AIBU - expecting son to pay for his own 'luxury' groceries on top of rent

[QuaintNewt]

23yo DS pays £500 a month 'rent'. This includes, all bills including mobile but ive recently asked him to take this on himself as he can get cheap sim only contract and good for credit rating etc. It also includes meals and snacks Sunday - Thursday with the original agreement being he buys his own meals on weekends (take aways) although if im cooking i will offer to include him and his gf in meals too.

We are very comfortable and not financially 'short' but also not loaded, we live well but dont have loads left over, and DS earns around £1800 after tax and has EV paid through work costing him £30 a month BIK (he charges at home and claims work mileage as expenses) so no other outgoings .

He thinks £500 a month is excessive and we have recently had a discussion about him paying us for his car electricity on top of his rent, I also do not want to buy him large packs of canned drinks and coffee pods (nespresso) as part of our weekly shop. The coffee machine was purchased as weve recently moved rurally and i miss my occasional coffee shop coffee but dont expect to be paying £150 a month in pods for is all which I can see happening ig DH,DS,DD all start drinking 2 o 3 coffees a day!

AIBU and a tighta**e or do you think expecting him to purchase these things himself is fair?

It’s abhorrent to smoke in any home you don’t own, when you’ve been asked to by that owner.

Maybe focus on that, before you continue to defend the son.

I am pointing out that you are using the word “profiteering” incorrectly.

Rather than responding to that, you have gone back to another one of your favourite hyperbolic words - abhorrent.

What words do you use to describe drug dealers or drink drivers, if you bust out abhorrent for “adult man pays less than one third of take home pay for board, lodging and bills”?

He's 23
You're still paying his mobile as though he were a teenager
He charges his car at home and gets the expenses from work. So no cost to him whatsoever.

You've previously bailed him out. I didn't fully understand the connection with almost losing his job.
If he ever cooks he doesn't clean up after himself. Total lack of thought for others
He smokes in your house when he knows you don't like it. Total disrespect.
I think the £500 is the least of your worries.

After ds graduated last summer I was charging him £30 a week as I knew he'd be moving out again and needed a deposit for rent. It ended up being for about 4 months. He used to moan that I wasn't charging dd3! Dd3 is still at school!

Landlords have always profited from renting out their properties its not a new thing. I doubt there any many parents that charge rent simply to make a profit from their own kids. I know parents who charge a fair amount for rent dont offer to buy cars etc. and they definitely dont need the money ..also their kids wouldnt dream of.asking. Just as cost and worth aren't the same thing, the fact some.adult children are able to save on spending their money on rent doesnt automatically set them up for a better life because I think for some it definitely comes at a cost.

Im sure there are decent kids who live with their parents for free or very little who help around the house or at least offer to and who are genuinely saving to move out into the next couple of years..then the set up just makes sense.

But there are also others, and I've seen them, who see the fact they dont have to pay rent as an opportunity to spend all their spare money on themselves. To blame profiteering landlords and making noises about getting on the property ladder just sounds better.

It is accurate though. Very few other countries have this bizarre culture of charging DC to live in their own home.

Young people already have a hard enough time as it is without their parents using them as cash cows in addition. It is no coincidence life satisfaction is so poor here compared to other countries.

Maybe, but in the couple of European countries ive lived in the kids seemed to have a different attitude to (some of) those here regarding spending a lot on themselves etc while living at home.

Friends from further afield who live with parents for an extended time have a different family set up where its often expected that the parents will live with the adult children later down the line.

@Cornishwafer I think that’s the key. Reciprocity in family relationships is the norm in many countries, but not as much in the UK. Of course some adult children do a lot for their parents, but the expectation seems to be that parents shouldn’t expect any support or get upset if they don’t receive any- they’re the parents and they must keep giving.

Whereas in Italy, for example, adult children would definitely be looking out for parents/grandparents as they get older. It would be frowned on if you didn’t.

It should absolutely work both ways, but it is no surprise adult children aren’t desperate to help their parents out when they are are the ones who have benefited from a huge rise in property prices, and yet are now using their DC as cash cows.

For parents of that age (80+) now… I believe it was a fair bit less common for their young adult children to live at home than it is now. Certainly siblings and I only went home to visit post uni, never moved back in. So I think your timescale is a bit off.

I think this is a good example of how there are situations when giving a DC a bit of a break isn't enabling...even though Manthide was charging her son less than many pay, it was short-term and he had a clear plan to really move out.

The baby boomer generation were technically born before 1965 (so the youngest will be in their 60s now).

