*sigh* this may take a while

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Honeysucklelou2 said:

It is tricky when you have a large family as the younger siblings are watching. Over the  years it’s worked out with mine that when they are 16 they have a laptop for their birthday. It’s not a massively expensive one but ensures that they are able to study without waiting for the family laptop to be available. With driving lessons, my parents have paid for the first 10 and I’ve paid for the rest. I’m conscious that we are very rural and that to have any degree of independence they will need to drive. I also pay for their insurance until they are earning in a full time job. So far this has worked out well. The younger ones know the pattern.  Does your DD ever do a grocery shop with you? I found that any moaning about money stopped when being taken round the supermarket, particularly if you stop and say this is £x worth. It certainly gave DS1 a shock !

We bought her a laptop a couple of years ago and it's a decent spec, I think she's clogged it up with !!!!!! that's slowed it down, but she won't let us look as we'll 'snoop'.
We'd cover 10 lessons... we live in a very suburban area.  She could walk to 4 different bus routes within breath holding distance, 2 train stations within 15 minute walk.  Those stations would get her to our local town within 5 mins and London within 30 minutes.
I do our grocery shop online and she's seen how much it is and really doesn't care.

ladyholly said:

Is she actually saving? I do think that she needs to see your budget to understand how much things cost compared with how much you earn bearing in mind that you have to provide similar in the future for your other children. Explain what inflation is and how it will impact on your budget. Tell her that you are treating her as an adult so that she can see money doesn't grow on trees and try to develop a more hard hearted attitude to wanting to please her. Teenagers can be tough but be assured most of them turn out OK. 

I've shown her our budget and it made her worse... she focused on our income and was 'if dad earns £45ph and you could earn the same if you just worked private, why are you so tight'.  We regularly get things like '1 driving lesson is 1 hour of dad working whereas it's 5 hours for me' blah blah.
We do need to be harsher on pleasing (and budgeting!)

ohdearhowdidthathappen

enthusiasticsaver said:

CRANKY40 said:

ohdearhowdidthathappen said:

 I was very calm and she literally just laughed at me and said I was pathetic expecting my child to cover my shortcomings in being able to provide!  I was fuming!

That statement alone would have reduced my parental contribution to zero.  

I agree.  This entitled attitude is horrendous.  

Depending on my mood it either makes me very angry or very sad.  It's very tiring.  I tend to think it's our fault, DH points out that the other 4 are nothing like it.  Who knows?!

savingholmes

My priority in that would be driving lessons. We gave DD £100 for 18th but gave her £1200 towards driving lessons on the understanding we were not suitable driving instructors and would not take her out to practice.

She bought her own laptop and iPad with £ from earnings, Xmas, birthday and lifelong savings from her nan. We don't plan to pay any other car expenses. She got £50 I think for A levels...

I completely get how annoying entitlement is though

crunchy_time

Sorry to hear about your struggles with entitled teen but thank you for sharing. Im sure it’s helping many people like it is me.

I am watching and learning with interest to try and avoid this happening with my two, especially my daughter who already has her father wrapped round her little finger. She is 7 and her brother is 9. They both get their age pocket money a week which costs a lot (£64 a month for me to budget) but they have to pay for anything they want. My son is already starting to save up for a secondhand phone for high school and my daughter just used some of hers to buy a new leotard that she really didn’t need but wanted. They have around £50-£60 just saved at the moment for if they want something. We have just started making them save about a third of their weekly ‘wage’ into their long term ISAs ready for cars, travelling etc. Each week they don’t get their pocket money until they have tidied their rooms but we are going to extend this to doing extra school work as well and eventually chores around the house.

We pay for all their sports clubs of course and our adventures as a family.

Both DH and I had parents that did not educate us with money. DHs parents turned a blind eye so he spent everything he earned on rubbish as a teenager and my parents were trying to keep up with the jones so bought us stuff (we each had two cars in our early 20s and there are three of us) to mainly impress their posh friends, but they could barely afford it. They wanted us to save and got frustrated when we didn’t but didn’t explain to us how.

Hence husband and I have been rubbish with money and it only feels like now we are getting a grip on it in our 40s.

I don’t want this for my two. I want them to be so money savvy throughout their childhood. 

So thank you all who share as its useful to know what’s coming up for us as parents and how to deal with it.

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Sounds like you're instilling really important money skills there Crunchie
We start pocket money for ours at 10 and link it to tidying their rooms.  Initially they get £10 a month (to get them used to the concept) until they get to secondary and then it's £10 a week.  That's been working well on the whole, my 4th child is about to start as he's 10 soon and is so looking forward to it They don't really need anything, so it'll be purely spent on 'wants'.
DD has got better since she's got the job, it's the 'big' stuff that causes issues because she doesn't want to save for them

Drawingaline

The bit about your DH growing up with not a lot of money and wanting to give the kids what he didn't have is how my hubby was. Except he included spending on himself like that too! All the stuff his mum couldn't afford to give him he bought in his 20's. It took a year of unemployment with our 20k of debt and me working two jobs to keep the house to make him really scale back. And although he makes double what he did pre redundancy he has become much tighter with his spending. And bizarrely me using ynab has made me LOOK like I spend more now, whereas I was always very very tight beforehand. Planning is key.

