Just wondering how much would you charge your 18 year old for rent

[mumofoneadult]

So my dad is 18 I told her she should be paying 300 per month. She did for two months and then said it was too high and can she reduce to 200 I agreed and said but she needs to do some cleaning round the house.

Dd is very lazy and doesn’t think she should have to hoover or clean the bathroom or any cleaning as I’m the mum. So for the last month she paid 200 and did not help atall. The only thing she does is wash her dishes after she cooks, but never wipes the sides or the kitchen sink.

I have told her she will need to pay the 300 as she won’t help, she point blank refuses.

her bedroom is an absolute tip and I’m always telling her to clean it but now she says as she pauses rent she can have her room joe she likes )it has always been a mess even before she paid anything).

so while refusing to pay the amount I set as it’s extortionate, she has also booked to get a tattoo that cost 500.

I just feel like she is being unreasonable but she thinks I am.

I still pay for all her toiletries and food and buy items of food for her that I don’t eat, I don’t think she has any idea how those things mount up.

so just wondering what others dcs of this age pay and what is reasonable.

I think I am also more bothered about her attitude of not doing any house work and expecting me to do it all and then refusing to pay what I said. Even if she didn’t pay any rent but was helpful and didnt cause me to do extra cleaning I would be happier.

20% of take home pay. She pays for her own toiletries, make up, clothes, phone contract, anything just for her.
Write down & show her all the shared house bills - so not including things like your own phone contract, car insurance etc. Then show her what her "share" would be.

This is what I did with my dd when she had a bit of a moan about paying keep & it worked. She actually thanked us for teaching her to budget when she moved out & was able to manage her own bills.

@Slightlyheadyshe is on 10.50 per hour and we get on well as long as I don’t ask her to do anything around the house. If I never ask her to clean her room or clean up after herself we would get on great.

I think as she is here and uses the bathrooms the day and walks through the house every day she should be contributing to cleaning but she doesn’t agree

I charged dd £50 per week. She then paid for her own phone, car running costs and although I provided meals she often used to buy extra bits for herself.

She had to keep the main bathroom clean (dh and I only ever use the en suite, clean the kitchen after she had used it and take her turn in doing the dishes. Plus hoover her bedroom weekly.

What was she doing between 16 and 18? Did she have any obvious plans?

I still think she is very young to be coping with all this at once. I get that it’s upsetting to see her spending money on herself, especially something as simultaneously high cost and (sorry) negative as a tattoo. But I do think you are giving quite mixed messages to her with regard to finances and looking after herself.

Id stop and reset. I’d say first of all that this feels messy and you want to make a fresh start with her. Stop paying for her toiletries and her phone, if she can pay for a tattoo she can start taking that on. Put all your energies into supporting her to find more work - nothing is going to improve her sense of purpose and achievement more than that. Then keep up low level nagging about the help and cleaning - including that regular skip-out of her room to prevent actual vermin taking hold. Once she’s working and at least doing something on the household front, I would start on the rent.

There are 1 billion people from my Indian culture who never charge rent, and yet we manage to excel in many fields and live in the real world, so I will take my chances. DS is 21, been offered a £50 k per year job on graduating, so I think he's fine without mummy and daddy.

@Comefromaway

my dd washes her dishes after she cooks, but leaves crumbs on the side and if I just cleaned the job leaves it messy etc.

yesterday I made a roast dinner for us and said she needs to wash up as I cooked, she responded by saying she won’t eat dinner with me next time I make it as she doesn’t want to wash up.

If she’s working, say 30 hrs pw, that’s £1260pm, £300 is perfectly acceptable.
Time to sit down and explain she wouldn’t be able to live anywhere else for £300pm, the chores are mandatory and tbh she should have grown up doing chores.

@PermanentTemporary

she was in 6th form but left in May so nearly a year and in that time has had a Saturday job for the whole time - worked for a short period and left and has recently started another job.

she is waiting to get into a certain sector and it takes a long time to get into but it is in progress.

I have been telling her for years she needs to keep her room clean and help round the house so it’s not a new thing.

I think the new thing is I feel less acceptable of it now as she is 18, will be 19 in a few months and I feel like I shouldn’t have to clean up after her now.

We did start from a very young age with both dd and ds. From primary school age they always had to clear their own plates and put them into the dishwasher. Then we moved house in 2020 and when lockdown happened we were without h a dishwasher so family washing up was a continuation of that. Plus she went to a specialist college age 16 and lived with a host family so had clear expectations there. When she returned home age 18/19 it wasn't a big change.

