If you have young adults living at home, what does their rent cover?

[Brunocatmon]

My ds is 21, almost 22. He's worked in hospitality his whole working life ( he started work 2 days after he turned 16 ).

Recently he changed jobs to a more secure job with decent contracted hours with more regular pay than before.

Ds's gf ( same age, 21) also lives with me.

Then I have dd who is 14.

The 2 young adults pay rent. £200 a month. This is all in.

In a couple of weeks my eldest dd (30) , her fiance, and 2 dc are moving in from overseas until they find themselves a house to buy. Realistically this could be a good few months.

Dd ( 18) is also moving back in from overseas.( she lives with them at)

I was talking to eldest dd and she said so if we give you X rent then we'll get groceries but if people want expensive extras they get it themselves is that OK?

I said their rent is inclusive of groceries unless expensive treats etc.

It just got me wondering. If your adult dc pay rent what does it include?

It’s semantics. ‘Rent’ usually isn’t rent. In my case it’s easier to say “DD, don’t forget to send me your rent when you get paid on Tuesday” than it is to say “DD, don’t forget to send me the money for your tiny contribution toward the food shopping; the money for your mobile phone contract and the health items I have on a regular subscription from Amazon for you each month”.

Her ‘rent’ doesn’t actually cover any rent, or household bills, or even half her food.

We charged ours £700 a month. We looked at local rent a room - rent a local room without bills is £700 he got his bills, internet and food included we thought that was a good deal for him! He’s moved out now and complaining as it’s twice as much in his studio flat!

How will they learn? Less than £10 a day or nothing ? Whilst working full time?

It's not rent it's paying towards cost of living at home. If mine didn't live it at home my cost would be more than halved.

I don’t charge but he gets his own food and lives as an ember of the house helping out appropriately. I would if he didn’t know how to save but he is way better than me.

I don’t charge my ds rent as if I did I think UC would class it as income

At what point does a child stop being a child?

We are talking about a 30 year old man here who - let's just say my friends were quite concerned when I let him move back in and there have been times I've had to leave the house and stay out for a while. I have 3 rooms apart from kitchen /bathrooms and I think £100 a month to lose 1/3rd of my house is very reasonable!

I was also a single parent who now has only a few years to go to retirement, have never earned well for various reasons and was about to get a lodger into that room to help save towards retirement. I have a mortgage and I also pay rent (shared ownership). A lodger would pay £600. My financial shortfalls are not his responsibility but he is saving a fortune by living here.

When he rented privately rent was £900 a month with all bills on top.

£100 a month is 30% of the rent I pay. An amount that was enough for me to not resent my life being turned upside down again.

Tell me again how I am being unreasonable?

When my DD started working part time, she started to pay for her own toiletries, phone and clothes, she also got PIP. Then she got a full time job and I treated it like a houseshare. Things that I'd need if she wasn't there, like a TV licence, cleaning stuff, getting the windows cleaned/garden done, water bill etc. I'd fully cover the costs of. This helped her to understand needing to budget heating etc. More importantly we respected each other as adults, it was a joint home. I wasn't petty, I bought the odd takeaway/bottle of wine.

When dsd lived with us i provided an evening meal if she was home and fed her boyfriend if he was here, she bought her breakfast and lunch items but had use of milk and spread (bought her own horrible white bread as my 3x price seeded wholemeal was not to her taste!) we didn’t charge rent. My dds were students so no rent and left after university, only one out of 3 seems to own a wallet when we go out, my youngest dd I’m too soft I suspect but they each went through their parents marriage breakdown as older teens and then dsd’s mum decided she was moving where there was no space, thankfully we had bought a big enough house (just)

22 year old currently pays us £90 per month, feeds/cooks/supplies himself. The £90 is the difference we think is the cost to of us of housing him, eg elec, water utilities (WFH two days pw). I do all his laundry ( I don’t work, seems sensible I throw it in with ours - he is very able to do his own as he did at uni). Buys his own toiletries/phone contract/car etc.

