Pay Dirt is Slate’s money advice column. Have a question? Send it to Kristin and Ilyce here. (It’s anonymous!)

Dear Pay Dirt, 

My parents are undeniably the cheapest people I know, and while not wealthy, they certainly aren’t destitute. They will only visit if they can stay at our house with their unruly dog so they don’t have to pay for a hotel or dog sitter. I agree to let them stay with us, but it’s exhausting spending every waking moment with them.

Still, thier most recent visit went well until the fourth and final day when I discovered something extremely off-putting that they are doing to save money.

My dad is using a subscription that my brother’s ex-girlfriend is paying for! They have been broken up for three years and in that entire time, my dad has been using her account. I’m absolutely disgusted by this. Particularly because my brother and I are estranged due to his horrible treatment of the women he dates. I gently voiced my opinion about this and my mom got defensive and said she probably doesn’t even know and besides, she liked my parents.

I’m considering reaching out to the ex-girlfriend to let her know. We’ve written a couple letters to each other in the last three years. Is this none of my business and something I need to let go? Or should I keep it between me and my parents and how do I talk to them about their cheap antics without them getting defensive?

—Quit Being Cheapskates

Dear Quit,

Not to downplay your feelings about the Netflix piggybacking, but this sounds like more of a “straw that broke the camel’s back” kind of situation. It sounds like the Netflix thing might be a reminder of how frustrating this situation has become for you.

The bigger issue is that you don’t want to host your parents every time they visit. It’s totally reasonable to set this boundary with them, and you can do it in a way that will minimize defensiveness. When you talk to them about this, focus less on how cheap they are and more on how that cheapness affects you and your life. Maybe come up with some solutions, too. Are you willing to chip in for a hotel? Could you put a limit on their stay? Could they find a dog sitter while they’re visiting? It doesn’t have to be a perfect solution, and you might very well know they’re going to veto it. The point is, you’re not just coming to them with a problem — you also want to solve that problem.

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Once you lay it on them, give them a chance to speak their mind, too. For example, “I love when you visit, but it’s also exhausting to play host for so long. I have some ideas of how to make it easier on all of us. What do you think?” At some point, you may need to set a firm boundary with them and tell them your rules for their stay. But the goal right now is to have a conversation without them getting defensive about it.

As for telling the ex about their use of her Netflix account: Your mom might be right in that it’s harmless and she may not even have a problem with it, but … wouldn’t you want to know if someone were using your Netflix account? If you do feel ethically obliged to tell her, maybe start with a gentle nudge: “By the way, you might want to change your Netflix password.” You don’t want to throw your parents under the bus— though if they do lose access, they’re probably going to know you’re the whistleblower!

Hang in there. These conversations aren’t easy but you also have every right to not want to feel stressed and overwhelmed when your parents visit. Being frugal is one thing, but when that frugality starts to negatively impact other people—you, and arguably, your brother’s ex— it crosses the line into downright cheap.

—Kristin

More Money Advice From Slate

My husband and I got married at the turn of the century and recently found out that we are an anomaly among our peer group because we have merged finances. We have our own retirement accounts, but all of our income otherwise goes into shared accounts. Our friends—some who married earlier than we did, some at the same time, some later—have one joint account for agreed-upon shared expenses, and then their own individual accounts for everything else. When our first couples-friends told us this, we thought they were out of the ordinary—all of our expenses are shared! We don’t get it. We started asking our other friends, and it turns out we are the outliers! We have opened a can of worms: Our friends are universally appalled that we share everything and have “nothing” of our “own.”

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