Soon-to-be homeless friend wants to live with me rent free
My friend (25f) recently broke up with her significant other, who she was financially dependent on and living with at the time. I am her only friend and she no longer speaks to her family. i had offered her my place to stay temporarily while she gets things sorted. My friend has never held a job for longer than a year and isn’t exactly the most financially responsible person as I have noticed from her behavior since middle school.
She just started her new job and has told me she doesn’t know how long she will need to stay at my place as she has no savings. I live by myself and work a pretty demanding job, sometimes up to 12 hour days plus 1.5 hour commute each way, so by the time i get home i am exhausted and cannot handle anymore interactions. I also enjoy intentional quality time as opposed to obligatory quality time, the problem with her living here stems from multiple things: like I said she has no other person she can rely on so I am her only source of social interaction, she will beg me to hang out with her even when I’m busy or tired and doesn’t understand that I have a social battery, I live in a one bedroom so she will be on my couch which makes it harder to have my personal space if everytime I need something from my kitchen or whatnot I have to interact with her as she is in my living room.
what is additionally frustrating is the entire time I am listening to her budget and make her plan to save up to get her own place, she also wants to allot a fair amount of money for frivolous spending such as eating out frequently, buying a physical music player (which the songs can be played on her phone for free), and money to go out clubbing and buy loads of alcohol for example. I understand there has to be a balance between work and play but she knows she has very little cash so i don’t get how she’s comfortable spending that money on things she doesn’t need. I didn’t offer her a place to stay just so she could have fun all day long. I offered her a place to stay to get back on her feet.
all this to say, if I don’t let her stay here she will essentially be homeless. but if I do let her stay, I fear she will be here for a long time. I already told her she can only stay for three months but I’m worried I’m being selfish in this regard and maybe I should let her stay longer. however if she stays longer than 3 months I might worry for my own mental being. I already set the boundary so I would feel bad for moving the deadline up but 3 months just sounds way too long on top of my current stressful work situation.