To think DB is mean to be charging my DCs for a room we don't want in a holiday home

[TheReason]

DB has arranged weekend away for all of our family. We are meant to be splitting the cost.

There are 6 bedrooms in the house he is renting out. It's working out at approximately £200 per room as me, my DB and DSs are covering the costs of my parents room.

This is a lot of money for us as money is tight due to childcare costs. To be honest I wish we weren't going as we can't really afford it but we feel obliged.

We are the only ones with children.

DB booked the holiday home and - without asking us - decided our children need their own room. Our 2 year old actually sleeps in our bed all the time anyway. Our 6 year old sleeps in his own room at home - but, I would prefer he just squashed into our bed in the holiday home - as otherwise we're paying an extra £200 for him to sleep alone in a room. Chances are that our 6 yr old will end up in our room anyway as he often does and it wouldn't bother us at all.

DB has no children and has no understanding about what having children means.

DB texted me to tell me the breakdown of the cost and I saw that me and DH are having to pay twice what everyone other couple has pay as we have to pay for two rooms.

From DB's point of view he seems to think my DSs are 2 extra people that should be charged as anyone else attending is being charged.

From my point of view, I think it is mean to charge my DSs as adults. Of all the couples attending we actually have the least disposable income due to having the expenses of childcare etc.

If the roles were reversed and DB had children and I didn't - then I would expect that the cost would be divided out per adult.

When I was initially unsure about attending the holiday at all, DB made a big issue about how important it was that my DS's attend. Normally he pays them very little attention and is not really a great uncle for them. He calls over about once every 2 months even though he lives close by and has loads of free time. He seems to feel he has ticked some box by giving them a tiny bit of attention. He always buys them very very cheap presents even though he has no other nephews or nieces and has a very high income. All of this is entirely his choice but colours how I feel about him charging my DC's for a room they don't need

AIBU to think the cost of this holiday home should be divided per adult?

Why have you offered to pay the extra in installments if you don't agree that you should paying more?
The total cost should just be split 4 ways.

So if another couple / family member were to come and have the spare room would they pay or have it for free?

Are you really going to sleep the 4 of you in one bed??

nur understand that, thank you. My point was had the DB booked somewhere smaller allowing a cheaper option, and OP opted to squeeze a family of four into one bed it would be sneaking people in. Her brother is right in assuming the children require a room and that they be paid for by their parents.

It isn't a clear cut issue in some ways but, as a pp said, you hold all the cards. People want the kids there and without you, everyone else will end up paying more anyway. So leave everything else out of it and say you can only afford 250, which is your quarter share of the present and what you'd budgeted for, and say sorry but if it's any more you'll have to drop out and just pay a quarter of your parents' share.

Can you text him and say that you had only budgeted £200 for the weekend so will not bringing the DCs?

What about paying a bit extra but not the total £400?

But MrsH there was no option of booking a cheaper property and this is not a holiday on which the OP is taking 4 people and the other siblings 2 each, it is a present the 4 adult siblings are giving their parents. Why should the OP pay a 40% share of a present she is giving 25% of? The children are not increasing the cost by a single penny, yet the OP is being asked to pay 200 pounds to bring them along - and this bill for 100% more than the OP agreed to pay is being unexpectedly presented to her as an established fact, rather than it being proposed to her before booking that she can pay 40% of the price of the 1000 pound gift if she brings her children along or 25% if she leaves them with the other grandparents...

I think the cost of the parents accommodation should be split between their children evenly
I think that the OP should pay for her own children-and whilst we are all talking about this holiday as if it were next week, the truth is it's months away, and the children's sleeping habits could change by then.
But that means that the second room shouldn't cost the same as the child's.
At the end of the day-no matter how nice it is for your parents to see the little cherubs in a holiday mode rather than carer mode, they are yours to fund and no one else's.

I think you can't expect your brother to dote on your children with visits toys and presents, he may just be doing the minimum to keep you quiet and would rather do nothing at all or even less. You are probably the one who cares where he lives or how much he spends, if your children do it's probably only do because they are aware it is an issue for you.
Your brother may have all sorts of reasons why he doesn't want to be around children, infertility missed chances, secret love child desire for a child of his own or actually he may just dislike them- socially any one of these reasons is acceptable in a woman to avoid children when she is feeling low- so why not a man?

I hate the mentality of "you have more money you should pay my costs"
To me if you have the children you should pay for them. If you can't afford to go, then say you can't.

But to be honest I think you should cancel-as you seem to be stocking up on resentments and that is not going to make for a pleasant week-end away.

She is saying she won't pay for the children because they all sleep in one bed, the fact the house is too large is irrelevant. It is the parents share that should be split in four, not accommodation for the rest of the family.

Not sheltered at all liquorice in fact, extremely experienced in the way free-loaders work, unfortunately

Yes it is appalling - although I see your later post of 'a night or two', is different to the earlier one of rocking up at center parcs with blow up beds for the extra people

We are now required, by law, to check the occupants of a rental property, and their passports/ID cards, huge fines possible for anyone who contravenes this, and the prospect of being ejected from the property with no notice or compensation - not quite so eh?

'Appalling' Costa really? You must have led a sheltered life. So if all our extended family are in a big rental house, grown up dc come and sleep on floor for a night as its near uni that's 'appalling'?

Nothing wrong with a secret sleeping bag on the floor for a night or 2.

