Should i ask my Adult Daughter to pay some money towards the household.

[Whataloadof2020]

I know theres a few threads like this.
My daughter is 22 this year. She lives with myself and my husband who is not biological dad, but had been her dad since she was 10.

This year i had to give up work and claim benefits due to poor health. My husband is self employed and earns a decent salary. But we are by no means, ‘well off’.

I initially told my daughter to pay £100 towards rent and i will put it aside for her into savings for when she moves out. She also buys her own food, only because she never eats what we eat, and sometimes she doesn’t eat what was bought in for her, so i put a stop to me buying food that i was throwing out.

So far she has not paid any money, and has just kicked off when i asked her to start.

she is a full time student, and gets a loan, as well as working part time.

she has no concept of money and sonce she has earned her own money, spends money like she is rich. There is not a week goes by without a parcel coming through the door.

I have told her that I actually need this money just now, for my own credit card bill, that i had to use while i was waiting on my benefits to be sorted, and to adapt to the way they are paid. And i would take note of how much i owed her, and would put it back in her savings.

Really I do not need to put it away for savings, but i want to help her when she does move out. But she always manages to argue the point and make me feel guilty.

She has free run of the house, comes in and out as she pleases. Uses the electricity, gas, Wi-Fi etc.
But because she HAD to have a VW polo, she has finance to pay and a high insurance.
As well as her phone bill for the most up to date iphone.

I can pay my Credit Card back, but with that £100 i can clear it quicker.

Am i being unfair?

Hi, no, we havent been asked to pay that. And we handed all the details regarding income. Im sure my husband earns more than that.

Thank you,
This is the thing, she has a cushion to turn to if i ask her to leave. My dad told her she can live with them rent free!
Which totally undermines me and my husband and the lessons we aren’t trying teach.

I did reply but didnt know how to reply to your comment. But i do now lol. I ended up posting a nee comment instead of replying to yours. 🙃

It must be tough but I wouldn't ask a full time student to contribute, to be honest. If she lived away from home accommodation costs would cost you a lot more than she costs you now. DD's current accommodation in halls is £160 a week in one of the cheaper places. Her house next year is £120 a week. Parents are supposed to support full time students, not the other way round. For most people the maintenance loan doesn't cover accommodation costs, anywhere near, in fact. DD1 has a good part time job too, which are not always easy to come by.

Even though she has a part time job, and is constantly buying clothes, takeaways and holidays?
Thats not real life, and she is quite disrespectful to us. I feel she wont learn what she has until its gone.

She gets a good amount for her loan.

Your correct in that my money problem is mine, but our electricity, gas, food bills would significantly be reduced if she was not relying on us to pay her living costs.

Ok, so what you need to do is find out how much student loan your daughter is getting & what your contribution should be based on your household income.

a full student loan living at home is £8,610. It’s only a couple of thousand less than fir a student living in halls so absolutely includes an element of the student contributing to the household.

however, if your Dd gets less than that then you are expected to make it up. Use this table to work out roughly what that might be.

https://www.savethestudent.org/student-finance/maintenance-loans.html

so if you expect your Dd to contribute £50 per week for her keep, but your parental top up is £2,600 you are even. If your top up is more than that (mine is about £5,000 for Ds) then you owe her. If it’s less then she pays you rent/keep

I have told her that I actually need this money just now, for my own credit card bill

This year i had to give up work and claim benefits due to poor health.

I can pay my Credit Card back, but with that £100 i can clear it quicker.

Stop telling her all of the above they are your problems and not hers and she obviously is seeing it as you want her to pay your credit card bill. You’d be far better off approaching it as asking for a contribution to gas and electricity etc or as you said towards rent. At 22 if she doesn’t like the £100 a month then she could always move out and pay her own way, I’m sure she’d much rather £100 then!

Exactly!

Is real life, being housed and all your income is expendable?

When she first started working at age 16 i did not ask her for money.
And when i was working full time and she was also, we did not ask for money.

All that did was allow her to spend like she was an instagram influencer AND rack up debt!

Not necessarily. My dd has a full loan of £10,500 and we don’t contribute anything to her uni expenses (apart from helping to kit her out with bedding & kitchen stuff). She worked for 3 years before going to uni (and payed rent first in a shared house and then to us when she moved back home) and built up some savings as well.

Our son, however has minimum loan so we do contribute.

