dd [21] objects to £50 pw rent

[mrsfuzzy]

title says it all, low-ish income house hold. dh reduced hours [26 per wk], i have medical problems so limited for work, ds on j.s.a, two in college, one in school. ddhi college full time, but works 14 -16 hours at weekends, takes home about £600 pm. self inflicted debt, wastes money on stupid things i.e £20 bet that her mate would throw up after chugging a milk shake, dd lost 'but it was a laugh' .
now she has told dm that she is 'paying £50 a week to share a box room with her dsis [3 bed house] and it's not fair because she's not at home much ! dm has just me this on the land line dd uses [dropped her phone - broken].
aibu, considering we cannot do with any reduction in income.

NB, for what it's worth, however rich we were I would expect teenage children to earn some money for themselves, especially when 16 plus.

Yep, you should definitely only have children if you are able to financially support them in their 20s.

I'm 32, if I decide to go to college, should my parents pay my living costs?

Great, so in case at some point in the future a parent loses a job / develops health problems, they should have 1 child only. A bit hard on the 1 child not being allowed any sibling? And why is it ok for 1 child to (just possibly, if something goes wrong) be brought up in a poor family, but not the 2nd child?
Just how financially secure do you need to be in order for it to be ok to have more than 1 child?
I'm guessing you are very well off, Charley, to write the things you do.
Hobbies are all well and good, but it's not the same thing. Knowing that you can make money if you either want or need to is very useful and empowering.

I don't think that it is particularly novel for parents to provide an allowance to student children

It's very novel in my world.

Dd still gets her phone contract paid for by us and some 'pocket money' towards travel and food if she's working late but that's it.

She loves her job. She regards her work colleagues as friends and manages her studies well. She also does lots of babysitting and takes her work along!

If we were to tell her to give up her job and we'd give her the equivalent money instead I honestly think she'd say no. Her job gives her more than just money. She loves putting on her uniform and lanyard!

Ah well, it's nice to know that I shouldn't exist and that I had a hellish childhood having been brought up in poverty....

Graduating uni and going straight into full time work having had no work experience at all must be tough, surely? Holding down a part time job whilst studying shows a certain level of responsibility that would tick boxes for most employers. My dh is always more interested in the graduates that have got a decent amount of 'life' experience outside of uni.

So how much do you all think is reasonable to charge if she was working full time but on a low (min wage ish) job?

What she costs to keep.

This thread just highlights exactly the two different camps of people out there: there is the camp who will read an OP, take it at face value that the poster is struggling financially, give a response to the question asked, and wish them well. Then there is the other camp will delight at making insulting judgements about the OP without any factual evidence to base it on, and sleep soundly tonight in the mistaken belief that people like OP and her family (bar her 21 yr old dd) are scroungers and deserve the financial hardship and emotional stress that accompanies that. But these people are deluding themselves, because no matter how much you want to convince yourself that the son on JSA should just "get a job instead of lounging about the house playing games", no matter how much you want to believe that the other daughter's special needs "might not be that bad", no matter how much you want to insist that the DP should just "increase his hours instead of getting his daughter to subsidise him", you do not know what is around the next corner, and around the next corner any of those people could easily be you or someone close to you.

Well said MeadowHay

I hope op is ok

Meadow

"like"

Aaargh meant to add...

4 years ago I was sympathetic but smug. Redundancy changed all that. 8 months to find a new job, and that took us from a reasonable (although below national average) salary to zero hours contracts on NMW.

All it takes is one thing like that to happen and all those Ivory towers could come crashing down.

Are you actually reading other people's posts, Charley?

Where you write: " If it were me though, and I was really that poor, I wouldn't want to bring a child into that sort of suffering, it would be selfish" you are referring to people who are not poor when they have their children, but who could in the future become relatively poor if they are unlucky enough to lose their job due to redundancy or ill-health at some point in the next 20 odd years, resulting in them not giving their child an allowance while they're at university.
So worst case scenario they won't be able to afford to support their adult child while that child is studying.
Even if the worst happens, and the child has to support themselves through university, does that really qualify as "that sort of suffering", which it is so unfair to put a child through, that it would be better for them not to be born?
I'm left wondering who, in your view, can have a child without qualifying as selfish. Presumably only those who have a trust fund set up for the child pre-birth?

I do agree with a lot of what you say Meadow. However, the point is that there is clearly work available as the daughter has a job. The OP has not confirmed whether the DS is looking actively for a job and is using his JSA appropriately. My view is that you take the majority of it for his keep and then give him back what he needs for seeking work. I think that is fair. The OP also doesn't say whether her DH is actively looking to increase his hours or if there is some issue meaning that he can't. It is also not clear whether the OP is working but can't work very much due to her medical condition or whether she is actively seeking work but it is difficult because of her medical position. We don't know if the family are claiming all the benefits they should be given that there appears to be grounds for claiming.

