Would you take housekeeping off teen on a low paid apprentiship ?

[Shinyshoes2]

My son has a face to face interview tomorrow with a fairly high chance of starting on a full time apprentiship ... He'll be on roughly £100. A week

He's 17 years old
..
Would you take housekeeping from him ?
I'm unsure as its very low paid but at the same time I want him contributing towards the house as a young man he needs to start learning about contributing to the household somehow . At the moment he takes his sister in the morning and picks her up from school.
Obviously if he's doing 40 hours a week he can't do this
Should I just leave it for a year ? ( the apprentiship is 12 months )
We get absolutely no financial help with him whatsoever

[Shinyshoes2]

Oh my mistake it's a minimum of 30 hour a week

[Xcountry]

Yep. I would take 20 quid a week off him, and its not that low paid - its about average for an apprenticeship.

[BadRoly]

I'm not there yet with mine. In the past I think I might have come up with some idealistic thing about teaching them about the real world etc but as it's getting closer, I'm not so sure!

I think in my idealistic world, when dc1 gets there I would ask her to save a % of her income - deposit for her own place (rented usually need a deposit)/car/'Australia fund' rather than give it to me as rent/housekeeping UNLESS I really need it to cover the costs of homing her!

I would expect her to be buying her own toiletries/clothes/phone bill etc though, I think.

[BertieBotts]

I'd maybe take a really token amount like £10 a week. And put it in savings for him. £100 is nothing. But, I would also stop paying for things like his clothes, toiletries, travel, mobile phone contract, junk food/snacks (if you buy things like pot noodles or crisps or coke or whatever), and he should be doing his own laundry and cleaning up after himself which includes a share of cleaning communal areas. So you provide bed, essential food, electricity, heating and he's sorting the rest.

[Scrounger]

I probably wait until he has a job in 12 months, how far does he have to travel and how much will it cost him? I would expect him to pay for any phones, clothes etc. and contribute to the household through chores. If I did take a contribution it would be minimal £20 per month.

Hope he gets the job.

[NigellasDealer]

yes I would take a third of it.

[CanaryYellow]

I'd take £20 a week, and put £10 of it into savings for him (but wouldn't tell him about that).

£80 a week to spend on yourself is a lot of money. I agree he should be buying his own toiletries, phone top-ups and paying for his own travel.

[KatieKaye]

Very definitely. Working means you enter the real world where things cost money. To do otherwise would not teach him how to plan and budget , so would be unfair and put him at a disadvantage
£20 sounds right given the wage and am assuming this will include breakfast and evening meal . Lunches, travel etc should be self funded.
If the school run is out, what other regular chores could take its place? Obviously teen will be responsible for own room , mobile phone bills etc,

[SanityClause]

My mother used to take 20 or 25% of my wages (I can't exactly remember now!) until I got a large pay rise, and handed over a lot more than my cost to the household. She then decided on a reasonable "rent" and capped what I paid her at that.

I think if my DC were on £100, I might not take anything, but would certainly expect that they were contributing to the household in other ways (like the school drop offs that your son does.) I would also be disinclined to otherwise subsidise their lives, so travelling to work, bought lunches, etc would come out of their money.

If I was really short of that money, I wouldn't hesitate to ask a reasonable percentage, though.

[Shinyshoes2]

Thanks everyone :-))

[frogsinapond]

I have two dc living at home this summer, one on a reasonably well paid apprenticeshp and the other a student home from uni on a reasonably well paying internship. I'm not asking either for housekeeping as it seems unfair not to do the same for both and the student really needs the ££ to support himself through the year (if I take it away I will end up having to give it back). I will expect them both to help around the house a bit.

I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to this though - you just need to find a solution that works for your family. But if you are taking payments as a matter of principle rather than actually needing the money, then I would strongly consider saving it and giving it back at somepoint when his need is great (buying a car/house/holiday or whatever).

[chocoluvva]

FWIW, I wouldn't take anything if I could afford it, but I wouldn't buy him anything either except food. He'd be doing an apprenticeship instead of going to college/uni which not only wouldn't pay but would cost several thousand per annum in fees.