There's everything wrong with it, Licorice. From the property owners point if view, it's totally wrong. Are those extra people not going to use electricity, water, extra wear and tear? The property owner is paying for that.

If 6 of you are going to Centreparcs, and book a room for 4, but sneak 2 extra in, that's effectively theft, as you should be paying for the extra 2.

If there's nothing wrong with it, why are you sneaking them in, rather than telling the owner?

^I hate the mentality of "you have more money you should pay my costs"
To me if you have the children you should pay for them. If you can't afford to go, then say you can't.^

I agree the DB's income and present buying habits should not be relevant (but in reality human beings see each other as an entirety and somebody with a very high disposable income trying to get away with paying less than their share is less understandable than somebody without a spare penny, so if the DB was struggling financially it might be easier to by sympathetic).

However "if you have children you should pay for them" reads as if if you have children you should be hit with every possible financial penalty to make you suffer for your audacity. The fact here is that whether the children come along or not will have 0 impact on the price of the holiday let, and has not been a factor in the choice of which house to rent.

Persuading the OP to bring her children and then charging the OP 200 pounds when she agrees is purely punitive or a way for the other siblings to weazle themselves a 5% discount on a total price which remains the same regardless of the children's existence/ presence, and which is the price of a present 4 adults agreed to split the cost of 4 ways.

It was not the original intention that the cost of the parents room only was split between us 4 siblings

My maths is very very bad but I think the contribution each sibling is making towards our parents room is approx £40

We always spend about £200 per sibling - not £40 per sibling.

We were only going on the holiday for my parents. I don't particularly want to go to that house or that location but I'm going along with it for my parents sake. So it's not like I'm seizing the chance to cheap out on some holiday I really desire.

This is bloody ridiculous. This is a gift that should be split 4 ways!
At the moment the siblings are just spending the normal Christmas present amount and getting a weekend away for themselves into the bargain but the op is £200 out of pocket! Surely the siblings would have just expected to divvy up the total cost between them all? All that is is another £50 each for the three of them. You can't say that the parent's 'room' is the present because the cheapskates would only be coughing up c.£35 for the Christmas present in that case instead of the normal £200.

What do your sisters say op? Has one of your siblings thought the equal split unfair and that is why they expect you to pay more or is this all your brother's doing?

And the problem of where the dc sleep is irrelevant. If there was the choice of places, the DC having a bedroom of their own is neither here nor there. This is family for chrissakes!

I think DB is saving himself money - perhaps accidentally or perhaps through meanness - because he his no longer contributing 25% of the gift to my parents - but actually he is using my DCs to lower his percentage contribution

Was the gift for your parents the room, or the house?

You seem to think it's the house. Your brother seems to think it was your parent's room, and everyone else pays for their own holiday.

Your brother being tight (or not), or a terrible uncle (or not), or you not wanting to holiday in that location are not relevant. They just aren't. You've agreed to go for your parents. It doesn't matter if your brother could pay for the whole house without blinking, it's not relevant.

Either way, if you can't afford to go with paying around £300 (worked out by multiple people already on this thread), and having your share being slightly more because of your children, then tell your DB that you can't afford to take your children. It matters not that he wanted them there - you can't afford it, so he can either change the arrangements so that you can, or they don't come and you pay for one room and your share of your parents room, like everyone else.

Then never holiday with anyone again, without setting an exact budget, including your DC.

I have no DC but holiday with someone with two, and a few people without, regularly. Depending on where we are and who is there, we are sometimes able to subsidise the children so the lone parent only pays the same as everyone else, and sometimes we can't. It's always made very clear at the outset, though, and friend sets her total budget - including DC - which is adhered too.

The room argument is secondary. You didn't intend to pay for your DC, your siblings thought you would. They are seeing the present as being from all of the siblings, but worked out based on how big each family is. You were seeing your DC as going free, and everyone paying an equal share.

If you'd agreed to go on a package holiday all together and split your parents part, you'd be paying more then, because you'd have 4 x per person costs and they'd all have 2 x. You'd then split your parents cost. It's not an unusual way of working it out.

Parents share rooms in most hotels. That's quite normal.

Wow licorice, would you also think it's ok to take enough food from a supermarket for 6, but only pay for 4 and 'sneak' the rest out? Because it's theft however you look at it

TheReason your brother is being mean mean mean.
What will you do?
Email all siblings and say the cost of the house is £1000 and we need to split this between the 4 of up siblings. That's £250 each. DB made a mistake in hip calculations and thought it was less.
Just leave it at that. Let them all know. If they come back to complain they are paying £50 more than expected then you can point out your 'D'B is charging you £200 more than YOU expected.
Good luck.

I'm not sure, OP, if YABU or not, but I can say pretty definitely, that if this was my family, my Dsis wouldn't be asking me to pay the extra ?200. If I was really skint, she'd try and pay as much of the total as possible. That's how we've always done things in my family - we treat each other to things when one of us is on the up and the other is struggling. I used to have another Dsis and she was exactly the same. We all do it, DPs, nephews etc. It's hard keeping the tabs when you do a lot of stuff together, but our policy has always been that if everyone tries to be as generous as possible, it all balances out in the end. Rarely any resentment, and everyone has a good time. Plus the treater gets to feel great!

Parents share rooms in most hotels. That's quite normal.

But this isn't a hotel, it's a property rental, and some will have family rooms, and some won't, some will have a sofa bed in the lounge and some won't. All will have a published maximum occupancy.