The point is those born in that period and the period after benefited from much lower house prices and cost of living than we have now.

It is abhorrent to talk about DC having to ‘pay their way’ as an excuse to exploit them from the comfort of the home you paid a pittance for but has now ballooned in value.

Some people rent.

My mum is 64, didn’t buy her first home until 2002.

My sister is 41, bought her first home at 38.

I’m 36, bought my first at 28.

They haven’t all “benefitted from a balloon increase,” and most of us have lived through a cost of living crisis and relevant austerity, this isn’t the first time it’s happened ever.

Yet somehow, we all managed!

Ok.... but you are saying that adult children being charged rent in their 20s isa reason that they are not involved in care for their parents... my point is that those currently needing care (in their 80s, say) are less likely to have had their adult children (now in their 50s, say) live at home when they were in their 20s.

So your cause and effect is all over the shop.

But since you seem to be posting in order to use your hyperbolic words in rotation, and not actually engaging with the points made, it might be time for me to track down a pigeon with my chessboard instead.

Why the obsession with house prices There's plenty of people who never bought a house.

What's that actually got to do with adult offspring contributing? What is the parents are still paying rent themselves, should get be subsidizing an adult child? Who may be better off than them

Because it was much easier for boomers and those slightly younger to buy a house than it is for young adults now.

But not for everyone. In fact I think house ownership was much lower than it is now a couple of generations ago

Still don't see the relevance to adult offspring contributing to living costs at home. A

Here’s the long-run picture for UK home owner-occupation (share of households that own their home, outright or with a mortgage). The best long series is usually shown at census decade points, plus modern annual surveys.
UK (approximate, long-run trend)
1951: ~29%
1961: ~42%
1971: ~50%
1981: ~57%
1991: ~68%
2001: ~69%
2011: ~64%
2021: ~63%

Also are these early 20-somethings all really focused on saving up to buy a property in the short-term...or is it just what some of them and their parents are saying to justify them still living at home. Most people really wanting to buy their own but unable to afford to will save in every area they can to make it happen...no wasting money on holidays, festivals etc. People keep citing other European countries but in many of these its far more common to rent, even right up to middle age than buy....there's less oh he's at home at 26 because he wants to get on the property ladder.

Im sure some young adults really do want to move out and start an independent life sooner rather than later and are saving every penny to make it happen...I think in those cases its great that parents help in any way they can.

The young adults I know including my own are genuinely saving for a house deposit. A couple of my friends’s DC bought their first houses last month.
My DC are saving (the younger one has a very low 6 figure saved). They also do go on some holidays, they don’t drink so nights out are cheap, they do things like cinema, paddle tennis, online gaming.
They aren’t into expensive clothes and as far as I can tell seem to be really sensible with money.
What I’ve noticed is none of them want flats and the young people who have DC when they rent find it even more difficult to buy
so many youngsters want to avoid this scenario if possible.

My df is 83 and he said he used to hand his pay packet to his dm and she would give him back a very small amount. This was usual in working class homes in the 1960s. After his parents died he still gave most of his pay packet to his sister so she could pay the rent etc even though he was in the army and living in barracks.

Thats the thing...they sound quite sensible and focused on saving...whereas OPs son doesnt. Even though they might not want to drink, it sounds like they might be making some sacrifices in other areas in order to save...like anyone saving for a home..OPs DS isn't.

And it’s a bit different if a 23 year old is living at home, helping out and paying his way and making an attempt to learn new life skills.
Just because it’s always been that way in Spain it doesn’t mean it’s right. I agree that families should support each other. However it’s the definition of support that needs to start changing.

Culturally and traditionally mothers take on the majority of the care of children for 18 years and many work on top of this - they didn’t use to - previously they had just one job- bringing up children. Now they juggle that with a full time job on top and there is no support for the mental load that goes with all of that. It’s such a battle all the way, for the single mums even more so , a child with a diagnosis often even more challenging, so if we are now saying it’s the ‘norm’ to not only fund for free a 23 year old male in your home and pick up after them and allow yourself to shrink into the invisible by being ignored when you just asked not to have to breath in their cancer fumes then something has gone a bit wrong with society.

And I can’t understand parents who would want such adult kids smoking in their home when they were told not to, and expecting someone else to clear up their stuff and cook their food. He doesn’t cook for the parents at all ? Why not? Why does he not contribute a family meal a few times a week ?

I'd expect him to buy his own luxuries but £500 a month seems really excessive to me. Does he genuinely cost you that much or are you making a profit from him living at home?

If you can't afford to subsidise him that's fair enough, but making a profit from him being at home seems a bit off.