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?

You can't both save it and use it for household expenditure though. Either you need the money or you don't.

You sound resentful of her and you shouldn't be asking her for money to pay your credit card bill. Sounds like you have been giving her mixed messages and now want the money as your financial situation has changed which is not her fault.

Well, if she's doing that and its 1200x7months, then it's a total of £8,400, so she's on the lowest rate based on her parent's household income, so OP is supposed to be topping her up by £3000 a year to the £11,400 she'd have got in total on the lowest rate.

So OP is already £3000 a year (£250 per month) in pocket. That more than covers her gas and electric use, no? With a nice fat profit for OP on top.

You can't have it both ways!

£3,000 per year is a hell of a lot less than the student would be paying out in rent in halls. That would be more like £7,000-£8,000.

Yes, halls are a business and make a profit. Parent's generally don't attempt to profiteer off their student children.

I'm not really entirely sure of your point? You think OP should not give her student DD the £3000 she owes her, and in addition should profiteer by an additional £4-5K? What parent would do that?

The costs to OP of having her DD there will not come close to the £3000 she's currently not giving her since DD pays for food and no council tax is due. The additional costs are literally some extra gas and electric and maybe some bog roll.

OP is not profittering by allowing her dd to live at home., Honestly, the privelege on these threads is unbelieable.

If you cant afford to keep her then she should contribute - and you shouldnt save it for her. Just tell her she pays up or goes to live with grandad.

She owes her DD £3000/annum top up based upon means testing. Her daughter has been directly penalised that amount due to their household income.

It doesn't cost her £3000 in additional costs to have her daughter there.

Therefore she is taking some of the money due to her daughter and putting it in her own pocket instead of giving it to her daughter as she should in line with government guidelines.

OP ends up better off than she should be. Her DD ends up worse off than she should be.

What bit of this don't you understand?

Her dd isn't owed it otherwise it would be mandated that parents had to top up the loan and they'd be actually billed for it. The parents are assumed to be topping up, but it is not the actual law.

If the government want to enforce the parents to top up, then they should run full affordability checks on the households, and quote a value that is affordable, not just say "well, you earn X so you should pay Y" with no checks on what X is paying for in the first place.

The dd would've been well within her rights to move out, be no longer answerable to parents, funding her own degree wholly, and be allocated the full grant amount. But then of course she'd have to take additional loans out to cover living costs.

It doesn't cost her £3000 in additional costs to have her daughter there

3k works out about £58 a week if on a 51 week halls contract or £75 a week if on a 40 week halls contract. There are no student accomodations available as cheap as that.

When my daughter and son in law moved in with us last year, they bought all their own food and drink because they follow a completely different diet to us. They also bought their own laundry detergent and household things that they wanted to use which I don't normally buy. We didn't expect them to pay anything towards any household bills because I don't think having them here really had much of an impact on the gas or electricity bills etc. If my daughter had still be at university, I wouldn't have let her pay for her own food, but that wasn't an issue when they were here last year as they were both employed.

£100 a week on a 40 week contract is common near us (northern England) but then the OPs DD likely wouldn't have commuting costs.

@Whataloadof2020 we bought our 1st house 18 months after graduating with a 5% deposit. We then did it up over the next 6-12months and sold it on to buy the next one. Not that it matters buying a house isn't the only good part of life our current mortgage is less than a quarter of what we were offered as we would rather have more fun money.

Ok, lots of mixed thoughts on this subject.

Firstly my daughter is 21, nearly 22. She is not just out of school and attending FT education for the first time.
She went back to college last year, after working full time for years. During this time she never paid any contribution to the house, as both i and her step dad worked full time.

I had to give up work after my illness become worse to the point i am unable to work even part time.

When i was a young adult living with my parents i paid my parents contribution towards my living in the house when i was a student and also working part time. I did not expect or want my parents to have me until such time i had money to get a mortgage, i wanted to love independently as an adult and not to live by my strict dad’s rules.

However when i moved out, i soon realised how much running a home cost, and respected my parents for all they done for me.

My daughter does not respect me, or my house.