@HappilyDivorced89

well you hope for that but it may not be the case given the way bills etc are rising - you might need to take something from her just to live and maintain the house. A lot of people don’t have any choice as to whether or not to get their adult sons and daughters to contribute to the running of the house - they need the money.

Out 2 DDs live here rent free but they are saving like mad to get on the property ladder so we don't mind at all but we are lucky we can afford it. If we couldn't then l think £200 each is not enough tbj

Just to be clear,I don't think of it as " rent". As previous posters have said basically just less than 50 quid per week per person barely covers food.

I'm single, I work. My food bill is always astronomical even with staff discount.

@Stolenyouth

Spain is hugely family oriented, and it would be absolutely unthinkable to charge DC rent at any age. DC to tend to live at home longer than here.

No system is perfect. However, I think it's no coincidence that young people in Spain are much happier (despite lower incomes generally) while ours are the most miserable in Europe. 🧐

Work hard at school and go to uni in order to get a graduate job that pays barely more than NMW. No prospect whatsoever of ever buying a home of your own. And btw you can pay your parents £10k a year to stay in your own home (that they probably bought for £50k.)

I have just shown DH the post that mentions charging £700 a month. He says Spanish grandparents would be on the warpath with their kids if they found out their DGC were being made to pay that.

When i paid rent at home, it covered a roof over my head, household bills eg water, electricity council tax, mum doing my washing, mum cleaning the house and a basic food shop. Any extras I bought food wise inc beauty bits.

my kids arent old enough yet but id like to think, if im not skint by then, that i could save a chunk of that rent to give back to them to put towards a house deposit

You sound like a lovely respectful person!

I charge my 26 year old dd £300. That includes all bills, and we cook for her as well. She earns 45k so I think that’s reasonable. She has moved back from a rented flat where she paid £700 plus bills, plus food. The £300 is to cover our extra costs really. When she first lived her straight from uni, I charged the same but saved half for her plus contributed to an isa. Her salary has gone up a lot since then so we both think 300 inc food is fair.

But the op hasn't asked for anyone's opinion on this. She is happy with her offer and her arrangements she simply asked if rent amount was fair.

@Brunocatmon personally I'd bump them all up by £100pm to cover electricity and the huge amounts of food you will need to purchase to keep everyone fed!

Sorry, where exactly in my post did I call you unreasonable? I believe I said, ‘interested to know’…
I mean, now that I do know, I’d still ask if it’s better to charge him for the rather considerable inconvenience (you have to stay away sometimes?!?) his living with you causes as opposed to letting him save that money towards a deposit and setting a strict timeframe on how long he remains with you!

When my daughter was here full time I asked for £300 and now she spends much more time at her boyfriends and sorts own food I ask for £150. The money is because she doesn’t want to give her room up for younger sister who is home all time but has a smaller room. It covers her share of the council tax - I could get the 25% single adult discount if she wasn’t here and for her part of the rent - UC take some off me as I have another adult at the property so she basically covers what I lose help with. I’m a single parent and my income pretty much matches hers so she has a pretty good deal as she doesn’t have to run a home on her wage. If I had enough not to charge her I wouldn’t but unfortunately I need the help.

Why is there a ‘how will they learn?’ attitude amongst some parents? They learn, as yours has, by moving out and getting their own property and growing up. I’m not sure why some parents think this is something then need to learn first from their parents.
My parents taught me the (in my opinion) far more important lesson, that whatever might go wrong, I was always welcomed and would be supported by them.
That life costs money is a lesson that the rest of the world is very willing to teach. The world is pretty hard on the young, it’s bloody hard to make a start nowadays, for goodness sakes can parental homes be some sort of sanctuary from the constant ‘lesson’ that it’s hard out there?

I wish my adult children paid rent..

He is earning plenty of money and is on a strict timeframe. That £100 would otherwise probably go on takeaways.

@MumbleBumbleAppleCrumble

Exactly- it would be totally out of the question to charge DC rent in the vast majority of countries in the world. Somehow they manage to budget and manage their own finances just fine.

@Willow12345

tell them to then.

It also depends how much you can afford to sub them too. Your bills will go up a lot. Id be charging £100 per week