Student daughter & boyfriend whats fair to ask in housekeeping?

leslieknope

i would charge the boyfriend £300 per month. that seems reasonable for rent & food. daughter, it's up to you. she will need a lot of time to study and this may affect her ability to work enough hours and her loan won't go far - my books alone were almost £500 per year and i can imagine she would need more than i did.

silvercar

If your daughter and her BF moved out, how much would you save? that is the starting point for discussion, the CB and CTC for her are going regardless.

Sambella

Expecting your children to be able to replace what you lose in government handouts is rarely doable for them unless they earn enough.

If you take £30 of her £48.92 per week you don't leave her much at all. You will then still have to help her out with clothes, transport etc from time to time.

Leave her enough to buy some clothes and pay for transport etc as this in turn saves you having to pay for those things. If there are 7 eating in your house and you spend £500 a month on groceries that's only £71 per person per month each. Electric , heating etc will be less than this. The rent is yours regardless of whether the kids are there or not unless you downsize.

You have to adapt to the

You need to be in a position where you can meet all bills as an when your 4 children leave home.

I've been there I know.

I charge my son an amount that I will NOT miss if he moves out. I might even gain an extra £20-40 per month when he does. That's a far, far better position to be in.

If my son was younger I'd be on tax credits based on my salary. So it took some doing but I adjusted to the loss.

Charging the kids to cover the loss of tax credits just delays the loss really unless the mortgage is paid off or you downsize to a cheaper rental property.

The more kids, the more tax credits, the greater the eventual loss.

snowball2

We could comfortably meet the bills and live on just our income if it was just the two of us, its these pesky kids that run up the costs feeding and clothing them, school lunches, bus fares ect, although I do expect my eldest daughter to buy her own things most of the time now as she has quite a bit of expendable income through her part time job. We have a small mortgage which will be finished while our two youngest will still be in school.

The drop between 4 and 3 children is almost by half.

FBaby

If your daughter and her BF moved out, how much would you save? that is the starting point for discussion, the CB and CTC for her are going regardless.

I agree with this. What they should pay is not about what you are losing in benefits. That's your issue and that would happen regardless. It's about what it truly cost you to have them staying. £60 a week seems quite a lot extra cost, but it depends on what you are supplying for that amount, mainly in terms of food. Do they do no food shopping and therefore you buy everything for them, or do they also have their own cupboard and cook their own food, sitting with you only occasionally? This will make quite a difference.

In terms of budget, take into consideration that any time they could be moving out and you would be with the £300 less anyway. Would you find yourself in the same position because that's how much less it would cost you not to have to support them any longer?

paddy's_mum

£30 a week (from the boyfriend) is an absolute dream, for him! Where else will he find lodgings with everything provided for less than the average cost of one night's B & B?

Unless he is doing a great deal else in order to help with the smooth running of the household of which he has elected to become part (such as gardening, washing cars etc) then you, OP, are in fact subsidising a young man to the detriment of your own family.

If he wasn't there, you could have a lodger in the same space who was paying a fair rent, and on an income of £1200 a month, this young chap could well afford to pay more.

In the opening post, you describe him as an 'adult' and it's time he learnt that adults see for themselves what is and is not fair and do something about it.

penguingirl

paddy's_mum wrote: »

If he wasn't there, you could have a lodger in the same space who was paying a fair rent, and on an income of £1200 a month, this young chap could well afford to pay more.

I somehow doubt that the OP would be allowing a lodger to share a room with their teenage daughter, so it's not quite the same.

OP I think you need to work out what your goals are- is it to replace the loss of child benefit? Or is it to cover the costs of having extra adults in the house? Do you want them to live with you? The risk of charging too much is that they decide to move out- that may or may not be what you want. What about think about it more like a house share? They are expected to pay a share of the bills, food etc (or cook independently). That way you are preparing them for normal bills, rather than putting an arbitrary figure on it.

gycraig_2

Judi wrote: »

If she has taken out a student loan and isnt needing it, she really ought to be saving it towards paying her loan off early... but we are talking about kids here...

It's a loan like any other, if someone was planning to take out a 5k loan they didn't need they would be laughed off the board.

It's great that you could afford to "carry" your kids in uni etc but not every parent can afford to and the whole point of the loan is to cover living expenses it's not designed (although is often used as) money to !!!! up the wall and get drunk every weekend

silvercar

It's a loan like any other, if someone was planning to take out a 5k loan they didn't need they would be laughed off the board.

This just isn't true. It is a loan that is written off if you never earn enough to pay it all back and where the payments are determined by income not loan agreement.

Believing that it is a loan like any other, is what puts people off going to university.

Sambella

It's quite different when you're on benefits.

If you were earning say £40k and your daughter moved out you'd still have £40k. Only loss is child benefit.

If all 4 of your children moved out tomorrow you'd lose perhaps £1000-£1200 if you are getting approx £300 per child.

If just one child moves out your rent /mortgage is the same, insurance, tv package, council tax etc also and there would be a small reduction in electric,water and maybe heating so it is actually unlikely that you will lose £300 in what you pay out especially if she buys her own clothes,make up etc. What she buys you don't have to pay for remember.

I charge my son £160 pm This covers food, electric heating and tv/broadband package. My other bills will be the same whether he is here or not.

My son buys his own clothes, toiletries etc so I don't have those costs anymore.