Re 17 year old DSS

[Blankscreen]

17 year old DSS lives with us full time he a good boy and he a fully integrated member of the family before anyone accuses me of being the wicked step mother

He turns 17 in May and Dh and I (family finances so joint decision) have said that we will buy him a car and pay for his insurance for his birthday and Christmas presents this year we will obviously get him a few extra bit but the budget is blown by the car.

Our budget is circa £5k for both and we have been looking at what option we can get for a car. DSS wants a VW up which all seem to be more expensive than our budget and he is now just moaning about the fact that he doesn't like any of the other cars this has really annoyed me

He gets £135 a month allowance and on top of that we pay for his phone £56 month and in non covid times gym membership and give him money for lunch at college. Again in non covid time we pay for him to do his hobby which is an additional £129 a month.
Our cleaner has recently left and I said to DSS did he want to do it and I would pay him the same £14 an hour as he will need to run his car etc. ( I'm not talking about the toilets) but the other jobs and he said no

We also have 2 dogs and i've offered to pay him to walk the dogs a couple of times a week so its one less thing for me and Dh to do. Doesn't want to do it

I feel like he is a spoilt brat . Dh is bloody fuming and told him that he needs to stop buying crap with his saved pocket money and he is going to have pay for his driving lessons and provisional licence.

I'm now feeling a bit mean but he is just so spoilt and has literally no idea about the value of money (which is our fault) and was saying yesterday he will take his car to be cleaned once a week instead of doing it himself

How would you deal with this and getting to stop being so bloody lazy!!

I think it's a bit unfair to back-track completely on your original offer or change his allowance.

I would stick with buying the car and paying his first year of insurance - but the car has to be within your original budget and that means he takes what he can get. When he's earning, he can trade it in and get a VW or whatever. He needs to pay for his petrol etc out of his allowance.

Offering to pay him for jobs around the house is ridiculous, so I would withdraw that. He needs to get himself down to McDonalds or something and get himself a job for the things he wants.

If you buy a car but make him pay his own insurance, just be aware that you will have to check he is paying the insurance.
If he pays monthly you will have to check EVERY month. If you don't, he will be at serious risk of driving around uninsured. He won't want to get a job to pay for insurance.

I would pay the tax and insurance but tell him he has to buy the car.

“Here’s the budget. Pick what you want but you’ll need to save up for anything over that”. Why has he got a £56 a month phone contract? That’s really expensive. Even an iPhone 12 with unlimited data is only about £40-45 these days.

I don't know about spoilt brat, but he's certainly spoilt!
That's a load of money he's getting, and what are you getting in return? Not much, by the sound of it.

He needs to wise up and learn that you and his dad aren't going to keep paying for everything for him - he has to start taking responsibility for himself.

I'm actually really shocked by how much money he has at his fingertips, and his unwillingness to contribute anything in return!

I've read your updates and am pleased that you're going to be changing things - he does need to learn better money management, so you buying him the car but him having to pay for running it (insurance, petrol etc.) will be a good start. And yes to halving the money for his hobby - karting is very expensive, so he does need to learn the value of everything, not just the cost.

Good luck - I suspect there will be some resistance as he's been allowed to get away with it for so long, but hopefully he'll come around.

And why are you getting him a car when he clearly can’t afford to run it?

£135 allowance a month? Are you kidding!! My 16 yr old gets £20 a month and £20 as the ipad monthly she wanted. I pay for both teens phones at £80 a month for both, older teen gets no allowance now as has a little job,
Sorry but £135 a month is way too high and the 56 phone needs to be cut back ?

DS1 is 16, he gets £20 a month pocket money and is expected to do housework because he lives here and is part of the house. He can earn extra for eg mowing the lawn. All the stuff he needs is paid for, and the occasional thing he wants (but doesn't exactly need).

Good household income, but we need leaving home to be an attractive option as he's far too comfortable staying at home (we have very few arguments and get on well).

