Would you take housekeeping off teen on a low paid apprentiship ?

[Shinyshoes2]

My son has a face to face interview tomorrow with a fairly high chance of starting on a full time apprentiship ... He'll be on roughly £100. A week

He's 17 years old
..
Would you take housekeeping from him ?
I'm unsure as its very low paid but at the same time I want him contributing towards the house as a young man he needs to start learning about contributing to the household somehow . At the moment he takes his sister in the morning and picks her up from school.
Obviously if he's doing 40 hours a week he can't do this
Should I just leave it for a year ? ( the apprentiship is 12 months )
We get absolutely no financial help with him whatsoever

No, I wouldn't.

Taking money from a child? At 17, and doing an apprenticeship, he is a young adult embarking on working life. Should mummy phone in sick for him when he has a tummy ache? Jeez....

Well put stickaflake

Apart from obviously providing a home and food and clothes etc for him, were you giving him any money?

If it was me, I'd stop their allowance/pocket money but not take anything initially if I didn't need the money. If I did need the money then I'd take £10-20 a week and leave him the rest but he'd have to pay his way as regards his clothes, haircuts etc.

Or, I may take a token amount and save it for him if I didn't need it myself to put food on the table.

I don't allow myself £100 a week to spend on whatever I want, but then I am not a teenager with an important social life and a need to be wearing the right clothes etc ;)

I wonder if any of the "take £50 a week" brigade can remember what it was like to be a teenager! My first job I was earning £200 a month and I gave my mum £60 a month - but she needed it as my dad wasn't working after an op on his spine and she'd lost my child benefit etc too. I was £20 a month for my buspass and got a subsidised lunch at work or could take my own from home and I felt rich.......but we are talking about the early 1980s.

I got my first p/t job at 14 and at that age my pocket money stopped, as I got £20 a week for a Saturday job At 18 i began working full time in a gap year before uni and earned £120 a week. I gave my mum £30 a week without having to be asked. Once you start working, you contribute to the family if you are still living in the family home. That was how I was raised and it is how I'll raise my children.

Tbh whoever suggested taking £50 a week from £100 wages is taking the piss. ( I'm hoping anyway.) Why would you do that, except to breed resentment, and considering the other £50.00 would have to cover travel expenses/ haircuts/ toiletries/ phone etc he would be left with literally nothing to enjoy. I somehow doubt that will encourage a 17 year old to stick at a poorly paid apprenticeship.....Especially as you would not be £50.00 a week better off if he were to move out.

A far more reasonable approach would be to allow him to become self-funding, ( e.g. he now pays for phone, toiletries, food out etc) himself, with you providing basic/ family mealtime food and shelter, and an agreement he will pay a reasonable amount of board, (NOT a third ffs,) once he has progressed from the apprenticeship to a full-time job.

To end taking a third/ 50% of such low wages just makes you look petty, greedy and grasping.

As a side note I also really don't understand the mentality of "secretly," saving for your child. Surely it would be far more sensible and encourage a much more responsible attitude to encourage the ds in question to open a savings account for himself. Seeing his savings build will encourage a stronger work ethic than giving mum money which he thinks she's spending on herself and doen't realise is being saved.

Also completely agree with usual. So what if he blows his wages a couple oftimes at 17 ? when else can you lol