She knew her rent at the host family was £130 per week (will be more now) and both she and ds knew that we would support them whilst in full time education but once they left education they had to contribute to the household.

Tbh her attitude sounds appalling, why has it taken you 18yrs to address it!?

It’s time to get tough now. You’ve tried and tried with the softly softly approach and it hasn’t worked. I could sense this from your first post. The lack of respect to you and the piss taking will only carry on until you give her an ultimatum.

As a rule of thumb think it depends on how much they earn and also think parents not needing the money is irrelevant

But she is on low pay looking at the £10.50 per hour, I charge my DS £200 per month and he is earning 40k, I’m assuming your DD if FT so on around 22k? DS knew we didn’t need the money at all but I sat him down and showed him just how much bills are and that he needed to make a contribution. You are in an unenviable position as do need the money. Show her just how much bills are. I would just stop worrying about her room and shut the door and concentrate on communal areas being kept clean.

@Slightlyheady

when I ask her to do chores she sometimes says yes I’ll do it and never does or says things like I’m relaxing!

but when I have a proper chat and tell her she should clean the bathroom regularly and run the Hoover over the house once a week and clean the kitchen maybe once per week she just acts like I’m being unreasonable.

she is on a 16 hour contract in her new job so the amount of hours she works can change but she works 3-4 days there and also has a Saturday job.

she had good exam results and is waiting to get into a job which is a long process to get into, so she will have career

I’ve got an 18 year old who is coming to the end of her college course. I’ve told her she needs to get full time employment and she’ll then pay rent. I think £300 is very reasonable

@HortiGalyes i would expect she would be getting something around that as she works 3-5 days per week

I have already explained this and her answer is I’m her mum so she can live her much cheaper than anywhere else (which I agree with) and that’s why I’m charging her 300 and not say 800 which you would easily pay to rent a room somewhere

My DS pays £180 which I am happy with. This includes all but toiletries. I cook, clean and do all his laundry. He changes his bed and his room and his bathroom is always tidy. I clean as I have much higher standards than him. I see this as a me problem rather than a him problem. He is a saver and realises that to buy a property as a single person he will need at least a 50% deposit. If he was blowing £500 on a tattoo I would most likely think differently.

It does sound as if you are butting heads, as if you both jump to absolute statements and then won’t back down. I’d disagree that you need to ‘get tough’, I’d say you need to assume she is fully capable and appreciate what she does right now, plus being a constant undertow of push/nudge to do more- she’s cooking for you, she has a career plan having got good exam results, she is working 5 days a week… tbh an awful lot is going right, don’t you think?

Id be more inclined to say something like ‘right having done that roast I’m off for a sit down, it’s fantastic to have you at home to clean up! Thanks love, make me a brew as well while you’re at it,’ and joke her out of it if she gets huffy. Just assume she will do the right thing, lighten the mood a bit.

Not sure about this ‘waiting’ to progress her career though, what’s the next step there?

@Comefromaway

i have made it very clear that at 18 she would need to pay rent. But as she only had a Saturday job for most of that time she didn’t. I also made it clear that she needed another job so she could afford to live and also to pay rent.

I told her when she wasn’t working that looking for a job should be her job as in if I didn’t have a job I would spend 7 hours a day looking and I would get one quickly.

now she has a job she doesn’t see why she should pay extortionate rent

@Comefromaway

i sent the last message too soon.

I have always tried to make her do chores and she won’t. So when she was 16 I stopped washing her clothes as I would wash them and she would leave them on her floor or bed and then sleep in the bed with the clothes there.

she has helped with washing the dishes that’s about the only thing she does but she washes them so badly I have to rewash them or make her wash them again.

so it’s not that I haven’t been trying for years I have, but she won’t do it

@Statsquestion1

it hasn’t taken 18 years to address it, I constantly tell her what she needs to do and she just won’t.

and I’m not sure how I can force her. At this point I’m actually thinking of telling her she needs to leave, and I have told her this before as in if you can’t help with chores you need to leave and she’s like I can’t I have no where to go.

@topcat2026

when you say ultimatum do you mean with chores or rent? Or both?

as tbh I think I am more bothered that I am still cleaning up after her and my home would be much cleaner if I lived alone. But I know she won’t do what I’m saying so I think in my head I have thought well even if she agrees to chores she won’t do them so if she is atleast paying her way it’s better than nothing. But she is also refusing to do that.