[BowtieBelle]

I'm absolutely livid at this point and would love to hear if any of you have encountered an experience like this and what you did.

I let a friend move in with me. She's from Michigan and wanted to move away and start over, which I totally understand. Been there, done that! She's been a pretty good friend to me and we have known each other for some time.

Anyhow, the first two months she was here I let her live with me without paying anything. I live on my family's old ranch, which is paid off and I don't pay my dad for rent but I do keep the place up, pay property taxes, insurance, etc. She got a job fairly quickly, but I let her stay on for free for a while so she could build up a reserve. During this time I paid increased bills because of her living at the house, and also paid for food. I'm still buying food and cooking.

Anyway after those first two months I asked her to start paying half the electric bill (now that she lives here the total bill has been around $180 the last three months so $90 a month for electric) and $250 for rent. Not much, right? Especially since I'm still paying the other bills (cable, internet, etc) myself and not asking for her help. Well, after harassing her a little I got the money for last month. This month, she decides to just not pay me. When I asked if she'd have it by the fifth, her response was no, she had other things to pay. She also just got back from renting a car and driving 9 hours to New Orleans and spending a weekend with a guy she doesn't even hardly know. Doing that isn't cheap.

Anyway, I told her I had property taxes and everything else due, and I just paid my insurance on my car and the house in full, so I'm broke, and was really counting on her part to pay bills and whatnot. But it doesn't matter, 'cause she said it'll be like three weeks before she has it. By then her next rent would be about due and I can guarantee she won't have the money to pay for it AND the previous month.

What would you do in this situation? She had the gall to send me a text that said "what would you do if I wasn't living with you?" This really made me livid so I wrote back, "what would you do if you had to pay rent to someone who wasn't a friend, and it was twice what you're getting charged here?" Anywhere else her bills would be twice as high; I let her live cheaply here because she is my friend. I also mentioned the New Orleans trip since she decided to pop attitude at me.

I just don't know how to handle this. I'm tired of getting walked on by people, and this is absolutely a prime example. My entire next paycheck is going to go towards bills and I was counting on her rent to help me out. If she wasn't living with me, I'd have planned things differently, but that's not the case. I don't know if it's worth ruining a friendship over but it doesn't seem like she's treating me like a friend right now.