At the moment we're not insisting he gets a job, because he's doing 4 A levels and needs to focus. However, looking at the amounts quoted here I'm now thinking that maybe we should up his pocket money a little if anything , especially once everything opens up again, so it's useful to know what everyone else is doing!

I'm glad to read that you are going to make changes.
It is partly your own faults, as you say, so is up to you and DH to sort it out and make your DSS take some responsibility for himself.

I'd not be adding a car into the mix of entitlement at all, btw.

My mind is still boggling that your husband takes 2 cars in turn every Sunday night to fill the petrol up. Hasn’t he got anything better to do with his time? Do you not find that infantilising? I’m trying to see it as helpful, but I just can’t - I can only imagine saying, “will you just sit down? When my car is low, and I am passing the petrol station anyway, I will re-fuel it myself!”

And he was going to add car 3 to this weird ritual? 🙈

Is this like a towels washing thread where in going to find that half the country does this weird merrygoround?!

It's great you've got a plan but have you sat down and discussed it with him? You can't force someone to be responsible. You still treating him like a spoilt child if you come up with these ideas between yourselves but don't get any input from him. What does he think and what changes does he suggest? He may have a strop and rebel against it all but at least give him a chance of a calm two way conversation.

@Blankscreen You might want to reconsider the term "Good boy". A good boy would walk the dogs without being asked. You have spoiled what might have been a good boy by indulging him, and now you are paying the price. You have, instead of a good boy, a lazy, entitled brat. And while I'm at it, why would he not be expected to clean the toilets? Does he not use them?
You all need to sit down and talk about this, starting with his phone contract....My iPhone and my husband's Samsung, costs us jointly £27 per month (we don't make calls on the house phone) He should pay for his phone out of his allowance. You are literally throwing money down the drain. If he wants a gym membership he should work for it, and if you buy him a car, have you considered who will pay tax and insurance, breakdown cover, MOT and repairs, petrol and car parking charges, and fines if he exceeds the speed limit? Not to mention the lazy devil's weekly car clean!

He needs to learn to budget. He will also be more attractive to future employers if he has work experience in a weekend or holiday job

I'd put the car budget in a separate account. If he wants a fancier car, he needs to save up to contribute. He will also find that insurance is more expensive for nicer cars, so he'll have to save more.

Give him less money so he has an incentive to work. Or he will leave home with no understanding of budgeting and no track record of working to put on a CV

My 16 year old has been applying for jobs as she wants to buy all sorts and realises she cant on her £20 per month allowance (was 40 but she wanted the ipad contract so we said ok but 20 comes off the allowance - it is £28 per month)
I give my 16 yr old lunch money and buy bits when they need it. Eldest has phone paid and i buy the odd bits but not that often at all.

Why are the bathrooms excluded from the cleaning?

I was doing that much younger than 17...

He sounds completely spoiled and ready for the life lesson of compromise and sacrifice, work out what his monthly budget / allowance is and leave it to him to work out which things he wants to keep and which to drop.

The other thing your should probably get him thinking about is what age you're going to stop paying for everything and him needing to earn the money himself, get him to work out what that looks like in terms of hours per week in jobs he's likely to be able to get.

Wow.

Allowance,, phone, gym membership, lunches, expensive hobbies, driving lessons and now a £5k car budget for a 17 year old.

Some people really do live on a completely different planet don’t they? When I was 17 and studying for my A levels I had a Saturday job on a market stall from which I earned a tenner. Per day, not per hour.

This young man is an entitled spoiled brat who needs a serious dose of reality. This isn’t entirely his fault, obviously, but the sooner it happens he better. I would stop paying for everything except the monthly allowance and tell him to get a job at McDonald’s if he wants more money.

Buy him driving lessons for his birthday and he can save to buy his own car, fuel and insurance by getting a job.

Until he starts to understand the value of money, he will never appreciate or care for what he has.

