10% of income is fair ‘rent’

So many of the comments on here are ignoring that he is disabled enough to qualify for PIP! Do you have access to any support for him in terms of mentoring/coaching? For example through Access to Work or similar? They would have specialist advice for you on helping him understand these things and prepare for independent living.

How is it immoral to ask a 23 year old working adult for a contribution to house hold expenses, rent ,board and lodgings, whatever you want to call it?

How long until you expect them to act as adults though? If they're still with you at 29, 30, 40, 50?

I'm currently charging dd £50 per week but she buys a lot of her own food. (she's welcome to eat our food but she eats differently to us eg oat milk/vegan food etc)

I think you are making it worse as by making it so low it has no real world value. Divide the bills by the number of adults in the house , add on £100 a month for food and charge that and explain why. Sit him down and show him the calculations. ( if you have dependent children then deduct some money before dividing by number of adults to allow for their energy and water use)

It's not immoral, that's really extreme.

It is a reasonable and not unusual approach to take a mutually acceptable contribution to household costs from working adults.

You've been parented one way and are repeating that. That's fine, but just because it's your family's way doesn't make it the only way.

Many families have always taken contributions to household costs from working adults. There's nothing wrong with that approach either.

Seems fine to me, if he’s earning.

*I'm always in the minority with this, but I just would never charge my kids rent.
It was my decision to have them, therefore I pick up the bill.

It just feels so incredibly grabby when I hear of parents charging their kids to live with them.*

I feel exactly the same - immoral and grabby - but it seems like a cultural difference.
In OPs case - maybe it would be more useful to familiarize the kid with household expenses and budgeting. Or that he pays for his own expenditures, such as phone, transportation, subscriptions.

Does he understand that you need to pay rent or mortgage to live in the house? Maybe that would help him rationalise, also looking at the cost of rent or properties in your area. Definitely show him grocery bills, electricity, WiFi etc… keep him in the know about everything he will have to cover in future!

I have a foster son with learning disabilities who has lived withe since he was 6. He is staying with us because we are his family now. LA have worked out what he has to pay us for his room, food, laundry etc. He is 18 but still at college. He has to claim UC as he's an adult now and give us the housing benefit he will receive. That is £115 per week. He understands if he wants to go to the cinema or bowling now he has to pay himself instead of me paying for him. If he goes out with his friend I no longer give him £10 for his lunch or put £25 on his lunch card. He has to use the UC allowance he gets. I think you need to charge your son a nominal amount for his room but charge for electricity, water and food. I don't think you help him by not charging him as he will never learn to budget effectively if you don't. I've sat down with my foster son and helped him to work out how much money he needs to put back for his lunches £25 or he will need to take a packed lunch from home. He likes to eat in the canteen with his friends but I've suggested he tries a mix of both. I've suggested he puts £20 back for either cinema or bowling each week. He has to pay his phone SIM now which is £8. That would use most of his UC allowance. He gets PIP so can afford clothes, trainers etc. but I have helped him set up some money going into his savings account for clothes, holidays and emergencies.

That's not true at all

My parents never charged any of us rent or food. We were all capable of knowing that when we left we'd have to pay our way. It's not a difficult concept to understand for most? It wasn't a shock to me at all.

i could move back tomorrow and my mum wouldn't take rent. If i transferred her money, she would send it straight back.

It’s too low. He isn’t actually learning to budget his money with such a low rent. 30% just on rent is the rule of thumb and since you are likely subsidizing his food and other expenses as well, that 10% is absolutely nothing.

its not about getting money from your child, its about teaching them to live on an adult budget. Eventually they are going to want to move out and if they are used to not paying rent or only paying a token rent, it’s going to be a shock.

The benefit of living at home is you can tie the rent to income. A landlord doesn’t care what you earn, they just set a rate, even if it is completely unaffordable.

It doesn’t have to be rent paid to you. The two of you could agree to a transparent savings arrangement. He puts money into a savings account with every paycheck and you have the right to verify it is happening and the money is staying there.

I paid a third of my wages in 1985 in my first job, and moved out 18 months later. My own DC, we did a income and expenditure for the house, items that were the same cost regardless of numbers in house, rent etc we paid, anything affected by extra use we split by number of adults, food, utilities etc. Then agreed on that amount. It worked out slightly less than a third. So a good deal!

I guess one person's grabby is another person's teaching your children that they have to pay their way in life and when earning in a proper job should contribute to their living costs.

Either do it properly or don't do it at all, because this halfway option isn't teaching anybody anything.

He will get a massive shock when he's out in the world and he's paying 30%, if not a lot more, on rent.

So either charge him a realistic percentage, or charge him nothing and stop all the moaning.

Re getting him to understand, it's not about living at home vs not living at home. It's about being a child or an adult. Is he a child? No. Then he needs to pay for things, that's what adults do with the money they earn from their jobs.

Exactly and that's why we've been very careful with what we "give" our son. He's already earning more than we are (semi retired), so there's no need for us to financially support him. We've plenty of money in the bank and in investments, but we both have potentially complex long term diseases and we don't know how much of our savings we'll have to spend on care, adaptations, private healthcare etc in the future. We've "invested" time, effort, money etc into our son over many years to ensure he got a good education, a good degree and a good career/profession - now he's got there, our job is done. He'll struggle for a few years financially as his costs are high, but he's set up for life, so we're stepping down and leaving him to it!

I’d say 10% is not enough to be honest.

I’m 23 too and I pay my parents 20%

When DS moved away for his first "proper" job after graduating, we "helped" him a lot with his flat. The only way he could get a flat was to pay a year's rent upfront, so we paid that and he's paying us back monthly out of his wage. After the year, he'll pay the landlord directly every month.

The flat was unfurnished, so he needed a bed, sofa, wardrobe, drawer unit, desk and chair (partly working from home), and all kitchen/bathroom supplies, microwave, drier, kettle, toaster, etc. Likewise, we bought all that for him, OH built all the flatpack furniture, we waited in his flat over the week to receive deliveries of it all (son's first week at work). We rented a holiday cottage for the week, so he had somewhere "nice" to live during the week that we were putting his flat together. Again, other than the cottage rent, he's paying us back monthly for it all, and is happy to do so.

He's said many times how thankful and grateful he was to us for taking a week out and setting up his flat. All that time and effort we spent means more to him than the monetary side of it. It meant that he could concentrate on his job and didn't have to worry about deliveries/buying stuff/setting up his flat - once it was all set up, he could literally just come home and it was all ready for him to chill after a hard days' work.

We won't be doing it again. He knows that if/when he moves, he'll have to sort it all himself, in both financial and practical terms, and is happy to do that.

Because we adopted a "hand up rather than hand-out" approach, he's matured really quickly which was our hope and intention.

With him having to pay us back monthly, it reduces his funds so he's careful with what money he has left. He's very much into shopping carefully, i.e. buys load of yellow sticker stuff to freeze, uses clubcard pricing, always on the lookout for BOGOF and other deals, filled his boots last week with the Co-Ops pizza and beer offer for the Euros, etc. They're good habits to get into. If he wasn't paying us back, and had more money "spare" I don't think he'd make as much effort towards cost savings.

Also you never know when your circumstances might change. We are wealthy, but dh was taken suddenly ill and had to have 6 months off work. At one point we though he would never work again. He then also lost his job and now has a lower paying one.

This taught us that as well as making sure our kids are ok financially we have to keep an eye on our own future. Our adult children contribute to our household finances on this basis.

Good for you
But you must be aware that not everyone can afford to keep their grown off spring for nothing?

When your DC eventually leave home they'll have no idea of budgeting for household costs.