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DS18 starts a full time job next week, earning £10 per hour.

It's only me and him in the house. Obviously child maintenance and child benefit has stopped. Single person discount will be taken off my council tax.

I have told him he will need to start contributing and asked if he wanted to discuss a fair amount. He wants me just to tell him. I've told him he will also be taking over his mobile phone.

Also relevant is that I have agreed to take out a small car loan for him when he passes his test, hopefully in the next few months, and i have said that I will make the payments for the first year, and then he can take them over. Payments will be about £90 per month. I had agreed to this before we knew whether he would go to college or go out to work, and I still plan to do this for him. He'll cover insurance and fuel.

So what is fair?

Thanks.

Gosh, this is tricky. If he has chosen to work rather than continue education then he need’s to understand that this is what adults do, and adults pay their way, so you should ask what it actually costs to house, feed and pay his share of bills
it is not hard to get jobs that pay a full time wage these days, so saying he can only get two days work sounds a bit suspect to me

if you don’t, then he will think that it is someone else’s responsibility to pay for these things ie you could well be making a cocklodger

if he intends to train or go back to college or get an apprenticeship then this is different and a token contribution may be more suitable

That's frustrating. Did you make any progress with him on understanding and agreeing what his contribution should be? I would still want to take that as a starting point, based on food, council tax etc, and give him a discount on that for ?a couple of months. You (or us) pulling numbers out of thin air is not going to help him engage. And it's a short term discount, not a "new normal".

The week before Christmas is a very difficult time to go job hunting though, so it's more about getting him prepared to get going in Jan.

Thanks for the replies.

Hadn't yet discussed the amounts, but I was planning on having him pay £40 this week, and then £80 per fortnight as of his pay in first week of Jan.

Now I'm thinking maybe £25 per week until we hopefully see an increase in hours or a new job. And I'll keep paying his phone bill for now.

He has mentioned possibly starting college next summer, but that's definitely not a certainty based on previous discussions of options.

What would he be paying in a house share? Outside of London is it around £500+ pcm? Charge him just under that as that is the alternative to staying home with you.

Re dentist, if he's registered with an NHS dentist as a child will they keep him on as an adult patient?

This

No, they've been telling me for some time that once he turns 18, he needs to go private or go elsewhere for NHS. Which is practically impossible, apparently.

It makes more sense to pay a % of earnings which then allows for fluctuations. My DS pays 20% of his earnings to me which we both feel is fair. He might be getting a promotion soon so it’s an easy way to work things out. It’s still far cheaper for him than living elsewhere and I don’t “profit” from it as I still pay more of the household expenses.

Ah, I thought they could only get rid of you if you missed appointments but it seems some are only commissioned for children.

I thinI maybe £25 per week for now
and then encourage him to look for a proper full time job in January.