Son demanding expensive items which I can't afford

[Uncomfortableinmyownhome]

How is best to manage these situations? I'm a low earner (school support staff) and my husband is currently off work sick so money is very tight. We can pay all of the bills , food etc and do have some left over for days out / to fix the car etc but we aren't flush with cash and it's important we save some for emergencies.
We live in an area where my 13 year old sons school mates families all have more money than us, they have 2 working parents on good wages.
They get spoilt rotten with all the new consoles, games , subscriptions, expensive clothes and trainers and very expensive bikes bought for them throughout the year , not just birthdays and Xmas. I know this as we are all friends.
My son does get everything he requests, but has to wait until Xmas for a console for example whereas they just get bought one anytime. I buy his clothes off vinted whereas they get taken to jd sports and get £500 spent on them. I have to save up for larger priced items so he may have to wait a while but I always try to best to make sure he has the same or similar to them.
His current obsession is a new bike. Him and his friends go out biking every day. He has a £500 bike which I fully expected to last him until adulthood . That was a really expensive purchase for us. He'd had it for 18 months.
According to him, his friends have a new bike every 6 months and one of them is was £2000 and one was £4000. Ive seen these new bikes as their parents have out photos on social media. I think spending that amount is absolutely ridiculous and I wouldn't be spending that even if I was a millionaire.(up to them what they want to do with their money)
He's telling me they are laughing at him because his bike is rubbish. Which is funny seeing as we bought it off one of them and they were telling us how great it was (it's retail price was £1000 and we paid £500 for it) He is now begging me for a new one which is £1000 . I cannot afford this , not even for Xmas.
He knows our financial pressure but can't seem to accept it. He keeps pushing and pushing and causing arguments about it. I've told him we would have to go without food for me to save up for that for him. What does he expect me to do? I only warn just over £1000 a month and inl work full time!! We have another child aswell so not fair to just be spending that on one of them.
I don't know if this matters at all but he does have adhd with asd traits and he desperately tries to fit in. He also is very impulsive, especially with wanting to buy things and he doesn't seem to be able to accept no is no . He thinks if he asks me about it over and over again I will eventually give in and say yes.
He is making me feel like shit regarding our financial situation. We are also in the process of separating, and when that is sorted money will be even tighter, I will have to claim universal credit to top up my wage

Sounds like you’ve trained him he will get it eventually, if he keeps asking.

tell him, no problem, he can have the bike. You will donate his Christmas money to the cause of her likes, but he has to save or find a way to earn the rest because it’s out of the budget. He won’t be able to, but he might try, and learn something. Maybe the value of money?

I’m looking at this from an ADHD/ASD perspective. I have ASD (and probable ADHD) and I feel like he could do with a different dopamine hit/focus. Could you ask him to do a list of what upgrades a new bike would give? Ask him what he wants out of a new bike and offer to help him find parts to do up his current bike. I’m a cyclist and know there are any amount of upgrades/additions you can add to a bike. Try to gently push him into a new hyper focus. He can earn the money for the upgrades by washing cars/mowing lawns/walking dogs/paper round. He will have to figure it out.

Err this. I wouldn’t get sucked into endless debates about it. You don’t have the money and won’t do anytime soon. He’s got a £1,000 bike so lm sure he will cope. If he wants a new bike he needs to work out how he will do that rather than you. Sell old bike, birthday money, paper round etc

I can imagine how much this hurts OP. He has a fantastic bike! To put this into context, I earn just over £100k. I took my 14yo DS out bike shopping at a local second-hand place and he chose a battered old mountain bike for £80, which he adores and is out on all the time. No way would I spend thousands on a leisure bike for a child that age. If he wants a flashy thief magnet then he can save up for one when he's old enough to have his own job.

I don’t normally weigh in on this stuff, but maybe put aside the fact you can’t afford it. His requests are totally unreasonable, which you seem to understand, but that’s become muddied by your guilt over your finances.

Just tell him that it’s ridiculous to spend that much and leave it at that.

Is he old enough to get a weekend job?

I was going to say similar - son goes to private school, lots to very wealthy friends with pools, tennis courts, flash cars (we live in a normal semi detached) and there is non of this with my sons friends. No one is worried about price/labels/keeping up with ‘the jones’. He has a good group of friends from a variety of backgrounds and if any of the kids were mean to any of the other group for any reason non of us would tolerate it.

If he has asd you have to be more specific that 'we can't afford it'.

People say that all the time but everyone has a different idea of what that means!

Show him your monthly incomings and monthly outgoings.

Work out how much the bike costs in number of weeks worth of food he eats.

Show him how much his electricity use costs.

If you use a car to drive him about show how all the car costs add up.

Both my kids have Autism......rather than a flat no you might be better off suggesting ways he can obtain one by having money for birthday and Christmas and putting that away. If he gets gifts from family etc too it might soon add up.

To me tho the bike isn't the issue, his 'friends' sound like arseholes and have probably picked up on the fact he's vulnerable. I wouldn't be encouraging these friendships at all.

This is good advice

you do a huge amount for him already (probably out of guilt) and he sounds ungrateful and spoiled

You have explained the facts. I would try and alternative perspective also, sustainability.

You are being financially responsible and sustainability responsible. And that the answer is sometimes no.

Keep to your budget, give him a say in how the budget for his share is and then do not feel guilty. He will learn more as he matures and will respect it later. Unfortunately teens can have a selfish outlook.

Just keep saying no, i wouldn’t even answer him if he keeps asking. If he’s always got what he wants eventually that’s why he keeps on, but he’s going to soon learn it won’t work as you can’t afford it. I earn decent money, but I absolutely don’t buy my kids everything they ask for. As all that ends up with is spoiled kids. I’d just explain every household is different with income, and yours is a lower income so not amount of asking will change anything. He is just going to have to suck it up until he can earn money

Well, he can demand away - if you don't have the money, then he can't have these things. And even if you had the money he should not be given stuff on a plate. It teaches him that he can have anything he wants, and when he gets out into the real world he will be in for a big disappointment.

Just say - if we had money to spare then you could have X, but we haven't so you can't. That's what my now adult children heard from us. And, even when we had the money, we would set limits and engage them in prioritising and thinking seriously about how money should be spent.

It is amazing how all children tell their parents that their friends get bought XYZ - it can't be true, if you think about it!

I'm glad I found this. My son needed a new bike before the holidays, his had gotten unsafe and the repairs were adding up. I was going to let him buy a used one for 300, but he found his "dream" bike new for 600. I gave in and said it'd be for Xmas. He rode it 4 times and a key part malfunctioned so its in the shop for 2 wks. He got heavy into mtn biking and all of his friends followed. They l had pretty new bikes already, some less than a yr old. They saw he got a new bike and literally ALL (6 kids) their parents rushed out and got them full suspension bikes in the 3 to 5k range, not exaggerating. He's recently had some significant mental health issues and now on top of this suddenly his new "dream" bike is the poor kids bike. I'm struggling a LOT with this, I don't know what to do. I pointed out that I was in my 40s when I spent 600 on a bike 4 yrs ago and that's only because I have severe arthritis in my neck and needed something smoother. Everything else online that I've found has people saying spend the money, it keeps them outdoors, is safer etc. But I just can't fathom spending thousands on a bike for a 13 yr old. And I'm already out 600 on a bike sitting in the shop. I can't win.