[BackforGood]

Yes, but a lot more than is being suggested here.
Depending on things like how much he has to pay for travel, and if he were funding sensible things like driving lessons, I'd certainly be thinking about having around £50 a week out of that. After all - if he's been at school he'll still be going from having no money to spend on himself each week, to having *£50 a week to spend on himself. that's a FAR bigger budget than anybody I know as an adult has to just spend on themselves. It will help with a slightly closer to real life expectation about spending power as an adult.
If I could afford it, tbh, I'd probably save it for him and not tell him, but then give it to him when he needed a deposit for his first home in the future or something, but I'd certainly want to help him understand that "wages" - however low aren't all for spending on "fun", but are there to firstly provide you with somewhere to live and something to eat.

[AnyFucker]

No

but I would give absolutely no money for anything

he finances everything himself including travel, lunches, clothes and of course his mobile phone

[Frontier]

£100 a week if he's got no living cost is huge. How many adults do you know who have £100 a week to spend on just exactly what they please, all to themselves? Will he have transport costs?

I would take something, even if I just put it in a savings account to surprise him with when he had something "sensible" to spend it on.

[bevelino]

He's still a bairn and I would take £20 a week and save it for him.

[wakeupandsmellthecoffee]

God I must be awful then My DS has just started a part time job .Friday and Saturday nights 6pm to 9 pm .I've told him every session he works wether it's 3 hours or more I expect him to hand over £5.
He is just 15 and still at school .I am saving it all up for him .I won't touch a penny but he didn't know that .
It's a life lesson that I feel strongly about

[LaurieFairyCake]

I would take 50 quid for food and doing the washing.

And the 50 he had left would still be more than I spend a week on myself!

[pigwitch]

I would expect him to pay for his clothes, phone, travel etc but I wouldn't take anything from him if I could afford not to iykwim. It's only for a year and then you can rethink the situation as his wage increases.
I can remember as a 17 year old I was at college full time and also worked in the evening to pay for toiletries, clothes,everything really except food and shelter etc. I earned £70 a week and my mum took £10 a week off me even though she still got child benefit and maintainance from my Dad. That still makes me feel a bit crap.

[HygieneFreak]

When i did an apprenticeship 10 years ago it was £80 a week for 40 hours a week.

My mother took £25 a week off me.

I had to pay £8.50 for a weekly bus ticket.

I was left with around £45 a week.

I think my mother took too much.

I wouldnt take any money off my children out of 100 quid a week, but i would expect them to do household chores.

£100 a week spending money which you have to pay lunches out of and their phone etc is a pittance really.

You may find that if you take too much off them then they may feel they are working for nothing and sack the apprenticeship in.

[LaceyLitch]

Agree wholeheartedly with Hygiene if you take the piss out of him he may just jack it.

£100 a week for the work he will be doing is heart breaking anyway, why would you want to trod him down even further by making it less.

£100 a week after travel, paying for lunches, phone contract, toiletries, snacks, clothes etc is fuck all.

I wouldn't take anything but I would stop paying for everything besides cereal/toast for breakfast and an evening meal.

The mothers saying take a third or 50%, seriously? Why would you do that?

[LaurieFairyCake]

Hygiene - because he's an adult, because that's how much it costs to feed them, because the other adults in the house wouldn't have more than 50 quid spending money each a week, because it's equitable, and the 50 would only cover food - not cover gas/electric/rent from the room you could get if you got someone else in.

And finally because why should an adult pay for nothing and have much more spending money than the other adults

[knickernicker]

I think you should make a chart of the responses you've read and then take from him the mean, median or mode of the responses

[Floralnomad]

I have a working 21 yr old , I don't take anything off him because I don't need to . I really don't understand people who say they take money and save it without the child/ adult knowing - what exactly is that teaching them ? surely it's better to encourage them to save themselves ( which is what mine does) . My children are both excellent with saving and budgeting ,they don't need to pay me to learn that, it's how they're bought up.

[BackforGood]

Exactly what Laurie said.
If he's been at school, then he's used to surviving on pocket money or no money or wages from a Saturday job, so less than £20 a week in most cases (considerably less if he's not had a job). If you have £50 a week, he's still got £50 a week which will appear to be a MASSIVE amount to him compared to what he's been used to, whilst you are still totally subsidising him in terms of having to pay for his lodgings, food etc if he weren't living at home.
Those saying not to tak any / take a very small amount.... do you have £80 - £100 a week just to spend on treats for yourself ???