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!!

My parents paid for my hobby but my pocket money was only £20 a month and this stopped soon as I was old enough to get a job. If I wanted money I had to get a job so I did. My parents bought my car but I paid to run it. Your dss sounds like a spoilt brat which you and just dad are enabling. Why would he go get a job when he can get that allowance for f all?

@WallaceinAnderland

I'm shocked at a 17 year old not doing any housework.

Why?

I’m even more shocked at people paying their kids to do housework. Same question, why?

No one pays me to clean my house. If anything, I’d pay a cleaner if I employed one. These kids won’t be paid to maintain a household when they move out either. They need to learn that.

Goodness. He gets a lot!
Many of Ds1's friends are ungrateful, all come from well-to-do families. He has to clean the bathroom every week. His phone contract is £20, which we pay for. Is about to start driving lessons which we will pay for.

My student dc have cars and have bought and paid the running costs with minimum help from us.
Dd cleaned school toilets at 17 to earn the money to buy her car.

I would really recommend reading the Entitlement Trap. Eye opening for all of you. And would allow you to continue to be generous with a fair greater return on your investment and for him to really understand the cost of things.

Also OP, in the nicest possible way, you and your DH are setting him up to be an appalling life partner for someone. Lazy, entitled, the classic manchild. Just read a few threads on here on the unhappy marriages and divorces that that breeds. Don't have a son who is sitting there in 10 years time wondering why his fiancee/wife/mother of his kids has snapped, told him where to stick it, and taken your grandchildren to be raised somewhere far away from him.

Not all kids will mistreat a car or be spoilt for being bought one.
My husband bought our son a car,think it was approx £1k, taught my son to drive in it(passed first go 2 months after 17th birthday), my son paid for all parts to fix it up/keep it running etc.
He kept the car for 2 years before upgrading .

My ex and I went halves. Car was circa £5k
I wanted as safe as possible within budget

My son didn’t expect
It was a total surprise
He was utterly blown away
Wrote letters (hand wrote no less!) to convey thanks
Since then he protects and loves like a child!
We paid for first year insurance.
He pays from then and any maintenance including MOT and petrol.
He ferries his younger siblings around happily, which is a huge help to me as a single parent
And is very involved in housework and has been for last.... decade!

I can see the error of our ways

DSS has really excelled in being a spoilt last little sod today dh was taking down a shed and needed some help DSS appeared for 5 minutes and then disappeared off . 10 year old ds was helping and happy to

Dh has just told DSS that things are changing

We are going to sit down calmly and come up with a plan.

It looks to me that he gets more than £135 a month allowance more like £300 +. I always took an allowance as being you paying for anything outside of household bills that you want.

I'd stop throwing so much money at him. If he's ungrateful for what he has, he should go without.

My daughter got £15 per week when she was 16, and we paid for her phone and gym membership. She got a job waitressing, and then signed up to do stewarding at outdoor events, long hours, but decent pay. She worked all the way through university, bar work, cleaning, waitressing and working on a street food stand. She got my car (a 10 year old Nissan Micra) when she passed her test, but she paid for the insurance. I've been proud of the fact that she managed her money really well at university, and rarely dipped into her overdraft.
She is now working full time (temporary because of Covid), and is managing to save quite a bit. I really don't think it does kids any favours to pay for everything. I actually have to really push it when I want to treat her to something now as she likes to be independent!
Seriously, your DSS needs to get a job. Maybe telling him to think how many hours he would need to work on minimum wage before he could buy his £450 karting helmet?

I got a job at 15 knowing that my (90s) £40 a month allowance would stop at 16. At 17 I paid for my driving lessons, test, bought my car and paid the insurance. I moved out and had to pay rent and bills (plus car) as well as attending 2 sixth forms to do my A levels. I got a job to start the week after my last exam, and kept my evening/weekend pub job. At 19 I bought my first house.

Whilst I suspect this is not the norm, your stepson is taking the absolute piss, and you’re enabling him.

I think you need to withdraw the offer of the car until he has earned and saved enough to prove he will contribute a notional amount to the purchase and running of it. I'd change the phone to a refurbished android on a £5 giffgaff contract in due course too and he can pay for it out of his reduced allowance. And as he's approaching adulthood you need to transition him to contributing to household chores as an adult in the home and paying his way through earning or student loans in due course.

What was the reason for buying him a car in the first place? It doesn't sound like he needs one if he doesn't have a job and presumably was already getting himself to college? I'm slightly gobsmacked by the whole proposal tbh - I have a DD who is 17 and none of her friends have cars. It's not a thing at all.

Projection, much?

IF you bothered reading all @Blankscreen's posts, you would have seen that she and her DH are on the same page when it comes to dealing with the DSS.

Wow.

What does he do to contribute to the running of the household @Blankscreen ?

I think if you just dramatically cut his allowance you'll end up with a resentful teen

You need to make him take some responsibility and see himself as part of the family team. He should be cooking, dog walking, doing laundry etc along with other members of the household.

At the same time you need to reassess some of the financial treats he expects.
But fundamentally you also need to realise that you have created this situation - it's not his fault and he'll need help understanding why the goalposts have changed

@batmannnn

You are not the biological mother and if your husband wants to buy him a car, you have no say. There is no spending limit or minimum wage, it depends on your income and the family's standard of living. My father's wife is always complaining that I don't help around the house, and that I don't work, and in the meantime she might be pregnant again. She's not even two years old, she spends a fortune on her daughter. I want the Renault Clio Williams, but instead they want to buy a second-hand toyota and force me to install a car seat for the daughter. My stepmother doesn't drive and I'm supposed to take her shopping with the daughter.

Do you work or help around the house?

Do you have any idea how tiring it is having a toddler and being pregnant?

Poor you only having a second hand car bought for you, that must be so hard. Here I am aged 50 and no one has ever bought me a car at all. I got my first car aged 26 after teaching for 2 years (travelling by bus or train) to save up for it. It was a 2nd hand metro and it cost 1500.
If you really want a particular car, the best thing to do would be to show some maturity. Work out the price difference and insurance difference and offer to pay the difference yourself by getting a (part time if still in college) job.

[quote batmannnn]****@ThumbWitchesAbroad**
Yes, I read it all.
From personal experience it's stepmothers who are jealous of their children, and these are strategies for kicking stepchildren out of the house.[/quote]
Get to fuck. Wind up 😂

Agree with pp. he’s been very spoilt and does not understand the value of money.
My ds19 had a paper round for 2 years from aged 14, then got work in a pub kitchen as a kitchen Porter. I paid for school trips, clubs, phone contract. He paid for extras such as spending money for school trips, the odd t shirt he wanted, expensive trainers. He’s now at uni, has a job in a pub (pre Covid times) runs a car and manages his own student finances.
Your dss is very fortunate to be having a car bought for him, I cannot get my head around the entitledness of him demanding a certain make or model, refusing to walk dogs, or get a job.

Jeez, Batmannnn - you need some more salt for those chips?

As I said, PROJECTING.