how much financial support do/would you give a lazy 17yo?

[Strenua]

Dd has made very little effort to obtain part time work despite literally all of her friends having something. Foolishly I started giving her £80 every 4 weeks when she started 6th form college, dependent on her pulling her weight. This was reduced to £40 once the lack of effort in college or out of it became apparent, and this is carrying on as its £8.50 a week for a bus pass and she Is eligible for £10 EMA but rarely seems to get it grrrr

This week she's not got enough for bud fare so I've told her she shall get £10 a week in her hand and no more from next week.

She has 3.5 days a week with nothing to do,never ever does any college work..

Bearing in mind she does NOTHING at home, is generally unpleasant and if in the house at all, asleep or causing a riot, AIBU to stop funding her life. I feel I am but am reknowned for being too soft!!!

If she has 3.5 days a week to do nothing does that include the weekend? If it doesnt then that's 5.5 days a week to do nothing!! I think the less we do, the less we want to do, and then the less we're able to do.

Have you been watching 'working girls'? It's a pretty big wake up call to what can happen if we let our teenagers rely on us for money.

If she's a good kid, helps around the house, and has a little saturday job... and you can afford it, I see no harm in topping up her money and I intend to do this when mine reach this stage.

However, there's nothing in this world that comes for free and the quicker she realises this the better.

I'd go down to the bus stop and buy here a weekly ticket, pack her some sandwiches and tell her if she wants any more money than that she'll have to earn it!

Thank you thank you thank you!!!! I needed that and its exactly what will now happen! Pretty sure I can order bus pass monthly online......

The 3.5 includes weekends....but she goes in late almost daily and finishes early on a Monday too...not a hard life !!

I'd love to treat her, top up her money IF I felt she deserved it or had earnt it....but no.

Starting today!

We have one of these - a DS in our case. He has made little effort to get a part time job, even though I used to go round our local town and give him pointers of which shops were looking for staff. I've stopped bothering, since he never followed it up.

He currently gets £25 a month, which includes £18 for his phone contract - not sure how I got suckered into that.

I've told him that he gets nothing from us after his AS levels this summer, which will severely curtail his holiday plans.

My parents pay dds phone....and her driving lessons...Christmas and birthday presents.

I'm definitely stopping funds. We live in a holiday town fgs, there are loads of jobs this time of year......argh!!

Yay!! Good for you

She'll thank you for it when she's running a hedge fund!

What is this business about paying for teenagers phones? We never had phones when we were kids, we had to walk to our friend's houses to find out if they were able to see us. Or wait until 8pm when calls to other landlines were free.

OK, it's unrealistic now a days for kids to not have a phone, and it is a good safety measure. But it seems they think it's a god given right that they will have a phone supplied... even if they contribute naff all to their own existence

Driving lessons and extra money to buy xmas presents is fair enough, but again, it's a privalege not a right

This sounds just like my eldest dd at her age. But she was only in college 3.5 days a week and so had 3.5 days of doing nothing, and she did NOTHING. Even during the 4 months she had off between her GCSE's and college she did nothing. It was so frustrating. I gave her money to get the bus up to town to look for work and she would spend it on something else.

I bought her everything for her prom, but said I would only pay for her to get her hair done professionaly if she applied for some p/t work, and I said she only had to apply. She even refused to do that. It was very annoying.

She's 21 now and has been working 31 hrs a week since the month after she left college but refuses to ask for more hrs even though she is always skint. I won't even lend her money anymore. Plus she has to buy her own food and do her own laundry. She did move out for a few months but moved back in as she found the rent took up too much of her wages but still refused to get more hours. I still find her lack of effort really hard to accept. I have to detach as much as possible and it's easier now that she can't ask to borrow money.

All I would say is definitely give her as little as possible. Remember she has no money and can't do the things her friends with cash do because she has chosen not to work. If you're paying for her phone I wouldn't do that either personally. I've learnt to be harsh, can you tell? :)

Isn't it odd. There seem to be quite a few stories like this. When i was a teenager I couldn't wait to get a job. I started a saturday job at 14 and if anything my parents would have to limit the hours I took so that i could fit my school work in!

I've always been of the mind that as long as you're not running yourself in to the ground, why would you prefer to lay in bed or on the sofa when you could be earning cash?!

