to confiscate her bank card?

[WongaWoman]

Today I opened the October bank statement of my eldest DD (19) and was horrified to discover that she was overdrawn by £280, had been charged nearly £90 in authorised and unauthorised overdraft charges, had accrued over £40 so far this month in charges, and she had received a payday loan of £100 from a well known online payday loan company earlier in October.

She is only on apprentice pay of £2.60 per hour! I have now nearly killed myself to pay off her payday loan and overdraft. With back up from my DH I have confiscated her bank card until I get all my money back as I thought it was the cheapest option for her. She was in floods of tears tonight in embarrassment and at losing her independence.

I don't really know what else I could have done. AIBU?

She is for real!

I think that she lives exactly as she says-hopefully her DCs fall in line!

In a slight quandary here- realising I will never reach a 100k income, but...(embarrassing to admit)...I have no idea how you fry a Mars bar!

I do, however, have some friends who have worked as cleaners- do you think they could help me out?

Well fair enough. I guess it clearly shows a negative correlation between business success and empathy. She just seems so sure of everything. Most people with money (and, on a moderate level, I have some) agonise about what is right to give their children and what they ought to manage for themselves (e.g I would think that getting a child to at least take out some student loan is a good thing even if you don't have to). Also, she seems to take incredible personal pride in what her children have "achieved" even though she outsourced all the childcare.

In some ways, I am quite jealous of her self confidence!

I suspect that most Glaswegians have never fried a Mars Bar-it is a bit like me saying that I couldn't live in London because I wouldn't want to eat a jellied eel!

It all reminds me of all the BBC staff member telling their line manager about the relocation to Salford: "I liked Didsbury but I only saw one specialist cheese shop which put me off a bit to be honest."

Utterly clueless and stuck in a stereotyped alternative reality.

(for the record, Media City gaven the onsite supermarket franchise to a local supermaket which has won national cheese retailer of the year for about 8 billion years. We may not be Kensington, and we may be northern but we have trees, fields and posh cheese round these parts!)

You dip it in batter and deep fry it cory.

You need more than one data point for a correlation larry.

Just saying.

Outliers and all that.

Trills,

I have plenty of data points in RL thanks. Also there is a causal mechanism. You have to be quite ruthless to get right to the top.

Thanks for the maths tuition though. Clearly not covered in my physics degree :).

Just saying..

It's a mixture. I believe our chidlren are 50% genes and 50% environment. I spend quite a lot of time with mine. 4 are in the kitchen at the moment where I was a short while ago and I don't accept that if a father (or mother) works they then have no influence over their children.

Secondly your children will never be leading surgeons etc etc unless they are led that way. I am not saying they all can be but one of the biggest difference between private and state schools seems to be low expectations. I doubt daughter 1 started off with any advantages over the apprentice daughter on the thread so why are their positions going to be so different? It can't just be money surely as I know a lot of people in the City who came from poor homes but worked hard and did well. It must be a large part to do with what the parent and school expects. If 100% of the girls in your class go to the best universities then you're likely to.

On the debt I think if the children are properly grounded and sensible then ensuring they graduate debt free (as many many mumsnet posters did - so I'm only ensuring they are in the same position we were when there were no loans and no fees) is not really the same as giving them huge sums to spend.

Of course those of us who can't afford fees just send them to the nearest school and couldn't care less about education and we know there won't be any able aspirational DCs, because to be either of those things you have to have rich parents.
I wish Xenia could be at parents evenings to hear all the earnest questions about Oxbridge and see the list of all the universities these 'poor unmotivated' pupils are moving on to.I must tell my DS1 that he was very unusual to go to a Russell Group university from his comprehensive-(he will be a bit surprised because most of his school friends were similar).

50% genes/50% expectations. Hmm. DH - forebears were miners, very working class background - went to Oxbridge, top of his profession. Me: rather unacademic daughter of landed gentry, didn't go to uni but did jolly well in the City without being terribly earnest or trying very hard (grafter though).

DS: Top school and lots of expectations but no chance of being a surgeon because he detests the sciences just a tiny bit less than he detests maths and psychometric thingy they did at school said he was very low on caring genes so medicine was a total no no.

DD: More all round school, has the emotional intelligence of an elephant and although she isn't top at anything she is a real all rounder but I doubt she has the absolute cleverness to cope with medicine.

Oddly both of them are fantastic linguists and very musical. Neither of us are so goodness knows where that comes from.

You have been lucky Xenia but you can't plan it. DH's sisters came from the same stable both went to university (russell group) but never much wanted to work for a living.

