became debt-free and bought a $20,000 couch with a loan and went on vacation.

Her husband (my step dad) is also this way.

He didn’t want to get a job closer to home so they pay for an apartment where we actually works about 4 hours away from their house.

She’s way too dramatic!

She’s also quite sensitive to any monetary topics.

For example, my cousin got a brand new car when we graduated HS and my mom cried for days bc she wasn’t able to provide me that.

I told her I was just fine with the car I had.

She asked her aunt for advice.

My aunt, ~40F, and her long term boyfriend recently came into some money and moved into a $900K house with lots of money still left over.

My aunt went to the same university that I’m going to now and so I asked her for advice on getting an external loan alone.

This is because my mom and my stepdad have tried to be a cosigner for me and they were both denied.

She’s not complaining about paying her own way.

I paid for my Associates and am paying for my Bachelors out of pocket and all by myself.

They have never offered or been able to help me.

I have never mentioned this or been ungrateful, I love school.

That’s really thoughtful of her…

My aunt recently took me to lunch and told me that since they’re in a great place and already got all their Christmas presents for everyone- that she is going to give me her work bonus to use for school.

I don’t know how much it is, but she is a CPA and I know it is at least $1,000.

I am very excited and grateful as I only have a year and a half left (with only 12K in student loans so far!)

It might get messy…

Me and my mom are extremely close and keep no secrets from each other, but I feel that if I tell her, then she will be happy to my face, but we’ll go home upset.

I also don’t want to make my mom feel like I was keeping secrets from her.

Would I be TA if I don’t tell her to keep from hurting her feelings?

Or maybe telling her down the line instead?

YIKES! Mother’s spending habits sound a little too unreasonable!

It sounds nice of OP that her top concern is not hurting her mother’s feelings.

Let’s find out what the Reddit community thinks about this one.

This user thinks it is insane to get such an expensive couch.

That’s right! This user advices against telling the mother the full truth.

Makes sense. This user believes the mother might get even lazier after finding out.

True that! This user thinks some information is better when kept as a secret.

This user suggests talking to the aunt about it.

Sometimes it’s a good idea to withhold the truth.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.