But ultimately I do think some people's nature impacts on how they are with money and how they are influenced from the outside too. I know someone whose two girls couldn't be more different from their parents. And part of that is because of where they live. They have a bit of the keeping up with friends attitude, even though their parents have never bought into that kind of lifestyle.

I do understand on the large family thing. One of the things I told my girl was that I wasn't funding her through uni as I wouldn't take things from her brothers to enable her to do a degree. We will ensure she has a roof over her head a phone for communication and that she won't starve. The rest is on her.

I hope you and your husband come up with a way that works, but it does sound like she may not change until she is out of the family home and supporting herself. 

EssexHebridean

Gentle reminder - as parents, your responsibility is not to be liked all the time, or to please your kids - it’s to turn out decent human beings. I’d be pointing this out to Little Miss Entitled with the addition that in her case even your best efforts are starting to look a bit unlikely to succeed! 😉 The things she says to you, for context, just one of those statements used to my parents when I was her equivalent age (which for me would have been 14 or so as I left school after GCSEs) would have seen a grounding and instant withdrawal of all privileges for an appreciable time. I’m curious - have you told her that she’s behaving like someone unpleasant and unlikeable? A line my Mum used to me once feels relevant here “I might love you, but right now I REALLY don’t like you at all”. It was deserved, it hit home, and I’ve never forgotten it. Sorry if this feels too harsh - it genuinely is from personal experience though and I can say with hindsight I’m incredibly glad my parents pulled no punches (metaphorically speaking) as I was growing up. 

Stick with it - at least the others will be seeing her behaviour and realising how ridiculous it is - that should help! 

enthusiasticsaver

ohdearhowdidthathappen said:

enthusiasticsaver said:

CRANKY40 said:

ohdearhowdidthathappen said:

 I was very calm and she literally just laughed at me and said I was pathetic expecting my child to cover my shortcomings in being able to provide!  I was fuming!

That statement alone would have reduced my parental contribution to zero.  

I agree.  This entitled attitude is horrendous.  

Depending on my mood it either makes me very angry or very sad.  It's very tiring.  I tend to think it's our fault, DH points out that the other 4 are nothing like it.  Who knows?!

I don't think you can blame yourself for her attitude.  It may be her peers or  because she is the oldest? The thing is for you both to stand firm and consistent and do not give in to the pester power. Personally I would be  pointing out that at her age many of our parents/grandparents or even ourselves were living independently and not being supported by parents at all.  My dad was a high earner but at 18 I was working and saving for a wedding and our first house.  We always appreciated cash assistance as did our children but never expected it. Instilling good money habits into our  adult children (at 18 she is an adult) is crucial and that means the discipline of saving and waiting rather than expecting things to land in their laps or god forbid put it on a credit card.  I thought having a job might have turned her attitude around.  I feel very angry on your behalf that she calls you pathetic and point out she is not a child. 

enthusiasticsaver

crunchy_time said:

Sorry to hear about your struggles with entitled teen but thank you for sharing. Im sure it’s helping many people like it is me.

I am watching and learning with interest to try and avoid this happening with my two, especially my daughter who already has her father wrapped round her little finger. She is 7 and her brother is 9. They both get their age pocket money a week which costs a lot (£64 a month for me to budget) but they have to pay for anything they want. My son is already starting to save up for a secondhand phone for high school and my daughter just used some of hers to buy a new leotard that she really didn’t need but wanted. They have around £50-£60 just saved at the moment for if they want something. We have just started making them save about a third of their weekly ‘wage’ into their long term ISAs ready for cars, travelling etc. Each week they don’t get their pocket money until they have tidied their rooms but we are going to extend this to doing extra school work as well and eventually chores around the house.

We pay for all their sports clubs of course and our adventures as a family.

Both DH and I had parents that did not educate us with money. DHs parents turned a blind eye so he spent everything he earned on rubbish as a teenager and my parents were trying to keep up with the jones so bought us stuff (we each had two cars in our early 20s and there are three of us) to mainly impress their posh friends, but they could barely afford it. They wanted us to save and got frustrated when we didn’t but didn’t explain to us how.

Hence husband and I have been rubbish with money and it only feels like now we are getting a grip on it in our 40s.

I don’t want this for my two. I want them to be so money savvy throughout their childhood. 

So thank you all who share as its useful to know what’s coming up for us as parents and how to deal with it.

I think this will pay dividends as your children get older.  Both my girls had similar experiences (not as  young as yours but from about 12) we gave them monthly allowances and made them save for things like school trips (we paid the majority but they had to make a contribution).  I think children look after their things better too when they have had to pay towards them. Now my girls are adults and both are very good at managing money and don't carry debt except for the occasional 0% deal and a mortgage/car loan. 

ohdearhowdidthathappen

Thanks DAL, EH and ES

All really good points made

I think sometimes we've given in for an easy life, she's very good at guilt tripping and I think we've fallen for it and she's learnt by guilting and nagging she might get what she wants.  As she's got older and the demands have got more expensive, we've got firmer.  Maybe too little, too late.

She was always quite sneaky with it when my youngest was very small, she'd wait until the end of the day when she knew we'd be knackered and start arguments then when we just wanted to chill

If I tell her she's being unpleasant, she'll say something like 'boohoo, you just can't cope with the truth' or 'well I get it from you' or 'I have a right to share my opinion'.  It turns nasty fast - she likes to swear and name call and it upsets the little ones.

She seems to have simmered down the last day or so, so we'll just see when the next flare up is.