Dig money

[weeecheeese]

DS18 starts a full time job next week, earning £10 per hour.

It's only me and him in the house. Obviously child maintenance and child benefit has stopped. Single person discount will be taken off my council tax.

I have told him he will need to start contributing and asked if he wanted to discuss a fair amount. He wants me just to tell him. I've told him he will also be taking over his mobile phone.

Also relevant is that I have agreed to take out a small car loan for him when he passes his test, hopefully in the next few months, and i have said that I will make the payments for the first year, and then he can take them over. Payments will be about £90 per month. I had agreed to this before we knew whether he would go to college or go out to work, and I still plan to do this for him. He'll cover insurance and fuel.

So what is fair?

Thanks.

Bumping

My 18 year old earns similarly and he pays £400 a month. We're in an area where a room in a shared house in not nice area costs £600 (and then he'd have food etc on top). We've suggested to him that he might aim to pay a third of his salary on essentials, save a third and spend a third.

You'll get posts saying it's cruel to charge your own children, but DS was more than happy to pay this and even agreed it was sensible.

What will his take home pay per month and is he sensible with money?

That would determine what I'd do. If he isn't likely to save, ask for a bit more than you need and save the extra for him each month to give back to him later on.

I have a 25 yo dss who earns around £24k and pays £250 pm.

We charge my adult DS £250 per month. I move £50 of that into a savings account for him (which he knows about). We should charge him more really (and he was used to paying a lot more when he lived away from home), but he's on a stupid 8 hour contract, so his monthly income isn't guaranteed.

A good opportunity to sit down and set out your actual budget - incoming and outgoing - and show him how much it is to live. Tell him how much income you have lost due to him becoming an adult and use that as your low baseline for how much he should contribute. Will your costs actually increase by dint of him living at home or have you priced in the electricity/ food etc anyway? Have you factored in council tax (you will lose single adult discount).

We have taken the view that rather than charge rent as such the young earner should save at least 50% of income in order to hasten their ability to move out! Saving in that way might be a factor in your deliberations.

If he was to move out he would have to rent a room in a shared house. Look up what that might look like in your area and perhaps discount a bit.

Duplicate post because I also posted this in chat, but:

Thanks for these replies. I agree that sitting down with him and going through the big bills, and probably even the smaller ones that he would never consider, is a good opportunity, regardless of the figure I decide on. Would love to see him take that on board and start some real saving, but we shall see!