Families are supposed to look out for each other, not exploit each other.

After taking a generous loan from his sister to buy a house, one man found himself slowly paying it back — not just with money, but with unpaid babysitting too.

And he wasn’t sure it was a trade-off he wanted to make any longer.

Keep reading for the full story.

Babysitting For Free?

I (30M) bought a small house after years of working two to three jobs at the same time.

Even with two to three jobs for years, I still didn’t have enough money on my own, so I took out some loans.

His sister soon came to him with a generous offer.

My sister (39F), who is married and has a lovely son who just turned 5, also gave me a loan.

I am thankful to my sister, as the loan they gave me was generous (about $10K) with no interest, and I was to start paying it back after a year.

The deal was also advantageous for my sister since the house I bought is very close to where they live, which means I could occasionally babysit their child when they needed to do something urgently.

This is where things get complicated.

But soon he realized the loan came with drawbacks.

Ever since moving six months ago, I have been bombarded with babysitting requests.

I am okay with looking after my nephew every once in a while, but we are talking about babysitting two to three days a week.

He is a difficult child who is not potty trained yet and cannot sleep alone.

If it is a weekday, I take the child from school at 4 p.m.

This takes up a lot of his time.

I feed him (I buy the food), play with him, handle all the toilet stuff, put him to bed, and sleep next to him until 8 a.m. the next morning.

He sleeps like a madman and wakes me up all the time.

Then I dress him and take him to school.

If it is a weekend, I pretty much do the same things, minus taking him to school.

He’s struggling to find a job, and the constant babysitting is only making things harder.

Ever since I moved, I have yet to find a stable job (the job market is really bad at the moment), even though I do some odd jobs here and there.

My sister knows I have some spare time, so she asks me to take care of the child even more often nowadays.

It’s starting to weigh on him financially and emotionally.

I am also not compensated if we eat something with the kid outside or if the kid wants any toys or entertainment that cost money.

Around where I live (İstanbul, Turkey), nannies are quite expensive, especially if they do more than basic babysitting.

That includes sleeping all night with the child and cleaning up after them, and they are not always trustworthy.

I look after my nephew like he is my own child.

He knows he does a good job looking after the child.

He is extremely happy with me, always wants to play with me, and I am even teaching him useful things like chess and English.

Apart from that, we play, go to parks, go to the cinema, or just hang out at home with toys.

All of this has started to feel like a burden.

On one side, I owe my sister, so it is hard to say no.

So he thinks he deserves to at least be paid for it.

On the other side, I am spending so much time with her child that I am missing opportunities to earn money and pay them back when the time comes.

I am not looking to set boundaries and never see my nephew again.

But I feel like at this point, I should be compensated for my efforts in some way so I can put food on the table for myself.

WIBTA if I asked for either a reduction in the debt or some form of compensation?

One thing’s for sure: This loan came with strings attached.

What did Reddit think?

This man is already doing more than enough by keeping up with his loan payments.

Loan aside, his sister could be doing a lot more to help him out in a time of need.

His sister can’t continue to hold the loan over her head.

This indentured servitude may have been his sister’s goal from the start.

Babysitting out of love was one thing, but doing it at the cost of his own future was another.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.