This is going to be controversial but...

[rosesarered95]

I genuinely don't understand the concept of charging your children "rent" to live in their own home. Wouldn't you rather help them by allowing them to save as much money as possible (especially in this current economy) instead of taking money from them which may reduce the amount that they can save each month, resulting in it taking them a bit longer to move out?

I bought my own property on my own aged 25 and would have never been able to achieve this if I wasn't allowed to stay at home rent free and save as much of my salary as I could. Can I just add, I contributed to the household in other ways e.g cooking for the family weekly, cleaning etc.

I totally understand charging your children rent if you are on a lower income and genuinely need the money, but if this is not the case for you, why do you charge your children rent?

YANBU

If you can afford it then no you shouldn’t be charging rent.

However, what I read on here back along which I absolutely loved! Was that a parent charged their DCs an amount but put it into a savings account.

The DC got used to paying bills every month but also had a nice deposit to go towards their first home or car.

I paid rent while living at home and working - kids need to learn that real life costs money! I'll be doing the same with my DCs if they're still at home when they're employed

I don’t charge my dd rent but will once she gets a job a. Because it teaches her life is not free b. She learns to think of expenses like rent when she gets paid c. She wil think about moving out sooner than living like an adult child at home with mum and dad.
I may ( or may not) give back to her when she buys a flat but I am in the privileged position to be able to do that

But you have no idea who is taking rent because they need to.
I genuinely don't understand the concept of caring about and involving myself in how other households organise their financial agreements.

It's so important to teach your children the value of money, and the meaning of responsibility. I wouldn't suggest you charge 'rent' i.e. money just for being in their room, however they should absolutely pay their share of the bills and food shopping, and share the housework (although this should be the case long before they're adults).

It will get them ready for having their own place, and means you won't be struggling in these difficult times.

I always contributed as my mum was on benefits due to her being ill so when I came back from uni in the holidays I worked and split all bills with her. She didn't have a mortgage though.
I think it did me good, taught me the value of things and gave me pride that I could work and help her and be like a team.
It taught me to budget too. I now charge my older child but am in the lucky position that I can afford to save it for them.

Discovered it's great if your DC save their 'disposable' income sensibly but so many young people (and not so young people) don't seem to value saving - appreciate not everyone can afford to save. You frequently hear of young adults going mad with their money - expensive gadgets, beauty treatments, designer clothing, eating out, holidays etc etc and not realising that 'normal life' has to be paid for and if you want to buy or rent your own place you need to have a deposit.

Its often mentioned on here that young adult DC have loads more disposable income than their DPs ... so why shouldn't 'rent' be charged? And look how many women on here end up with cocklodgers? When my DS graduates he is likely to be earning a lot more than me so even though technically I don't 'need' the rent I will certainly make it clear that £X amount is the cost of living at home ... but I sincerely hope that he will be independent and find his own flat share rather than stay at home.

I don’t understand this, how did she get to adult hood and not know life is not free L not think of expenses like rent and why would she want to stay living with you like an adult child? Is there a back story here?

I work full time and am a uni student, single mum as well. I have had to move back home with my mum as I couldn't afford to stay in a refuge (£380pw), paying my mum rent and helping out with other things (new boiler etc) seeing as the house will be mine in the long term anyway. I would be brassic if i stayed in the refuge.

I agree with you. My parents never asked anything from me or my brothers , it was, and still is always our home. It meant we could save and I was able to buy a property much sooner. They even offered to help there. I’ll do the same for my kids

I can see both sides why people charge/don't charge rent

I chose not to charge ds 20 rent as long as he saves at least £400 a month for a house deposit as its likely the only time in the near future he's going to have that amount to put into savings each month. So far he has 10k

Some people have no choice. But I think if I was in a position to not need the rent money I would take it anyway, save it and then maybe gift to them when they were ready to buy. It gets them into the habit of putting money aside each month to pay for essential living costs.

@Artygirlghost
Also if you are receiving benefits you need to be careful about taking on a lodger. Because that is what you are doing if you start charging someone rent, even if it is a family member. There are all sort of rules about what you can and can't do and how it can affect your benefits. You also might need to update your insurance.

This is a good point I hadn’t considered and would apply to me. We also rent privately and the tenancy forbids lodgers or subletting of any sort. If we were to charge a DC rent, they would no longer be an occupier but would need to be on the tenancy agreement as a joint tenant. Which means paying a fee to amend the tenancy agreement to add them, and another fee again to later delete them when they move out. It’s also a decision point where the landlord can decide to simply evict us if by adding our adult child as a tenant they get cold feet about whether we can still afford to pay the rent on our own….they may perceive the adding of a tenant to mean we have become financially unstable….

I agree with you IF they are saving money to enable them to work towards buying.

If they are living the life of Riley, pissing it away, going out all the time with high associated expense, going on holidays, always buying new clothes etc, then nope, I’m not subsidising that!

Mine are at home while either going to uni or working and saving towards property. We’re happy not to charge anything because we know, for those out of uni and working, most of it is being saved. They are out a lot but most things they do are free or extremely low cost, maybe a movie or bowling with low cost dinner once a month or so. Basically we don’t feel taken advantage of. And, they know exactly how much it costs to run a household, bills, expenses etc, we are not shielding them from that, they are well across it. We don’t need to take rent to ‘teach how to save’ as they save most of what they get.

