Adult child not wanting to pay their way

[Cazzalou]

18 months ago my daughter spilt up from the BF and moved back home with me.
We agreed that she would pay £500 a month for rent and bills. We live in London.
Now she and BF are back together and are hoping to buy somewhere out in Kent.
She would like to reduce her monthly payments to £300 a month so she can save for the deposit on a new home.
This could take a long time.
Should I agree the reduction or keep it at £500?
Is daughter taking me for a ride?
I'm an almost retired nurse and my monthly income has reduced as I have reduced my working hours to 30 per week.
Am I being mean if I say no?

I do not need the money at all but my DS pays 65 per week, he is also saving up to buy a house, he is 22 . We worked out that it really does just cover his food and extra water for washing himself and clothes so we make no money at all but it covers himself and the 2/3 nights his GF stays over.

If parents are not gonna help their kids out in any way once they're adults I don't see any point in continuing a relationship with them, they're not friends and people you choose to hang out with. If they view their job as "done" once you turn 18 they can crack on with their own life and don't expect any help if they need it either.

I think you need to charge her an amount which covers the costs of her living there rather than the argument your hours are being reduced. I suspect her proposal of £300 would not cover her bills.
of course if you were planning on renting out her room for income that is a different story. I am usually help your children as much as you can but if you are on a nurses income you need to think of your future too. Hope you get it sorted.

Anyone else now getting the ad for London flatshares at a grand a month popping up ?? 🤣🤣🤣

She's taking the piss op, she's on a good salary, you should not be subsidising her lifestyle.

£500/month is a bargain in London but you're not doing this a commercial venture, you're her mother. How much does it cost you to have her there? Charge her that. I'd feel I was taking advantage of my children if I was making a profit off them, especially if that profit was enough for me to then start working part time!

I think in the circumstances she should cover costs and a little extra. That should include the costs of the boyf. She should also pull her weight domestically.

Will you be ok financially when she moves out?

Last year my husband did raw number crunching on the actual cost of having another adult living in our house.

Based on extra electricity working from home, extra laundry loads and drying, extra dish wash loads and food, plus baths/showers.

It was £7.85 for the extra adult per day for our house at cost.

But that is based on our household bills and how we do things. We are well insulated and have free energy half of the year and free hot water half of the year too so these figures are personal to us.
We also eat basic home cooked food so costs are low.

That's an absolute bottom line of £235 a month per adult at cost.

You might need to also factor in the single occupancy discount for council tax which you might lose if you are currently the only adult in your property.

As other posters have commented I don't think £300 will cover her share of bills.

She at the very least needs to cover the cost of her living with you.

Pretty sure the ‘they didn’t ask to be born’ excuse doesn’t apply when the child is 26 🙄

At some point adults have to start adulting.

Please have some sensitivity to other people’s needs, OP learns less than her dd and needs the money. Step out of your bubble and into OP’s shoes.

That sounds about right to me - added to that the cost of food and council tax, as well as having the boyfriend to stay twice a week, and I really don't think the OP is "profiting" with £500/month. I think some posters just haven't properly understood or thought through the numbers.

The daughter is very fortunate to only have these fixed costs - she should still have lots of scope to save.

An almost retired nurse has a salary that is approaching £57,102£ and that is just for a basic nurse with no additional qualifications.

In that world is this? That is absolutely not the case and I have no idea where you get that from @monyk12

So they’re controlling him by letting keep most of his money? This place is insane 🤣

So you’re saying because I paid my mum £300 a month once I got a full time job, I should now go no contact with her?

The woman who gave birth to me, loved me, protected me, and cooked for me should just be dismissed as a nobody because she didn’t let me live rent free in her home?

Your view of parent-child relationships is so disgustingly transactional that I don’t even know where to begin with you. Truly horrified.

without exaggeration, this is one of the saddest, grimmest things I’ve ever read. We live is completely different moral universes.

also you DH must be a hit at parties 😂

You must live an extremely sheltered and privileged life if this is the saddest thing you’ve read.

