How much rent would you charge your offspring?

[NoahVale]

DS has a job now.
full time.
I imagine he will take home £200 per week or thereabouts.
We will lose some of our housing benefit due to this.
I have no idea the going rate to charge him for his room

Can you charge him the part of HB that will be lost?

I wouldn't want to make a profit off my kids, but if I was going to be out of pocket and they could afford to reimburse then I might do that.

I was considering that pretend

I would charge the lost HB plus £10 to cover energy costs also the actual cost if his food £20?

I wouldn't charge unless you really need to.
If you have to out of financial necessity no more than the HB you have lost

I would charge £25 a week I think. So £100 a month. If you don't actually need the money I would put it away for him so when he leaves home he has a surprise amount saved up (£1200 per year)

I think it's perfectly fair to charge him rent if he is an adult, has a job and is living in your home.

I moved back home after university (about six years ago now) and had a job earning approximately 1300 a month. I paid my mum £250 in rent a month which seemed very fair to me (and waaaaaaaay cheaper than I'd pay anywhere else in London).

Depends if he's saving or not. If he's just blowing the money I would charge him say £30 p/w and save it/some of it up for him, if he would save the money himself I wouldn't charge him. How much HB will you lose and how ill can you afford to lose it?

I would charge 10% and advise him to save 10%. Still leaves him with £160 pw to do as he likes. My DS(20) is on training wages at the moment so we don't charge him anything but he buys a large box of washing powder when we need it and helps out with looking after his sisters if necessary. Once he's on full wages I'll be charging him though.

I would only charge whatever you have lost in HB.

I wouldn't charge a child to live at home but would expect them to save for when they move out.

Can you not make up the loss of benefit by increasing hours etc?

My parents used to charge me a third of whatever I earned. It very quickly got cheaper to move out - which was the point I think.

I would charge a percentage of their income. When dsd returns from uni she will live with us. I am paying her money to get her through uni but I expect her to top it up with a job. Her job hunting has been poor so far. When she lives with us she will be charged rent. I wont be saving it for her as such but we are planning to pay off out mortgage early so we have a few years of earning with no mortgage and I intend to save the majority of what would have been a mortgage payment to help her get a ddeposit for a house however if she doesn't save and work hard I won't be giving her anything. I am hoping that it is just immaturity that is stopping her getting a job now and when she goes to uni she will grow up and have a good work ethic.

Id charge housekeeping , it's not making a profit from your child , it's teaching them that now they're an adult ,living as an adult , he's got to start paying towards bills like other adults otherwise he will face a short sharp shack when he finally leaves home and has to pay bills himself
I'd take about £40.0- £50.0 a week

That leaves £150.0 - £160. for spends for a lone person with no dependants to spend on himself as he chooses .
I'd still buy his toiletries when I go shopping though
I assuming he will still be eating at home , drinking , using gas , electricity, showering , dishwasher , washing machine and everything else

September will be expensive for us as my dd will need bus fares paying for further education, and yes I was thinking about increasing my hours, I have so far done that, trying to get a work life balance as well, So I plan to do extra as long as my work will allow it. Unfortunately like a lot of people, the less we earn the more help we get.

I know my DS is planning to save a %, and learn to drive, so the rest is spending money.
I was going to wait to see how much housing benefit we do lose, I think I might have read it somehwere this morning, on the Turn to Us website, it might be £30 per week, it depends, if he is on X amount it is £15 per week, and then it goes up in increments. But I wasnt paying much attention

On the other hand if we lose like it looks we are going to lose £300 per month, that seems too much to charge DS, roughly £70 per week - which, coincidentally is the amount DDs travel will cost us

I wouldn't charge him. I'd ask for a contribution towards gas and electric and obviously he can buy his own food.

No way would I charge for a room that would be empty.

Sorry missed the HB bit.

If you are out of pocket with the HB you could charge him a bit for that. Around £100 a month or up to £200 at most. He will still have quite a lot of spending money.

When I first got a job, my mum would take 1/3 of my wages (only a Saturday job @ age 14!) inc any extra hours I worked. When I moved in with my Dad and started full time work he'd just charge me the extra cost on his bills (he lost his single person discount on his council tax) and just charged a nominal £10/wk towards bills, and I bought my own food, much fairer!

I would just sit and look through family budget together. Since he still lives as part of the family & earn some money & family pays certain bills he/sd he should be aware how much is spend on food/housing/ gas+electricity and he should contribute. If the earnings is small - then it should be a little bit, maybe buying milk+bread, transport tickets an so. If it is full time job, the contribution should be bigger. The same with household chores... But I would not treat is as a rent, we're family and family relationship is different from renting-leasing ones. If the child is that type who does not want famiy relationship - then it's another story...

It seems very clear to me. I would charge the amount of hb you would lose (30pw I think you said? or whatever the amount ends up being?). Plus food and energy costs (about £25pw?). It's not unreasonable. If you are on hb then I presume you do not earn loads so probably can't afford not to. It would still be cheaper than them moving out. Definitely don't feel guilt about it.
Also, any extra hours you work will be deducted from your hb anyway, usually about 65% is taken off.

HB is reduced not because you are losing money for a child. It is reduced because an adult wage earner in the household is expected to be contributing towards rent.

That post was to Cereal.

Op how is your dd's travel costing you £70 a week?

I used to work with a teenager whose family were in a very similar position except they didn't work at all and all rent was paid by HB. When she started work they lost all of it and so it fell to her to pay all the rent on the family house. I felt really sad for her because she didn't have the money to go out or spend that her friends did. But, I don't think it was unfair of her family to ask her to pay, they just didn't have the money to pay the rent so what else could they do.

You say he will take home about £900 a month, you will loose £300 a month. I would ask him for the £300. He will still have £600 per month to spend/save, an amount that I could only dream of being able to spend on myself each month. If you still feed him it's not as if you'll be any better of worse off this way, anything less means your subsiding his spending money and if your getting HB I bet you don't have £600 to spend on yourself each month.

thanks for raising that AndNow.
HAve found DD might be able to get to college cheaper, being a student
so it would be about £30 per week
touch wood and all that.