I want her to understand that life isnt about expendable income, and i would like her to understand and appreciate what she has been giving in life.

The DWP knows all about my husbands income, and because i am registered DISABLED, my benefit are calculated regardless of my husband’s income. So to that person who asked if the DWP know, heres your answer.

I agree that my financial situation is not my daughter’s problem, and i didn’t want to tell her, but my daughter wanted to know.
So no i did not emotionally manipulate her.
I also would be putting her money she paid towards HER living costs into savings for her. And if i had to use the money it would be put back in.

I am a parent who believes children when they become 18, and want to be treated as an adult should be, including all that comes with adult hood, which is responsibilities.

I Dont believe that parents should have adult children living at home, not contributing to their living costs regardless of their own financial position.
She chose to give up working full time to go to college. As an adult she made thst choice, and im glad she did. But i don’t agree with parents that allow adult children living with them to live rent free. It doesnt teach them about real life.
One day we (parents) might not be there, and i would like to hope I’ve prepared my daughter for life without us, god forbid if that happens.

This.
OP, you're complaining that your daughter has no concept of money and is overspending, whilst you want her to pay rent to cover your credit card overspending.
Having read through your posts you really don't seem to like your daughter very much.

OP used her credit card to pay for essentials because there wasn’t enough money coming into the household.

Well, no, some parents do disadvantage their children, but that's hardly the standard to aspire to.

It shouldn't have to be mandated, because good parents will do it regardless.

In reality OPs daughter is down £3k on what the government say she needs to live on, and what means testing calculates that OP's household can afford to pay.

OP is not adequately supporting her student daughter as per government guidelines. That's not something to be proud of.

I also dont know where, i owe her £3000 has came from???

As it turns out, only my income is included when she applied for her student loan as they do not take Step parents income into account unless they adopted the child before their 16.

This is the scotland student award scheme i got this information from.

I do not or have been requested to pay any contribution to her.
And i definitely do not owe her any money.

I am also not jealous of the parcels and the car. I bought her first car. But that was not good enough so she part exchanged for the polo.
I am frustrated when she tells me she cant afford to help pay living costs, but can afford to spend x amount on clothes. And buying a brand new i-pad when she has an apple mac that she got on credit thsts barely 2 years old.

I mention these parcels and gadgets as enough is enough. If you can’t afford to pay £100 a month, on what amounts to £1000 a month income, then how can you afford all these luxuries.

When she first started working and for a good 2 years after she has had a good time. I never bothered, but now i want her to start being a responsible ADULT. Or is 21 soon
to be 22 not classed as an adult these days?

Wow!

I dont like how my daughter treats me. There is a difference.

Totally irrelevent. She doesn't live in halls.

She costs her parents extra utilities, that's all. That's not likely to cost anything close to £3k per year.

Maybe OP should take up her dads offer to house DD and then pay her daughter the £3k recommended by the government if she thinks her DD is costing more than an extra £3K in utilities....

Thank you.

It was also because the way benefits are paid into the bank its here there and every where.

So i was finding that sometimes there wasnt money in for my direct debits.

Where is this £3000 coming from????

Indo not have to oay any contribution to her living costs!

She gets 11,400 a year paid in 10 months installments.

Please show me these government guidelines.

Your daughter missed a real opportunity to leave university with absolutely zero debt. She has no fees, lives at home and has a part time job. I’d have made my dc see sense - that not getting the loan and keeping things simple eg public transport rather than car etc was a much better financial decision.

@Whataloadof2020 what does she actually cost you as it sounds like she is paying 90% of her own living expenses. The government defines an independent student as >25 and I would say that's the age I would expect DS to be more independent. If he's at home between 18-25 I would still expect him to be a young adult we need to support considering the current cost of housing. I wouldn't want him to be as independent as us at 23/24.

Absolutely 👍🏻

She left a full time job to go back to study, but by then she already had the car finance and the phone bills! Which are all CHOICES she has made.
Some of the comments on here, have made me feel like i should continue paying for her choices?

if she was only 17 and going to college that would be different story.
But i did support her then, but she left as she wanted money from a full time job.