I will really struggle if my DD or DSD take the lazy route. I suppose not giving them money is one way to make them pull their weight but as headinhands says, even though she doesnt give DD any money, she'd still rather be skint than work. I hope she doesnt get any benefits?

I don't have teenagers but know plenty of young adults that have been parent funded to the point that they failed to stand on their own two feet for years. If it's easy to get everything you want without trying you don't develop a work ethic & you have unreasonable expectations that the relative luxury that you have been brought up in should just magically appear. It can cause disappointment & frustration.

Your parental instincts are spot on. If I were you I'd also use the mobile contract and driving lessons as leverage to get her to pull her weight/ get a job.

Talk to your parents if they want to give your dd generous gifts that's great but not if it undermines your parenting.. Will they support you suggesting to dd to delay the start of her driving lessons until she has a Saturday job? What's going to happen when she wants a car?

DS1 does not have a job at the moment because he is focusing on his Higher exams. However, he worked October to January as a Christmas temp in the local city, and saved half his money to tide him over for this period - he is VERY focused.

We give him sixty pounds a month to cover all his expenses, which includes phone and all clothes apart from school uniform.

He also picks up the odd babysitting job in the village.

He intends to get a job once the exams are over for the summer.

We are very clear that if he cannot afford to do it, he doesn't do it. We also point out that neither of his parents learned to drive until we were in our late 20s.

That's an interesting point about getting them used to relative luxury.

My DSD often asks why her dad gets to buy expensive clothes and she has to get cheaper ones.. it's not like he's in versace and she's in primark but I think that where kids grow so quickly it's daft to spend a lot on clothes and also I don't think they should jsut have expensive clothes bought for them when they havent earned them. she alos gets annoyed that i have expensive make up and she has Rimmell... she's 12!

When they first move out it's unlikely they'll be able to afford to continue with the same standard of living if you spoil them when theyre kids and then where does it end? Should you give a 23 year old pocket money so they can keep buying the clothes and make up they have come to expect? Or do you just stop dead and cut them off? That would seem unfair.

I think buying them the things they need plus treats and rewards for good behaviour (with age appropriate expectations) is the way forward.

we all know how much better it feels to own something you have actually bought for yourself.

DS gets the full £30 per week EMA and has subsidised bus travel. I pay £45 for a 16 week bus pass for him so the EMA is his to do what he wants with (if he misses a lecture he gats no EMA but that's his look out).
I don't give him any extras for lunches - I do occasionally buy him clothes (but not ALL his clothes) I pay his mobile contract and he gives me £5 a week towards it - he had a part time job in a bar but the hours were so erratic (sometimes he would turn up and they'd say 'Oh we don't need you tonight') so he packed that in. he is supposed to be looking for another job but can't find one at the moment .

Big shake up when he finishes college this summer (he's decided not to go to Uni) - in for a shock if he thinks he can sit on his backside after that!

Drizzela - No, she lives with us and does pay 'rent' out of her wages and doesn't get any benefits. When she realised her hours didn't fund her rent AND living expenses when she lived out for those 3 months she did suggest she might try claiming some benefits but I pointed out that it was her choice to work 31 hrs and not 40 which is something the DSS would have pointed out, I hope.

However she now takes a very dim view of any of her friends that have never worked since leaving school without sufficient mental/physical health grounds etc as she can see how much tax she is paying. There is light!

Libra - Fair do's. When dd2 was doing a levels I paid her mob contract and gave her a little money. She did well enough to get into the Uni of her choice and now does have a little p/t job and a small bursary along with the student loans etc but we still pay for her mob, her contact lenses and buy her a bus pass for the city she's in. It's easier to support them when they have some sort of drive in one way or another.

headinhands I don't think they do question how many hours people work, as long as it's over the 16 hours then they are considered employed and if on a low salary they get help.. We won't tell your DD that though hey ;)

Mine is 18 and gets the full EMA. I don't fund him anything, bar the occasional item of clothing or shoes. £30 a week is plenty for his needs, including phone contract and beer money. He's got a job interview next week, and worked over Christmas.

my dd has a job thank goodness but i pay for her phone. however she has run up huge bills so i make her pay me for the difference. I pay £10. she pays the rest.

they all seem to have such a sense of entitlement. I get fed up as all her plans leave myself and my hubby skint with no thought to how we may like to go out etc etc.