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?

I'm in my early 50's. My parents are in their early 70s and still work. Maybe I should move in with them and save some money. I can then buy lots of designer handbags and they can keep me.

@SilkySquirrel

you haven’t answered any of my questions 🙄

Colour me shocked

Brilliant thinking!

Be sure to never tidy up after yourself and take up a smelly and expensive hobby - if you don’t fancy smoking, buy some designer perfumes to go with your handbags and spray them everywhere

Not the point of the thread I know, but £150 a month on Nespresso pods? That bit is nuts on its own. Spend £500 on a bean-to-cup machine. You'll save the money back in a few months.

In terms of the bigger picture, YANBU. Even if your DS's £500 a month includes meals, he needs to be paying for any extra luxuries - packs of drinks, snacks etc - himself. Don't think of it in terms of expecting/making him pay. Just think of it as you providing what you provide/ If he wants anything else he will naturally need to buy it himself like any adult.

basically @SilkySquirrel wants women in the UK chained to the sink in a role of servitude from
the minute they have a child until the day they die. It’s very depressing.

It's worse than that - your council tax jumps by over 33% if another adult moves in. If the full tax was £100, then with the discount it's £75. If it increases back to £100 again it's risen by 25/75 x 100 = 33.333...%, or a third.

Hang on.. so if I move back in with my mum, and take my teenagers, can my mum charge them board and lodgings once they are working? Or does the free ride keep on going down the generations?

ETA question for @SilkySquirrel - not that she’ll answer!

Another one who wants to profiteer.

@SilkySquirrel

i think you mean another one who doesn’t want to be a door mat and who wants their son/daughter to act like the adult that they are. What’s wrong with that?!

Because this poster wants the DS paying £500 a month plus his weekend meals, in addition to buying his own drinks and snacks.

So she would have him paying £650+ a month, which would result in an even bigger profit for the OP.

There’s a one bedroom studio near me on the market for £700 with bills included!

@SilkySquirrel

well, he could move into that then couldn’t he? No one’s forcing him to live with his mother! He probably won’t move though considering she cooks and cleans for him, and he would have to do that stuff for himself if he moved out

Returning to Actual Facts, OP often cooks for DS and his GF at the weekend if they are around - she objected to his expectation that she would pay for his takeaway if he was out with mates, though. What with the £1300 he has spare a month for that sort of thing.

I am still astonished that you think it’s acceptable for a mother to profiteer in such a way.

What are you on about? This post is just bizarre when the only change I actually suggested in the arrangement between the OP and her adult son was for her not to feel obligated to buy him every expensive item he has a whim to own. That's nothing to do with "profiteering" by any stretch of the imagination!

Anyway, I won't be engaging with your further as it's pretty obvious you're not discussing in good faith but just trolling on this thread.

And food as well? And coffee pods? And a cook and cleaner? That would cost him far more. It's already 200 more just on rent and bills

@SilkySquirrel

yep, I think it’s absolutely fine 😀
keep profiteering,OP!

According to SS at 10.41, it costs DS £150 pcm to feed himself at weekends. 4 x fri and sat each month makes that £18.75 a day. So for a 28 day month, his food and drink and snacks in that studio flat - using her own maths - would cost £525 on top of the £700.

But yeah, OP is profiteering 😀

I’m actually at my mums right now, staying the night visiting.

I’m never going to leave. I’m going to keep my full time job, and live in my mums spare room, forever. I may be 36, but it is my salary and I should be able to spend it on however many pizzas I desire.

Bugger my child, responsibilities and bills, I’m going to resign from adulthood and she can take back over.

God knows where you live then,studios here are about £1200 with no bills paid.TThe OP is paying for Mortgage,council tax tax,power,water food and luxuries and you think £500 a month is profiteering? You are delusional,you don't have to guess take all the fixed bills add them together,and divide by the number of people in the house,luxuries such as the Nespresso pods just the son is using are added on top,there is no question in this case of making a profit so calling it profiteering is just ignorant.

Putting the cat among the pigeons but I'm 61 this year and divorced. I won't have anything but the state pension when I retire and my elder two dc have already said they will help support me if necessary. They are both very well established in their careers. I obviously won't take the michael but they will be giving me money and not even living under my roof!

6 figures isn’t actually that mad if you start investing early. I gave my kids both a £40 k pot each at 18 from the matured child trust fund I invested for them drip feeding in £50 a month each over 18 years into an investment trust. I knew better than to do the cash alternative over that time span. If yp then has a gap year job ( which I’d expect ) and lives at home then a decent % of income goes in aswell. Then 4 k a year from the ISA £40 k gets transferred into LISA and government top up by £1000. Dividends get reinvested. Keep drip feeding in from jobs and birthday / Christmas money- with average stock market returns it soon accumulates.

I agree I don’t know anywhere apart from an absolute hovel in an unsafe area that rents for £700 a month. Totally agree the op is not profiteering. All adults should start to contribute to the overall bills. It’s about taking responsibility.

What about if OP or anyone in her situation just doesn’t actually want him there anymore? There comes a time when you might actually want to move on and have your own life you know not clearing up after others. Responsibilities in law for parenting ends at 18. I don’t want my kids living with me forever in a semi state of adulthood. It’s much more mentally healthy for the young adult to learn the skills of adulting living away from home. You don’t seem to be able to grasp this basic fact. It’s got nothing to do with ‘profiteering’. However I do think it’s a good thing if the OP can make some extra money as after all she will have given up work to bring him up and suffered pension loss in the process. Hence investing that rent would be a great move for her. I’d put it in an ISA and grow the hell out of it. OP has contributed to society for 18 years bringing up the next generation so she absolutely deserves some reward now even if all that money just went to her alone for her own purposes. I truly hope she is able to treat herself or perhaps reduce her own working hours as she goes through midlife / older years and can use the money for her own health and well being.After all, she is also important right? Or are you saying this mother has no value and serves no other purpose than a slave to her offspring forever? As that’s what it sounds like !

Some people have very different ideas of what being a parent means.
I didn't have children to contribute to future generations. I certainly would never want to profit from my children. Ever. Charging rent to help with basic costs is fine if you need the money. No profit from your own children though.
If you can afford it ,let them pay a contribution and save it for them towards a deposit for a house.
Some posters make being a mum sound so so transactional. You can argue all you want about rent costs etc but they are businesses,run for profit. A parent is not a business. A parent does what she or he can to support an adult child without making money out of that child.
But sadly ,I seem to be in a minority.