How much do people spend on teenage boys?

[HaroldsYoungerSister]

My dh has 3 teenage boys from his first marriage and we are trying to work out a budget for them to live with us (long story). I worked out a cost of around £1,000 per month (less £200 child benefit) extra but I'm struggling for reassurance as all my friends have young kids and articles around the web give wildly differing estimates.

All 3 (boys aged 15, 14, 13) do little other than go to school, doss around the house and go to Scouts. We earn about £35k gross between us so need neither skimp nor do everything they'd want. I thought per month extra £450 for food, £180 for clothes and equipment, £40 for phones (they rarely use the ones they've got except for free games), £100 for birthdays, Xmas presents, pocket money, £50 extra electricity/gas, £80 Scouts, £100 (inc school) trips out. We wouldn't have childcare, school transport and holiday costs.

Please will someone give me the benefit of their experience?

ps I thought this better here than in the money section, but stand to be corrected

They might eat like horses (my teenager does anyway) so factor in extra food. And school trips.

I've got one dd age 13. We're both working so don't need to be too stingy, but equally we live in the country in a low wage area so expectations not too high

Looking at your list:
£450 for food - £150 per dc looks pretty generous, but I've got a skinny girl not a growing 6 footer!
£180 for clothes - DD has £15 p/m clothes allowance plus I buy uniform/shoes/winter coat which must be another £15-20 per month if you tot it up over the year
£40 for phones - I would have though a tenner a month contract would be ample for a teen - dd doesn't really do phones though
£100 for birthdays/pocket money etc - actually probably about right, dd gets £10 pcm pocket money, but birthday presents, birthday trip, end of school holiday day out etc add up
£50 extra electricity gas - sounds quite a lot, you might want to ration shower length!
£180 for scouts & school trips - I think we spend a bit more than £60/month on activities for dd tbh, but it wouldn't be a bit deal to have to cut it back to that, would certainly allow a couple of extracurriculars. School trips here are very cheap (tenner for a trip to the cinema) apart from the big overseas ones that are definitely a 'once in your school career' thing.

I think this is a good place for your question, but you might want to edit your title?

BTW round here a 15 year old would most likely have a weekend/summer job, but we are in a tourist area so maybe more options than most places.

I have 2 teenage boys age 15 and 14. Our grocery bill for the 4 of us plus the cat is about £600 pm. we rarely do takeaway and all take pack lunch - we have a terrible organic fruit habit though so it would be very doable on a bit less.

We would be a lot less than £180 (though for two that'd be £120) a month in clothes I think but hard to tell cos it tends to come in cycles - i.e. Summer stuff for holidays, school uniform and shoes, winter stuff.

Phone amount seems fair.

Scouts I think is an overestimate imo - think I am about £10 a month each plus camps.

Extra for gas and electricity I would say is too high, but you will probably need unlimited wifi if you don't already and maybe Netfix or something.

Our gross income is higher (about 50k) than yours, but we run two cars and have a £4k holiday minimum out of that and also have a mortgage etc and we put money away etc too so I think it really depends on what other outgoings you have as you can cut your cloth etc.

Thank you all, you've been a big help

My 15yo boy rarely leaves his room except for school & occasionally air cadets (driving there & back costs £9/night). He eats less than I do (not right, I know!). His big thing is trainers, all shoes seem to wear out quickly. His train pass is about £300/yr.

I haven't added it up precisely, but aside from housing costs I imagine DS costs £250-£300/month (with all the expensive travel).

Obviously asking what people spend, is a bit of a 'how long is a piece of string' question - you can spend a fortune if you choose to, but I'm presuming you are asking as you are worried about your budget, so, to follow your thoughts:

When my (18yr old) ds left for university, my food bill went down around about £15 per week, so multiplied by 3 boys and multiplied by 4.5 weeks per month that's closer to £200 than the £450 you predict. Yes, you can get £££ worth of cakes and biscuits which they will hoover up, but there's ways of filling them up much cheaper than that.

I'm not sure what you are planning to spend £180 (£60 per ds) a month on , on clothes and equipment. Yes, replacing shoes is expensive when they have a growth spurt (although things like their walking boots and wet shoes can be handed down), but most months you don't need to go out and shop for new clothes. I don't spend anything like that on my 3 dc.

Not sure what you mean by equipment as you say they don't do much. Mine get big things - like a decent rucksack for Scout camp - for birthdays / Christmas

Phones - with so much wiFi readily available, my dc just use that. They have PAYG phones (so just the initial purchase, £30 or so) and they fund any top ups after that. They use WhatsApp mainly, or facebook Messenger so it doesn't use up any of their texts, so £20 credit lasts them about 18months - 2 years.

Pocket money - that's a whole other question which produces a wide variety of answers, but mine get £1per month, per yr of age, so my 16 yr old gets £16per month from us, and goes out to work to earn her big money.

Your electricity probably will go up, but I'd have thought your heating wouldn't change much. Difficult to guess that one.

Scouts - my Scout pays £10 per month for 11 months of year and my Explorer pays £2 per week, so for 3 of them it should only be £30ish a month. Admitedly it will start to add up as they go on camp, so your estimate might be close across the year, if they go on a lot of camps. If they don't (or the group lets them fundraise?) then you've over estimated there.

I doubt you'll spend anything like that on trips out (unless you are budgeting for a ski trip or something). Secondary schools don't do that many trips you need to pay for, and, 'as a family' teenagers don't tend to "do" trips with their parents

So, the good news is, IMO, it won't cost as much as you think in money, we won't go into stress levels.

Obviously you need the reassurance that you can afford to pay all the bills with three more in the house. We are 2 adults and one teenager and it costs £15 a week to feed each of us, money is fairly tight for us so that's what it has to be and we get by. We spend a max of £50 on DD for her birthday and she only asks for clothes if she actually needs them. She is happy but knows we have to be careful. Only one of us has a mobile phone contract and that's £7 odd with Carphone Warehouse. We are careful with some things so we can have treats, ie go out for the odd meal, pay for DD to do music lessons and clubs (for her this is about £50 a month but she's had problems in the past so we think it's important for her to do these things).

What I'm saying is that if you have to you can live within whatever budget you have to have to - my brother-in-law earns £16000 pa (which obviously gets topped up with government support) but he has three happy well grounded kids, ie they don't always needs to have lots of money spent on them to be happy.