He should be hoovering, dog waking and doing household chores anyway; that's about being part of a family and household and not being paid for it.

I am astounded at what he has every month but not surprised at his behaviour because of it. You will be doing him a disservice if you do not all change this situation now as he is totally not ready to be an adult and that makes him extremely vulnerable..... entitled but vulnerable.

Wow! You’re still setting your dss up to fail even with these reductions. He’s going to have a sharp shock in the real world.

OP why are you insistent that he gets paid to do household chores rather than find a job??

My 16 almost 17 year old DD earns £15 a week, for that she has to assist with the little children's classes at dance class on a saturday morning for 2 and a half hrs. The dance school has been shut for a huge chunk of the year so she hasnt even had that. There will not be a car bought by either of her parents or driving lessons as I cant even afford these for myself, so she will have to wait until she is earning a full time wage to learn to drive. Sorry but your SS sounds rather like an overindulged brat, not because of the things he has but because of his attitude.

Jesus fucking Christ.

He needs to get a job.

Blimey.

At 16 my allowance stopped, I was working weekends while at college during the week. I paid my phone bill, bought my own clothes etc. At 18 I worked full time and paid rent to my Mum. My grandparents kindly paid for my first car (it was pretty old and not necessarily what I'd have chosen but I was so grateful and would never ever have complained!) I paid for driving lessons, insurance, running costs.

Now I appreciate that finding a job at that age is much, much harder nowadays. But you're offering him a job! And you'd have paid him more than three times the minimum wage for his age too!!

I would tell him the budget and first thing to come out of it would be driving lessons and test. Once he has passed whatever is left he can pick a car with and leave him to pay insurance. Once he has passed and got the car he will have to find a way to pay. Make him ring round for his own insurance quotes. A reality check he needs

I don't see anything wrong with supporting them if you want to and can afford it.
The main reason I work is to support my DC
But if we couldn't afford it then that would be different

They do lots around the house when they re home,more than before they went away as they are used to doing for themselves

The toilet comment really shows the problem here, I think.
Raising someone not to be spoilt isn’t just about being careful not to throw money at them.
The fact that you jump straight in to tell us that of course he wouldn’t be cleaning toilets, tells me why he’s so spoilt and entitled.

Why would you automatically exclude him from that job, without him even having to do much as grumble about it?

It’s a toilet. That’s all 🤷🏻‍♀️

I recommend that you don’t just start looking at the money you’re throwing at him, but also look at all your expectations of him. Similarly, the ridiculous notion that daddy would most likely have taken his little baby’s car out to fill it with petrol every week... it’s not just the cost, it’s the time it takes and the fact it removes any need to grow up and be responsible for himself.

I have a suspicion that “Little Lord Mustn’t Be Asked to Clean a Loo” is spoilt in far too many other ways.

@Blankscreen

Dh has suggested that we buy the car but he needs to pay for the insurance. I think that's quite a good incentive to work/save as he can't get the car without the insurance..

We'll keep his allowance the same but he needs to do the hoovering and walk the dogs and he can pay for his gym membership out of his allowance.

Dh is also going to say we will only pay 1/2 of his karting

His phone contract will be up for renewal at the end of the year. We will put him in a sim only and if he wants a new phone he can pay for the difference.
.thanks for your input everyone

You're really going from one extreme to another - from far too spoiling and permissive to clamping down on his hobbies and spending quite hard and suddenly.

And it's such a 180 on your original offer that it's going to play out really badly and feel incredibly unfair to him. I don't think it's the right thing to do.

Yes, you should have some expectations around him doing his share at home - his own washing would be a good one and one if he doesn't do it, he's the one who suffers, whereas with the dog-walking/hoovering etc it has a knock-on effect for everyone and it'll cause drama.

Stick with the offer to buy a car (within your budget) and insurance (for 1st year), because then you know the insurance is paid. Everything else needs to come out of his allowance.