This. I’m on NMW and my DS earns £40k a year. Even if I didn’t need the money, wtf should he live here for free?! He saves £1k a month for a house deposit and spends the rest of whatever he likes, including several vehicles (cars and motorbikes), eating out, expensive gifts for his GF.

I shop at Primark and have a 12 year old car and two other children to look after.

Of course I want him to save enough to be able to start a life for himself, but while he’s here and I’m paying the 2 adult rate for council tax and missing out on the low income discounts for other things due to having a higher earner at the property, he can pay his measly £200 a month towards the bills as a token gesture, and anyone well off enough not to need that contribution should thank their lucky stars and stfu.

With us, it wasn’t a question of needing the money - rather getting them to understand that a roof over your head, endless electricity and hot water, etc., don’t come cheap.
We charged dds roughly half (rent only) of what they’d have had to pay in a flatshare locally. Made it considerably less of a shock when they did eventually move out.

Some years later we did give fairly substantial help with house deposits - I do know we were fortunate to be able to do so.,

We'll be charging ours once they have a full time job. Probably only a little less than marker rates too.

The idea is that is will get them used to paying rent/mortgage and appreciate that it costs to live. We hopefully won't "need" it so plan to put it away for them and they can use it as a deposit.

Isn't it sad though that there is an assumption that grown children will be living at home. :(

What happens when your adult child splits their time between 2 sets of parents (yes, this is rare but it does still happen)? And one parent needs rental support and the other now?

Have you seen the thread about young men still living at home and not contributing at all to family life and expenses?

I think charging rent is fair. It costs money to put a roof over someone's head and feed them. It also prepares you for independent life. Parents don't have to charge market rent.

It's not about parents being able to afford not to charge either. Parents bring their children up to be independent adults.

I genuinely don't understand the concept of charging your children "rent" to live in their own home.

I totally understand charging your children rent if you are on a lower income and genuinely need the money,

You genuinely don't understand, but then you do totally understand.

My daughter was claiming UC to help cover her rent. When she moved back home temporarily between flats the rent cover stopped so she had no means of paying rent even if I had wanted her to .

I worked full time from age 21 and lived at home until I got my own home with partner at age 24.

Myself and my partner actually both lived with my parents during this time and we both paid rent. We were both earning a full time wage so why wouldn't we contribute to bills, food shopping etc? my parents agreed we would only pay a small amount (very small amount compared to renting a place) so we could still save for a house deposit and we did.

I didn't have any adverse thoughts to paying this rent, we were adults and not going to live there for free. Although only a small amount, it prepared us for the adult world of having your own home and paying your way.

@Ragwort
Discovered it's great if your DC save their 'disposable' income sensibly but so many young people (and not so young people) don't seem to value saving - appreciate not everyone can afford to save. You frequently hear of young adults going mad with their money - expensive gadgets, beauty treatments, designer clothing, eating out, holidays etc etc and not realising that 'normal life' has to be paid for and if you want to buy or rent your own place you need to have a deposit.

I will repeat the second part of my post for you as you seem to have missed it:
”If I did have an adult working DC living at home that was blowing all their earnings on weed, takeaways, and nights out/holidays then I would definitely be charging some sort of rent as a way to force saving. It wouldn’t actually teach them to save though, so I’d also be giving them a crash course in finances alongside doing this because I won’t always be around to tithe their earnings as a way to force saving. They need to develop this habit for themselves.”

Its often mentioned on here that young adult DC have loads more disposable income than their DPs ... so why shouldn't 'rent' be charged?
Its not disposable income imho if they are consciously saving for a high cost goal like home ownership, children or retirement. Which given the state of this country, these items have been inflating in cost so fast that wages have fallen far behind. So any head start you can give a DC on this will help ensure their financial security when you are dead and gone.

And look how many women on here end up with cocklodgers?
I fail to see the relevance between cock or vagina lodgers and supporting your own DC financially to give them the best start in life you can afford.

When my DS graduates he is likely to be earning a lot more than me so even though technically I don't 'need' the rent I will certainly make it clear that £X amount is the cost of living at home ... but I sincerely hope that he will be independent and find his own flat share rather than stay at home.
Ok, you haven’t said how money wise your DS is though. I would only suggest you factor in how good he is with money when making this decision (if you haven’t already, you may have just not mentioned he’s a spender and so you need to charge him for his own long term good)

My DS moved back home after Uni last year whilst looking for a FT job (he worked in a supermarket in the meantime). The agreement was that we wouldn't charge him rent so he could save up to move out (preferably to buy a property). It was never his intention to stay around here but the job he ended up getting is local so he's still here. The food bill has increased massively and the electricity is higher too. He has taken over running costs for his car (paid by us when he was at Uni) but other than that his money is mostly saved. With the state of the nation atm I can see him being here a lot longer than he/we anticipated. DH is dropping a day at work after Christmas to work towards retirement so our income will reduce by quite a bit. With all the increased costs we may have to consider charging DS a small monthly contribution towards food/bills.

I can see all sorts of ways to do it, and it does make sense for many to live at home.

I do find it very odd to change a minimum token rent though, because it really teaches them nothing, whilst also not substantially changing your own position. So why do it?

My ILs charge £100 each for BIL and his girlfriend. It's a tiny fraction of their take home and is less than they eat each month. Plus MIL and FIL do all household stuff. The girlfriend - who is absolutely lovely - says that she wants to know HOW to sort a house when they buy one, not just be treated as an overindulged 14yo, but she's in a tricky position.