How much board do you charge your kids?

the_cat

Nothing. He is on an apprenticeship atm so earning very low wage. Once he gets a proper job, I'll start charging him

Seanymph

Nothing - they are both doing A levels and only work part time.

mountainofdebt

Junior pays us £20 per week and we also stipulate that he has to say half his wage as well

kingfisherblue

My daughter works for an agency, on a zero hours contract. Her hours and pay vary quite a bit. She pays £40 a week (£160 a month, £200 every third month as there are 13 weeks in a quarter) and gives me the cash on payday or the day after. She pays for her own phone, car, clothes and union fees, but uses household toiletries (except ones specifically for her, such as deodorant, which she pays for). She also pays for her own Diet Coke as no one else in the house drinks it, and she drinks quite a lot.

She will hear next week whether she has a job that she was interviewed for last week, so will hopefully have more regular income. She was saving, but after buying a car is no longer able to. If she gets this job, she will be able to start saving again. I won't be charging her any more as it isn't necessary.

Bennifred

Mine pay £50 each per week to cover food and share of bills.

embob74

DD pays £30 a week which doesn't seem much but she is on a zero hours contract and did well the first 2 months but only earned £300 this month and it looks like next month will be even less (she is looking for other jobs). We agreed on £30 a week as I wanted her to feel some benefit from working. When she received JSA we charged her £25 a week which was half of it and she had to fund her weekly bus pass (£15) with the remainder.

Bettie

£25 per week. She buys her own food + does her own washing.

DylanO

I pay nothing to my parents (although I tried by setting up a standing order and received a massive boll.ocking for it!) so now I sneakily pay for what I can get away with. I pay the papers, as much food as I can and my mum's flower bill whenever I can get to the shop before she does. It's a very strange game of cat and mouse.

Their reasoning is that I've lived out for a few years and I moved back in order to save for a house deposit. They come at it from different angles though - my mum was helped by her parents in the same way, while my dad wasn't and he was charged even after he moved out and he resents it a lot as do my aunts and uncles.

They treat all of us the same, and they've made it clear that as long as we're either saving, in education or training then they wouldn't want it any other way. That's only because they can easily afford it - if they couldn't, then I would fully expect to be paying full whack. They help us all in different ways too - they bought my brother a car and paid his insurance after his hours were changed at his apprenticeship - he pays £150 a month back to them for it - nowhere near the real cost, but it's what he can afford. My sister's at a university that prevents her from working part-time so my parents pay all her expenses. I worked through university, even during my Masters year but they still helped me out. Had I done the same as my sister then they would have paid for me completely.

I've never understood the arbitrary third rule - that might have worked in the past, but not now. When this house was bought it cost £63,000 - in twenty-odd years it's increased in value (admittedly with work done) nearly 20 times. Wages haven't. I need to save every spare penny and cut back on everything just to get something approaching a 15% deposit, never mind fees etc. Even then I'll be moving into a cheaper area and I'll have to buy a house slightly bigger than I need just so I can guard against interest rises by taking in lodgers. That was not something that previous generations ever had to worry about.

I also think that the idea of charging an arbitrary amount as some kind of financial lesson is such lazy parenting. If it's taken you 18 plus years to raise your child and you still haven't taught them basic financial lessons then you've failed. I still remember a PSE lesson from school where we were 'taught' about the costs of running a home - I was one of the only ones who knew what our teacher was talking about. Some didn't even understand that electricity costs money, or that houses had to be paid for. We were 15!

I really don't understand why people are still doing their adult children's washing. In this house whoever fills the basket up puts the washer on. It's been like that since I was 11! Isn't it easier to do it that way rather than have everyone do separate loads? What happened to working together as a family?

Spendless

DylanO wrote: »

Their reasoning is that I've lived out for a few years and I moved back in order to save for a house deposit. They come at it from different angles though - my mum was helped by her parents in the same way, while my dad wasn't and he was charged even after he moved out and he resents it a lot as do my aunts and uncles.


I've never understood the arbitrary third rule -

:eek:????? What was the reasoning behind that and did he pay it? It sounds like something that my Grandparents might have talked about happening (they left school around the start of WW2) if a parent had been widowed and was struggling, but reading your post it sounds as though you are a lot younger than me so I can't think why it was expected?

I've never understood the 1/3rd rule either. It always sounded a lot to me, when you have travel costs on top, as well as saving so you are able to eventually move out. I noticed it hasn't been mentioned on this thread as an amount their offspring are paying.

DylanO

Spendless wrote: »

:eek:????? What was the reasoning behind that and did he pay it? It sounds like something that my Grandparents might have talked about happening (they left school around the start of WW2) if a parent had been widowed and was struggling, but reading your post it sounds as though you are a lot younger than me so I can't think why it was expected?

I've never understood the 1/3rd rule either. It always sounded a lot to me, when you have travel costs on top, as well as saving so you are able to eventually move out. I noticed it hasn't been mentioned on this thread as an amount their offspring are paying.

The reasoning (as far as I'm aware) was "you've moved into a ready-made home - you don't forget your responsibilities here". There was also a holiday home to pay for - and a third of four adult children's wages goes a long way to paying off a mortgage and renovation. It meant that they had a very luxurious lifestyle on my grandad's wages without living in a luxurious area if you see what I mean.

He did pay - with the exception of one uncle (the favourite) they all paid. Which was very rich considering his two children lived with my grandparents at the time and everyone was paying but him.

The weird thing is that she's completely different with her grandchildren and she's the best gran ever. I mean seriously, she's just ace.