How much do I charge my 20 yr old daughter to live at home?

[mumofthreex]

I would like to know what is the normal amount, and how much it costs to keep them, especially how much I should charge without me making profit. I am a working single mum and buy all her food and make her dinners, special vegetarian meats too.
Anyone who does this for their child and can give any kind of amount they take and breakdown of what it goes to.
This would really help us out as we're having trouble agreeing on what's an appropriate amount.

Thanks in advance

Our daughter is 24 and earns £3,000 more than her parents who pay rent £450 a month plus all the utilities, all meals and including landline internet costs.
I work 5 days a week, cook all meals, do all laundry.
Daughter goes on holiday, buys new car (ours is an old 'L' plated motor), new clothes & shoes when desired and comes and goes as she pleases without even making us a cuppa, and the thought of asking her to empty the dishwasher fills me with dread........in the current climate where costs have risen and given the way I feel we are being taken for a ride, I think it only right she contributes to the household standing charges....this fills me with dread!!!
She has stated to her friends that why should she move out to somewhere she has to pay for when she gets everything done for her at home and gets left alone.
She does not smoke or drink and is a modest type of girl.......I am in a quandary as I do not think she understands this situation.

I would look up LHA for your area for a single adult in shared accomadation and use that amount. That is how much she would get in housing benefit, and isn't taking into account how much she costs in utilities etc, but it is a number decided by house prices in your area.

"I am in a quandary as I do not think she understands this situation."

She understands it very well and is exploiting your good nature ... She has free access to the best hotel in town. Some baby birds need a swift kick in the rear to leave the nest. Give her a deadline (say three months from now) to either move out or pitch in financially. Force the issue by making life much more unpleasant ie. stop doing laundry, insist she cleans the house once a week, makes family meals, buys the groceries. Then find suitable flats in the newspaper and propose she finds friends to move in with.

LeeAnnLeeAnn - I would suggest you sit her down and just point out that you have paid for her for nearly a quarter of a century now and it's about time she returned the favour in some way.

Get out the bills, show them to her, work out what your monthly budget is and show her that. Include your payslips.

Then make a reasonable demand (a third of her salary is good IMHO). If she refuses, point out she can very well go out and find somewhere else to live. She'll sulk for about two days probably. Try not to let it phase you. You'll get through this.

I guess the other issue is why are children staying so long? I moved out to go to Uni and then came back and rented a flat in the same city. The reason I did this was I couldn't stomach the thought of going back home and into the 'child' role again. Not that my parents did anything wrong but the politics of the family do mean that you become dependent again and I didn't like that - I was used to my independence and I was dirt poor when I lived on my own. But it didn't really matter to me because it was my place you know?

Perhaps these kids need to hear about the good stuff of living independently. I know it's hard to afford to buy but even a flat share is better IMHO than being back at home.

"I guess the other issue is why are children staying so long?"

Like you I left home aged 17 to attend uni and wouldn't have moved back if dragged by wild horses!! Independent types, we are. My lazy brother, on the other hand, didn't leave until age 27 because, like the person above, my mother ran around him like an over-indulgent slave. She charged no rent 'so that he could save up for a house' (did he heck) and being infantilised didn't bother him in the slightest. Trouble is that when he did get his own place he was constantly in debt because he had no idea what anything cost.

I blame the parents...

What Riven said. And a share of the council tax, too.

Stop making her dinners. Share it out between you, alternate this.

Chores, too.

'SpottyMuldoon - it's the principle. As a parent I do not stop being responsible for my child's wellbeing just because they have reached working age, and I would never ever expect my child to contribute to household running costs in order to give me some/more disposable income. To save for their own future benefit is something quite different.'

That's nice that you can afford that. But if you're a working poor like this OP, you're no longer getting Child Benefit or Child Tax Credit for the adult child who is earning and cannot afford to cover the full cost of their food and extra utilities they use. She is a lone, working parent who has two other children to provide for.

It's not giving her extra disposable income, she cannot afford to pay the cost of housing another adult.

I don't see what's so hard to understand about that.

That's reality for a good many people, Riven. And I really don't see why it's cruel in any way. I mean, it's not like you can just magic up money.

As for the poster who's still doing all the cooking and laundry, well, you show people how you wish to be treated.

My 7-year-old with dyspraxia can load the laundry into the washing machine and turn it on.

The 4-year-old knows to put her dirty clothes in the washing bin.

They help with the cooking already. We tidy up the living room together in the evenings. Everyone helps as they can.

I don't see where teaching my children helplessness is any way doing them a favour.

I won't always be here to sort things out for them, so it's my job to teach them, age appropriately, how to manage for themselves.

Chores foster a sense of family, of all of us mucking in together as a unit, and gives them confidence to know they can live their lives independently, they don't need to rely on someone else as adults. This sense of confidence is, to me, a very important thing to give to my children.

Chores for pocket money teaches them about money. How to earn, the importance of earning, that in jobs you have to perform them or you lose them. And the value of having your own money to do as you please with, also the concept of saving up and delayed gratification.

These types of lessons are, to us, as important as anything they learn in school.

I agree that adult children should pay a reasonable amount to the general costs of running the household, if I were able to financially I would probably put half of it into an account for them for a later date.

I was at uni and had to give my Mother £15 a week, £5 for an electric card and £10 for food which she and my brother then ate, I also had to buy cat food for my cat which she fed to her dog I left home pretty quick.