I didnt have to tell her but she wouldnt let it go. Our relationship is bery strained, as i have allowed her away with how she speaks to me, and our mother / daughter relationship gets blurred.

all my fault as i always gave in as i was too tired to argue.

My sil has never had to pay to live at home. She just does as she pleases with her money and absolutely takes the piss in my opinion. I don't know why PIL didn't ask her to pay 200quid a month and put it away for her. She would have roughly 36k now as at the grand old age of 35 she still won't leave because, boohoo, she will have to pay her own bills.
When I was an apprentice at 17, earning £290 a month I had to pay £70 to my parents. That was 20 years ago.

Op, you can be disappointed your dad undermined you and you’re DH but surely your daughter going to live with her grandad will be better for you financially.

We fully supported our children through further education and they’re all very responsible adults running their own homes but I do understand you need your daughter to contribute.

Let her go and live with her grandfather then. This shows her if she stays with you she needs to pay as you need the money; if she isn’t at yours, the money isn’t needed.

She may find living with her grandfather not that great though!

The government can "advise" on what a parental contribution should be for uni, taking into account family income. But it most certainly is not due to her.

Many families have costs which simply could not accommodate the additional finances to top up a student loan out of the family income, regardless of whatever decision someone at some government office has decided is "affordable".

I understand why you would do that. But are they buying clothes every other week? Getting nails done, having 3 holidays a year?

I feel that by letting them live without paying anything when they are now an adult and have been working since 16, that is not giving a realistic view on how life really is.

I never learned how much things cost until i moved out myself. It was a huge shock, and one that made me appreciate my mum and dad more and what they provided for me.

I dont know if it’s different in Scotland, as we dont pay fees. So her college fees are paid and she gets the loan. We were never asked to make contributions.

I take a token amount off my ds to cover a bit of electricity since he works from home some of the week.

id much rather he saved and was able to get a deposit together than pay my bills for me,

@Whataloadof2020 if your income is less than 24k (joint) then you aren't expected to contribute anymore and you actually should be paying towards her to top it up to around 11k

Oh i know. She already experienced that and lasted a week! But if she doesn’t start paying her way then that will be her choice.

The parental contribution amount should be on the student loan letter your dc received, so you could ask her what it says. They don’t write to parents asking for the contribution. It’s based on household income and should just be paid directly to dc.

The point is, she is not saving. Nothing she has not learned any lessons about saving since she started working at 16.

I am not asking her to pay my bills. I am asking her to make contributions to the living costs of the house that she is in. Utility, council tax, wifi, rent etc. I suggested to her we would put the money she paid away into a saving pot for her, as she cant manage money.

I said to her that for a couple of months that money would help me, and i would note what i owed her back, and then pay her back.

But in reality we dont need to save that for her, as it is paying towards her living costs.

It’s about making her live independently, realise how much running a house costs, and what we provide for her. As when the time comes, and she flys the nest, she is going to realise very quickly that not many people have expendable income.

She is getting about 1,200 a month in loan and she works part time.
She has also been in full time employment, and i let her use her money for herself, but all that did was allow her to spend, spend, spend and get into debt.
She learned no lesson from it.
I fear when she eventually does move out she will have a failed tenancy, and more debt, as she has no idea the cost of running a home.

@Whataloadof2020 she living at home of course it's a time to spend spend spend it sounds like your jealous of that. I had the fast car, nice holidays etc when I lived at home. When we moved out the holidays dropped down to one a year and the next car was more fuel efficient. My spending money after bills etc is more than 1.2k a month so it is doable when she goes into a graduate job. Also my 1st month's proper pay went on a handbag so it's not an overnight change. Only debt me and DH have is mortgage + cars.

I am absolutely not jealous of her.
I just want her to learn to save, and that life isnt about fast car’s and lots of holidays. Not for everyone anyway.

What age did you move out from home? Did you save for a deposit as well as all the other things you needed to save for.

Were you borrowed up in a 2 parent household were both parents worked? Or at least one worked and made a good income?

I am classed as disabled now, i now have to rely on benefits as well as my husband. Our situation might be completely different from
and your upbringing.

My daughter is a full time student and works part time (though not set hours and can be inconsistent depending on availability) and I most certainly wouldn’t expect her to hand up money at this stage. When she graduates and working full time I will expect her to contribute but for now I will buy the things that she needs and she can buy the things that she wants.