I have to say this, I really do.
STOP it, I hate how every one gangs up on Xenia, she has as much right to post on here as everyone else. Stop Bullying her!!

Xenia has every right to post on here, yes.

But if she chooses to post (on a thread about money management for a 19-year-old on an apprenticeship) "£2.60 an hour is not a great wage. Can't you encourage her to be an actuary or leading surgeon or something?" then other people have the right to rip the piss out of her.

I'm absolutely fine.

I do find all these issues very interesing however and it is not out of some kind of view I am better than anyone. My great grandfather was a miner. We have pretty good class mobility in the UK but I do like to know why some people end up X and others Y and we are all parents and things we do may or may not have an impact on our children. there was a girl in myd aughter's class at school who had to leave due to financial issues and I've always wondered who their paths would differ because of that change at age 11. I haven't heard from her since then. She may be doing great and all kinds of things like addictions and lack of ability to work hard have an impact on children a lot too,.

So presumably the children of marriedinwhite will not be on £2.60 an hour apprenticeships at 19. Why is that - because the parents earn a lot more? It can't be that the rich have children with a higher IQ.

The surgeon point was just an example. I just meant careers at that kindo f level like marriedin's City career and her husband's career.

Married' husband's sisters are not at all surprising. there is a vast class in the UK where boys go to good schools and girls marry and fllower arrange. It is loathesome but still exists. It is caused by parental expectation,. sexism, housewife mothers and a kind of conditioning that because you're female you won't be the one in the good job. It is as bad as a system which suggests certainly families are likely to have children as apprentices on low wages.

We're not bullying her. We're just making it known when we feel she's gone all Daily Telegraph again.

You do often seem to take an incredibly polarised view, though, Xenia. It sometimes seems as though in your world there are the non-intellectual jobs on minimum wage or there are jobs on £200K plus and very little in between, and little or no thought of intellectually-demanding jobs that are not massively well-remunerated (for example teachers (even in the private sector), librarians, university lecturers). You seem to be relying on those people while also feeling that they are a bit dim for not working as actuaries or surgeons (etc.) or starting their own businesses -- your idea of a "level" of career seems almost entirely financially-based.

I kinda said that too more or less, but got deleted.

Holding back the tears.... [ I jest] I think I can just about cope.

What was deleted of someone's posts above>? I don't remember it being a particularly dangerous thread....

No, I agree. The average wage is £20k - £25k in the UK and I know what teachers and even academics earn. I do think too many women set their sites too low and some women in their 30s and 40s regret earlier career decisions as you can see from the massive percentage of threads where the problem concerned couldk be solved with more money - eg fed up with lots of cleaning to do or not sure whether to go back to work as wage same as cost of child care or cannot leave husband as would have no money or cnanot buy the house I want because of no money.

Those girls led like lambs to the slaughter into librarian and teacher jobs in their teens who could as easilyh have been told if you do X you will earn Y, might have earned more. I am just trying to be a poster girl for high(ish) paid women and I by no means earn huge amount and have neve said I did and nor I think have I really said what the children do ( I did mention the eldest in general terms). In fact only the oldest is really off my hands.

I most of all adore the intellectual side of my work and tha tit changes all the time. I would do it even if I were not paid. I want women to pick work they adore. However if you can adore brain surgery as much as standard nursing you'd be a fool to nurse. I would imagine brain surgery taxes your brain a bit more too. There's huge fun as a woman in doing better than other people at work, in achievment, at being theb est at what you do in the UK. It annoys me that the press neglect the fact many women like those elements of life. It just doesn't fit the nice little stereotype of the press tha all women want a aminimum wage job to fit around the school run. That is simply not so for many of us. We are happy to ditch the school run if it means we earn an extra £100k.

Why should your daughter stop acting like a child? You've not taught her to be anything but. You should not be openin her mail or going through her room

Xenia can I just point out that DH's sister went to the same comp that he did and also to Russell Group universities but between them have never held a decent permanent job and they are in their mid/late 40's now. I, on the other hand was sent to finishing school and was never expected to do more than a bit of secretarial work but by the time I was 26/27 (mid 80s) I was earning more than 100k in the City.

There is one differentiator in my opinion, DH and I are grafters - his sisters are not. That, I think, is the key factor in success. It irks me but DS is the g&t one but he is not a grafter by nature, dd on the other hand is probably top average but she is a grafter and is shrewd with it. Only time will tell which one will be the most successful and I have no doubt that DS will make Oxbridge.