Rent, rules, reasonable?

[MMB00]

I have 4 sons, between the ages of 23 and 18. I am now in the situation where all four of them are living at home, as adults in full time work.

We live in London and it would be extremely expensive and unaffordable for them to live anywhere (nice) so makes sense for them to be at home, and there is plenty of room.

However we have told them we expect them to pay 'digs' and they are all happy with this arrangement. However we obviously don't want to profit from them being here, but would like the amount to be enough that they have the responsibility and obviously this is including food (which is very high for 4 young men).

Does anyone have any ideas about prices, or additional responsibilities that should be included. Often find myself treating them all as if they're still 14 even though I try not to!

They aren't learning financial responsibility if you're the one saving the excess, they need to learn to do that themselves

All those suggesting you put the money away ^^This.
They should know how to invest their money for the best returns and to save as much as possible. Unless they have proved themselves to be profligate I would ask them for a much smaller nominal amount and insist that they save a good percentage of their remaining income.
DS1 has been living at home for a year since graduating and I haven't charged him anything. He has pretty much saved all his first year's salary and is moving out into his own place next week.

MrsStrowman it totally depends on your out goings we live in a two bed house, heating hardly on as at work, water on meter, electric used sparingly. Only three people living here. It's totally upto you what you charge.

My son earns more than me and pays 20.00 a week my daughter is still at college but had a job where she gets about 250 a fortnight and she pays 20.00 a fortnight.

Mine pay £100 pm on the understanding they also put £200 pm into their help to buy isa.
They are responsible for keeping their own rooms clean, they cook for themselves and buy most of their own food although they are welcome to help themselves to anything in the fridge or freezer. I do the washing but that is my choice as I don’t want loads half loads going on and sometimes I will iron.
And they do any ad hoc jobs asked ie feed the cats, bins, hoover landing or stairs.

I don't think there's a 'magic number'. Is there an amount that you need them to pay you to be able to cover costs? Now the 18yos are not in full time education have you lost out on child benefit? Do you need this cost to be covered (by someone)? What are their long term plans? Are they saving for their own places - if they are and you don't need the money, it seems more sensible to let them save.

My brother and I are in our early 20s and live at home with our mum and twin brothers, who are mid-teens. I pay my mum £350 a month, which was calculated as the £200 rent I used to pay her when I was at uni (living at home), plus 1/5 of bills. This is about 1/3 of my take-home wage. My brother (who's still at uni - living at home) pays £250 a month (no bills because he's still studying, more rent because he eats more and I buy most of my own food). My mum charges us this because she needs the money.

WRT additional responsibilities, we recently all sat down and wrote a list of all the jobs that need to be done around the house: eg cooking on each specific day, washing up each day, taking bins out etc. Then we negotiated and picked the jobs we wanted to do - the same number for everyone. We're all adults (well, the twins almost are) and therefore there's no reason one person should do anymore than anyone else (or me and DM should do everything and the DBs nothing, as was previously happening).

I think if your sons had their own "jobs" that were pre-agreed on, they'd probably be more likely to do them, than you asking them to do things ad hoc, and them perhaps feeling like they were being nagged.

Agree with poster above about listing jobs and people choosing DD likes hoovering DS likes cleaning bathrooms
I hate cleaning but do all the washing and gardening
We are all responsible adults - like the house clean and tidy and share jobs