I reckon there are hundreds of thousands of households where adult working children and their parents are living quite harmoniously for a variety of reasons - financial, emotional, logistical.
It doesnt have to be (a) pay up bigtime or get out, or (b) it's disgusting to have them pay housekeeping, poor darlings.
I have 3 young adults here and all contribute to the running of the household. They all have plans and objectives of their own and dh and I are keen to help them along. We see them for perhaps half an hour a day, along with the occasional Sunday roast. We sometimes have a little spat about parking (but no penguin bollards yet).
I'd rather have them for an extra year and see them move into good quality secure housing than have them leave now for some damp grotty flat with a weirdy landlord.
But in the same way that the council won't listen to my excuses if I don't pay my council tax, a housekeeping payment here is non-negotiable (but the amount is, depending on their future plans). I won't change it cos someone's overdoing it on ASOS, but I will change it for someone laying out for a DBS to start a better paid job. It's a life lesson.

We don’t call any shots, we ask him to pay £100 of which £35 covers his phone bill and the other £65 goes towards food shopping and electricity as he is working from home at times.

this allows him to save as much as he can to buy his own property.

I've got 2 at uni. One is paying £625 a month for a room in a student house, not including bills or food. The other £415 a month plus bills. The second is in Norfolk. London is easily £800-1000. For student accommodation on a student loan (max £9500 a year).

@Cazzalou respectfully, I think the overall message is you can charge your daughter up to 900 per month and it’s still a better deal than most other options in London.

The other message is, if you can help your child without ending up broke then help her! you don’t owe it to her, but it could make a big difference to how things pan out for her in the long term. This is especially true if her partner makes more money than her. It doesn’t make you a doormat to help your child, even your adult child, it makes you a good parent.
maybe it makes sense just to split the food, heating, council tax and electricity bills equally? Or better yet let her buy her own food and just split the bills?
just try to do what will preserve your relationship best, life is short and it’s not easy for anyone but people who get lots of support from their family do have it easier in my experience

Apart from no longer receiving the 25% discount on your council tax as a single person, just how much more are your outgoings since she moved back in?

when my daughter moved out we noticed the water consumption dropped by half 🤪, and of course the grocery bill reduced, but not by much.

I would be inclined to total up all associated costs that have increased for you and charge her for those. She’s not just a lodger she’s your daughter.

OP, how will you cope without the £500 when she moves out?

You can charge DD up to £625 without a tax bill, btw, but any more than that and it’s taxed as commercial income.

I suspect £230-50 would amply cover your expenses. She’s out all day, every day and presumably socialises a bit in the evenings, so food costs are going to be very low, no day heating, water or electricity, and she pays her own phone bill.

You’re not feeding and housing a stay-at-home young man who eats loads and games nonstop.

Expecting adult children to make a financial contribution to the household is definitely a life lesson. Some of the irresponsible financial straits some MN pp get themselves into on here is crazy.

Our DD also had ASOS deliveries arriving too frequently and was getting Ubers to the tube station instead of doing the 10 min walk. She’s got so many clothes and shoes that she had to leave her Spring/Summer wardrobe behind at home with us when she moved out. She’s planning to sell a lot of it on eBay and Vintage.

We covered all Uni expenses except her travel to and from Uni within London and her social life. So, no Student Loans or student accommodation costs. We bought the iPad and paid for the various applications and materials for her creative degree. DD’s worked PT since 16.

In addition, we only took a 30% financial contribution when DD finally pulled her finger out and got a full time role four years after graduating, instead of lazily coasting by working part time (granted COVID19 and all of her trips abroad got in the way!). We had previously agreed before Uni, that we would only expect DD to contribute once she was working FT hours.
Reading similar threads on MN over the years, some of these adult children really take the piss and, therefore, need to be taught how to adult.

Luckily, DD is good at saving, has learnt how to budget and manage her money well, otherwise she would not have been able to move out two months ago, during a CoL crisis and after only working FT for the last year.

DD will get that one year of her 30% contribution back and more, when she gets onto the property ladder.

@Supersimkin2 I don't think anyone needs to be getting the taxman involved in a private arrangement between family members!

Does her living with you really cost you an extra £500 a month? If so, and you need the money, you’ve got to charge it.

If not, then I personally would do whatever I could to help my child get onto the housing ladder.

If she wasn’t there you would be paying all the bills regardless on your own, therefore £500 for the extras she is using (gas electricity, water and food) does seem a bit steep