I agree that there are posts that make assumptions that aren't nice, but actually in the absence of any further info, you can't stop people jumping to conclusions. I'm sure at one point OP said she was near Gatwick? I'm not aware that is an area of high unemployment or not, but my head is telling me it shouldn't be. I grew up in poverty in times of the highest unemployment rates in this country. I've been redundant twice, many of my family members have too. Luckily none of us have ever been in the position of having to claim benefits. In some ways though you make your own luck The 2nd time I was made redundant my DH was a stay at home dad to two toddlers, I spent days going round every temp agency possible and after temping managed to get another job but it meant moving my family away to a new area where we had no support, that was bloody hard and stressful. While I was pounding the streets looking for work and missing my babies at home, I passed many young people begging on the streets. I judged.

The OPs DS seems from the info available to be an able bodied young man, he may be trying hard to find a job, personally I think if he was trying hard enough he'd be working. Maybe not doing what he would like, or earning what he would like, but working. The DH and OP herself might have a bit more trouble given that they will be older and have other responsibilities.

I'm definitely not without sympathy but in this scenario the DD is not being treated fairly based on the info we have.

I definitely agree that some people really don't have a clue. I always keep 3 months outgoings in savings but being 3 months away from having no money at any point is not really that comfortable, a year would be better but, as well off as I consider myself, I couldn't afford to save that much.

OneMagnun I am sorry to hear that you had a tough time and I am glad that you managed to sort things out. Just based on figures alone from the ONS, there are more job-seekers than there are jobs, obviously it depends on the area where people live too of course, but when you think about things that could be barriers to work (disability and illness, travel, caring responsabilities, whatever), coupled with a very small pool of employment opportunities, sometimes people will try everything they can and still not find work. I also disagree with your view that people should be forced to move into areas with no support for work - obviously people have to be realistic but things like disability/health conditions are very serious issues for wanting wider friends/family support and respectfully I have to disagree that people should jeopardise themselves and their family like that by moving away to get work that is insecure and badly paid (obviously different if you're moving into a better job with better opportunities and so on). Basically the more I talk about it the more I just ramble because there are soooo many factors affecting peoples' situations and like 99% of benefit claimants are genuine, real people with multi-faceted issues and are trying hard to improve their situations. So whilst I am not afraid to tell the odd person like my neighbour whom I know very well to sign on and do volunteer work rather than arsing around the house contributing nothing to anyone, I will still always take all posts like OPs at face value and assume the best of people.

Hmm, well I would just say that what I dealt with was normal life. My parents brought up 7 of us in council property through the late 50's up to the early 80s, we didn't have much materially and initially we lived in a 2 bed flat. They both worked, Dad on nights and mum part time while he got up to look after us. Through the high inflation, I know they struggled to make the food go round however, we all agreed recently that we felt we had a blissful childhood. All of us had jobs as young teens and loved it. I left school in the early 80s in peak unemployment and high interest rates and still managed to get a job (2 in one week actually) and buy my first flat with my sister before I was 18. We also went hungry sometimes when there was more month left at the end of our money that we would like :). Not one of us has ever been unemployed for longer than a week or so. I think we have all been redundant at some point. I remember my brother being called into a staff announcement at the factory he was working in and being told they were all paid off. He was only 23 and had a wife and 2 young children. While everyone else was standing about moaning, he went out and caught a bus to the rival factory on the other side of the city and got himself a job. The redundancy money allowed him to buy a small house over there and get himself out of council rented on a rough estate. There is nothing special about us, we were just brought up to work for what you need and want in life. I am not bashing benefit claimants. I agree that the majority are in need. I love that there is a safety net for people (including me should the need arise) and I would be happy to pay more tax to ensure that those in need get what they need. I think we don't do enough for the elderly and people with disabilities and families who are struggling to raise children in poverty.

I live in a relatively sparsely populated area so it is more expected that you need to move and be flexible to keep employment. That doesn't apply to the OP as far as I can tell. I don't think anyone is expecting that her DS would have to move hours away for employment. This gives some info on unemployment rates in the area:

www.coast2capital.org.uk/news/unemployment-rates-at-lowest-for-7-years-and-jsa-claimants-reaches-record-low.html

I also don't think the OPs family values are bad. Clearly her daughter has a lot of get up and go, for all I know the DS does too and he is just unlucky so far - but, given the lack of info, it's not necessarily wrong to assume that he could be doing more. It's sad to think that a young person would be happy to sit on their arse and get handed pocket money while playing a half arsed game of doing just enough job looking to keep getting the money. What a waste of a life tbh. I hope that isn't the case.