Agree with everything expat says.

I have four DC there is no way I can do everything myself, we are a family unit we all help out.

When DP was living at home his Mother did everything for him, paid everything for him, he often said he didn't have a choice he was told not to touch her vacuum cleaner or iron. She paid his car tax/insurance etc too. It did him no favours as once he moved out I was not taking on her role and he had to start to do things for himself and I think it was a sharp learning curve to say the least.

I cannot believe adult males leave home not knowing how to iron a shirt or cook a simple meal.

I want to teach them lessons like this, too, sweetkitty, so they're not as easily taken advantage of. A lot of people I knew signed up for credit cards as students and went crazy.

No one had ever taught them very basic money skills and as a result they were easy prey for companies that charge usurious levels of interest.

Some got in some serious trouble with money before they were even 20 and learned some very harsh lessons.

I'm not saying mine won't make mistakes, but at least do what I can to instill confidence and sense into them.

I have already sat down with DD (not quite four) and explained how the bank and money works and how if we don't have enough, we don't buy what we want, and that we always, always buy what we need ahead of what we want.

And she is aware that things don't tidy themselves up and that we are very lucky to have all the nice things we do have and that we should look after them.

I think it's vital they learn all about money and later on about credit and how you buy a house. I think the first inkling I got into mortgages was when I applied for one . It's very easy to be oblivious as a child, unless your parents are very obviously very poor. It's not surprising kids grow up thinking money is just something you have, not something you earn.

One of my brothers went back home after uni, luckily he drove my parents nuts and vice versa and buggered off and got a job sharpish to get away! So there's definitely a place for being obnoxious if you are a put upon parent.

Or just learn about credit without even the house bit.

Loans, credit cards, car financing, etc.

Mine earn pocket money doing chores. They don't them, they don't get the money.

With the money, they can spend it or save it for something bigger. And they give the money to the till operator and take away teh change and decide what to do with it.

Same with birthday money.

VERY valuable lessons, IMO - about earning, jobs and their worth, saving and delayed gratification, budgeting, etc.

I see that as the opposite of cruel. Enabling and learned helplessness are increasingly disadvantageous in the world today.

23% of her wages

I don't buy not having everyone muck in and do chores because 'this is their home.'

Well, in every home I've lived in, unless you can pay someone, someone has to do the washing up, laundry, etc. or it doesn't get done.

This is my home, but I still have to take the bin out or no one collects the rubbish.

when I had my first job as a trainee I was forced to give my parents a third of my income. I found it deeply unfair as they also kept the child benefit and I had to clean the house top to bottom once a week (my other siblings had to do that too).
my sister was at uni with a part time job and didnt have to pay my parents and* received pocketmoney and my younger siblings still were at school.
I would say, charge her a third of what a room would cost to rent in real live and let her do some chores but not excessively. and treat all children the same!

When I was about 20 (and living back at home for a year while I did my Uni sandwich year in my home town) I gave my parents £200 out of my wages, cooked a couple of times a week, did one food shop a month and I was responsible for my own washing and ironing.

Obviously, when it was my turn to do the food shop, we got the bare essentials and no treats

Point was, I'd been blardy lazy and contributed nothing when I first came back home. My parents point was what expat said - everyone has to do something or else nothing will get done. It wasn't about giving me a taste of real life, it was about pulling together and everybody contributing.

Ps, sorry if that point has already been made. I might have skipped a bit in the middle

I've already said to my 8yr old, and first did years ago, that this is our home, and as such we both have to take responsibility for it.
She is expected to help with the housework, and she does. She can hoover, dust, peg out/bring in washing. Load the machine and switch it on, cook/assemble a few simple meals etc.

I expect her to do more and more as she gets older, eventually doing half.

As soon as she is earning, she will be expected to pay her share too.

If I'm in a position to save it for her, I may well do, depending on her attitude to money.

Exactly, muggle. We all live here as a family. This is real life, not a preparation for it. So they never get the idea, either, that after a certain point in time 'life begins'.

expat - I am one of those students you talk about except in my case I was very poor growing up, then went to uni, was even poorer, then I got a job and a credit card, one credit card turned into 4 then a loan very quickly I was seriously in debt. has taken me years to get myself out of it. I don't want my DC to go through what I did.

I also would not be a unpaid skivvy to grown up children, I see this with my SIL, she goes to work FT comes home and cooks and cleans after my 16yo neice who may have just only gotten out of bed when she arrives HOME from work. She leaves her a sandwich in the fridge as neice is too lazy to make herself anything to eat. Then of course SIL has to pay for everything, clothes/make up/nights out/hair extensions the lot. Neice left school at 15 and surprisingly cannot get a job. But why would she want to? What life lessons has she been taught?

I would definitely charge her. Doesn't really matter what you call it, she needs to pay.

I wasn't charged while doing school/college (through which I had weekend/evening jobs), but I paid during my gap year. I never lived at home after that. The amount I paid depended on my wage (some full time, some part time and a couple of months on the dole).

I also paid my own way entirely through uni. My parents couldn't afford for me not to.

I've often pondered what I will do if/when I have teenage/adult children at home. Part of me feels 'well, it did me no harm' but the other part wants to make their (potential) lives easier/more pleasant than mine was. I hope to be in a position not to need a contribution from them, so I suppose the idea of saving it up for a deposit is a possibility.