DS(16) spends £70 a week on renting movies. AIBU to ban him from the Sky store?

[Aggys]

Hello,

Our son is 16 and has a part-time job in McDonald's (the idea is to help him save for day to day stuff). He earns £100 a week. He usually (on average as obviously at weekends more and a busy day none) 2 movies a day. They're from the sky store.

He knows he can get them for free on his laptop but he says he wants them on the TV and just shrugs when we say it's costing him a fortune. I'm sure he's almost seen every one but then they add more!

I feel awful that he's wasting so much on this and really think I should put a ban on it? AIBU?

Googling it movies for free is:

a) illegal
b) a great way to pick up a computer virus

What a huge waste of money ! Can you not encourage him to save for uni or for his future house /flat ?
He can still enjoy his teenage years without spending money so recklessly. It’s never too early to start saving for his future . I would cancel the sky tbh if my child did this . Has he not got anything more productive to do with his time ?

When he is 17 he will need the money for driving lessons so he won't be able to fritter so much then. We did insist that DS use some of his money for this as he did seem to have a lot of disposable income and learning to drive is expensive, well it was in DS's case as 70 hours of lessons and 3 tests later he passed

Sorry I was unnecessarily rude.

How about offering to top up savings so he has an incentive. We all. Need help learning the value of saving.

I'm sure when I order movies etc through sky it's just added to my monthly bill? I don't remember paying separately. Are you sure he is paying for these and not you?

Introduce him to the concept of renting dvds from the local library, buying from CEX or charity shops or car boot sales.
Many teens are actually unaware of when something is an expensive way of buying something. If they have only ever paid for something in one way they think that's the 'normal' price and they are totally amazed they could buy a whole season of Game of Thrones on dvd from a charity for about £3.

He can use the Chromecast from his phone and text at the same time anyway.

This

Casting doesnt render your phone inoperable. In fact the signal isnt being sent from your phone directly, rather that your phone has given Chromecast permissive to acquire access. I cast and surf the internet from the same phone at the same time. Your son has more money than sense.

Are you absolutely sure he is spending it on the movies? I find it hard to believe a 16 year old doesn't know how to cast to the TV, know how to connect a laptop via HDMI or know that you can rent movies for a lot cheaper than that.

Do you have Sky movies? We got it for £1 a month for two years, but I think it’s only a tenner or so usually, and films are only a couple of months later than on the Store.

We rarely pay for movies unless it’s something we want the Blu-ray of as well.

Chromecast isn’t going to make any difference to the amount of money he spends unless you are also advising him to access illegal/pirated BitTorrent films for free. Chromecast won’t magic up free movies.

Please don’t let him do this OP. There are enough media scroungers out there as it is. Those of us who do pay for the stuff we view have no desire to subsidise any more.

He could just buy a HDMI cable and connect his laptop to the TV!

I second HDMI cable!

If you say "I've tried telling him to not be so idiotic", then there's no wonder he tells you to leave him alone. If you've expressed an opinion that you think he's an idiot I doubt he'll listen to many of your suggestions.
If you want a good response from him, start your conversation with an acknowledgement or your approval of what's important to him in his life like 'I know you love watching movies, and that's fine and it's a perfectly fine way to spend you spare time. It's the expense of it that gets me annoyed. It'd be great it there was a more economical way that you can watch what you want without it costing so much'.
Give him a limit on what you will subsidise for the week on the Sky account and then he has to pay the rest in cash to you. Also present him with the options for chromecast etc and offer to help him find out about those, if he wants.
Putting a ban on it is a sure-fire way to dismiss what's important to your kid and to damage your communication and relationship with him.

@SaucyJack

Thank you for clearing that up. I was bewildered by the suggestion that you buy a Chromecast for £30 and from then all films are free. I've looked at getting one but you still have to pay for the shows. Same as my Amazon Firestick, I just pay for films I want to watch.

Yeah- we’ve got the Now TV stick Van Gogh.

It was less than half the price of a Chromecast- so the CC is only a bargain if you’re then planning on ripping off the films and TV you’re watching via dodgy Russian pirate platforms like Showbox or whatevs.

You need to make sure he is the one paying for them either by reimbursing you or using his own money in the first place, but a 16 year old will soon figure out if there are other things they want to spend the money/time on

Lol charge a 16 yo at school rent from his couple of min wage part time shifts a week 😂😂😂 yes op, change the pin.

Oh I thought you meant that he could watch them for free from Sky on his laptop - I thought it sounded a bit strange. YA definitely BU to encourage him to watch them illegally instead. That is awful.

He needs showbox in his life

couple of min wage part time shifts a week

The kid has £100 A WEEK to piss up the wall! Not many adults have that much for frittering every week!

You need to have a serious chat with him about fiscal responsibility. If he’s making the decision to spend a fortune on movies, especially given that they’re available for free on another device, then he obviously doesn’t value money or have any common sense in that regard.

He could subscribe to Prime, Now TV, Netflix and one of the other separate prime channels for that. We love movies too and we do have a cinema pass, plus all of the above. We have an amazon fire stick and a chrome cast and just use those to watch on our tv. He is spending a silly amount of money, but I do believe part of learning to budget is sometimes spending on silly things and then realising you don’t have enough left for others. I would encourage him to save but I would never charge a 16 year old rent

You need to sit down with him and have a talk about money management. Buying the movies isn't really the issue. It's lack of budgeting that is.

He is earning £5200 a year and could use that money to fund his ISA, learn to drive or help towards the cost of tertiary education. So, he needs some goals. He needs a plan for achieving those goals. Learning to drive would be a great one. Saving for university would be prudent and saving for their pension sounds burning but would be very savy.