Thinking it’s weird for kids to pay parents rent

[User788889]

My friend has a daughter (17) she charges rent. My family did the same to me growing up? Am I the only one who think it’s setting your kids up for failure and greedy to charge your kids for staying in their childhood home. I’d want my kids to be able to afford their own place not make it harder for them. Only thing I would do was pretend to and then give it all back to them…

You don't think your children should learn to budget and that they have to pay rent/mortgage when the leave home? My mum and dad took board money from me and my husbands parents did not. He spent his wages on whatever he wanted and had no concept of paying rent/bills when we moved in together. Everyone of his siblings had the same issue and a few got into debt. When we moved in together he had spent his weeks wages by the Monday and I asked him how he was going to pay towards rent/food/electricity etc... he had a rough week that week and it was a hard lesson to learn. He said he wished his parents had taught him about budgeting and now he can be the complete opposite about spending money 😂

Its far more likely you'll teach them to be greedy if you set yourself up as the font of all freebies for as long as they choose to take advantage of you. As soon as I started earning an income I contributed. My parents were not well off and I liked that the bit extra I contributed made life easier for them. Does that sound like it made me greedy?

Just because people in the UK normally do not experience developing world levels of poverty (no food, clean water, shelter, sanitation), doesn't mean that they aren't poor. Some families, particularly single parent families, rely on the money from children benefit, other benefits and child maintenance which stop at 18. They may need contributions from the now adult child if they are earning to be able to pay rent, bills and buy food.

So if you were a single mum earning £25k a year and your 22 year old graduate kid in a full time job was earning £35k a year you wouldn't expect or want them to contribute anything at all to household expenses?

What about those that send money to their parents abroad. They live here but send money to India or China or wherever their parents live. I’ve heard that loads of times.

This.

No offence but this just seems really dim. Who takes on a rent agreement/ sets up utilities bills and somehow doesn’t realise they need to meet the payments they’ve (contractually) agreed to? Maybe it was more common back in the day but a 20 year old who can’t absorb this information and the implications of it now would be quite poorly raised / poorly educated imo, regardless of being charged rent.

We don’t take money from our dc because we don’t need to - DH and I are far wealthier than they will ever be, due in part to working hard in well-paid professional careers, but also in large part to luck and well-timed property purchases.

DH and I actually give our dc a lump sum every year to reduce the amount they will eventually need to pay inheritance tax on - there wouldn’t be much point charging them £250 a month when we give them £10k a year.

I wouldn’t judge anyone who can’t afford to have their dc at home for free, however. We are very lucky, and we know that. Also, while our DC have never had to pay their own way, they absolutely understand the value of money and how lucky they are to have had the head start we have given them, that most of their peers have not had. We’ve involved them in our family’s financial decisions since a very young age.

We are an Indian household so it's customary to not charge rent. Adult DC pay for their own outgoings once they work, but no need to pay just to live at home. They save a lot of money.

I don't charge my son as he's saving up for house deposit/professional fees and he's remarkably good with money and financially savvy. I would say though I can afford not to and accept not everyone can.

I paid two hundred euro a month from when I was 16 but when I think of how much I probably ate, the fact they gave me lifts everywhere etc I think they were being generous! Op do you not think it’ll be a huge shock to the system when they leave home and have to cover everything?

Would it not be likely that the graduate would rather live in their own house rather than with their mum who presumably due to their earnings lives in a small/ cheap property?

like what’s the motivation for the child to stay there? Maybe they’re amazing friends and support for each other but that’s not massively common at 22

My daughter never returned to college after lockdown. She was 17,and because she came out of full time education, my tax credits and child benefit for her stopped immediately. I told her that uf she didn't want to stay in education then that was fine, but she had to get a job to make up for what we were losing. I work, but DH doesn't due to ill health so we relied on that money every month. So she did!

Any spare money dc have they should be saving for their future rents/mortgages.

I'd never charge dc to live in their actual family home. We are paying bills anyway with or without them.

But it isn’t about what the parents can afford. Young adults need to develop a sense of what it costs to live independently. Having to pay accommodation costs is a fact of life. As is learning to budget for that.

Some will feel ots helpful for helping a child learn budgeting, others need the money.

I moaned about paying rent at 18 but in hindsight, my parents had very little and I can see why it would rankle seeing me bring home 1k a month while working less, doing less around the house and spaffing 80% of it each month on going out, drinking, buying clothes and make up etc while they were constantly working and bogged down by adult life.

The needed it more than I needed more stuff.

Dont froget that in their generation they would have been expected to do a lot more than the expected from you. The whole point is that each generation should want to make it better for the next so it's normal that you want to do thi gs differently, it's social mobility.

Not if they were single. Rent alone in my area at the cheapest is £1kfor a shithole and it would be unlikely they would be able to get a mortgage on their own either even if they had the necessary deposit(unlikely if they are from low income family). Most young people stay at home until their mid 20s these days, if not longer, to save up for a deposit. Don't forget a lot of young people like to party which costs ££££.
Some of the privileged posts on here have really riled me. Can you not see that not everyone has loads of money. It's not related to how hard you have worked at school. Socioeconomic factors keep poor people poor and we all know that. I hate people who think that people are poor because they didn't try hard enough at school/work/life.

No, it's not. I work with colleagues from other cultures where the norm is to hand over ALL their earnings to the head of the family and then each person has spending money from the surplus in the communal pot after household expenses have been paid. There are many different ways of managing finances in multi generational households. I think a model that allows some adults to live freely at the expense of others is less common than you might think. For a lot of lower income families its not viable. For a lot of adult children it wouldn't be desirable as it would feel exploitative of their parents if they were not well off.

Well good for you. You obviously don't move in the same circles as the majority of mumsnetters who would love to be able to subside their dc in their adulthood. Well done you 👏

'Young adults need to develop a sense of what it costs to live independently. Having to pay accommodation costs is a fact of life. As is learning to budget for that.'

They develop a sense of what it costs to live independently when they live independently.

Teens on min wage should not be paying their parents a penny, they should save. Obviously if still living at home at 30 earning 40k they can then chip in.

This is what we believe but some people factor in the cost of extra utility usage and extra food.

Lucky you. Not everyone can afford to support a working adult.

You may think
It's weird to ask an adult child to pay rent and you have strong opinions about it but that doesn't mean you are right and we are wrong.
Those of us who do charge our kids rent do not believe that we are 'holding them back' in life

But then we all used to pay dinner money for school and college didn't we, school and college bus fares etc. So what we don't now pay evens out any extra food purchases.

When younger we give them money for clothes, buy school shoes, pay for taxis, trains, pizzas out. It is neverending so yes when they work they can pay all those costs but not towards mum and Dads leccy bill. Board and lodge for teens on min wage is madness. Let them save a bit!

I don’t think there’s anything weird about it Al all.

I charged dd1 board. She was working and earning nearly double what I earn at 21. Even then it was only £150 a month which didn’t cover much.

Dd2 is 20 still living at home and at uni. I don’t charge her board. She’s not working at the moment, but when she was, I still had didn’t.

Must be very nice to be in the financial position to not charge a fully employed adult to live at home.

DS pays £300 a month which covers food, extra bills and the 25% extra council tax
He is still able to save at least £500 a month for house deposit and have a better social life than me