Ok, sure it’s been done before, but can’t find anything!

17 year old, 3 months off college, full time job. All the usual luxuries (sky tv, unlimited mobile, unlimited internet etc)

Part time job for the last 8 months – about £80 p/w on average.

Gets offered 40 hours a week for the summer, so we suggest a ‘contribution’ while she has full time hours should be made…

Didn’t go down well!

Do we pursue this? Seemed the norm when I was that age (and younger!)

Over to you, STW!

Seems totally normal to me. Just don’t go mad, 15-20% of take-home should be reasonable.

Charge it, save it, give it back when they want to buy their own place.

I’m 26. When if got my first job at 17 I was paying £20 per week rent to the folks.
Seemed more than fair to me at the time, also paid my own mobile bill.

To my parents it wasn’t about the money but just teaching me some responsibility.

We’ve had 4 daughters go through this, about 20% of their wages was about where we settled too.

Yes totally normal… My folks took a fair £25 a week at that age and I was earning £125 a week..

They did save some of it for me (which I was unaware of) and gave me a chunk back when I booked a snowboarding trip. Isn’t that nice of them. I had friends that paid nothing to their folks though so I guess that’s normal too.

Too many ‘kids’ can’t find any incentive for moving out, due to free luxuries at home / parents subsidising their privileged lifestyle – So get them to work out and pay for their fair share.
(Mrs Stuey says when the time comes we’ll bank their rent and give it to them for flat deposits when the finally fly the nest.)

Charge it for sure.

i know of a frend who at 21 or so was paying £50 a week (some 7/8 years back) and really compaining about it – laundry heat light broadband the full whack when his take home was about £250 per week. (i think he at about £10 worth of bacon a week!) If you dont get them used to contributing then real world self suffciency will be a big shock.
I never did – i went out and did higher eduction (which i ballesed up good n proper) and then got a job and paid my way, however if i lived at home i expected to pay my way not coast/sponge.

I paid 1/3 of take home while living at home and working full time. It was spent on bills so I never saw it back when I moved out.

Let them enjoy their money – they have plenty of time to ‘learn resonsibility’ ffs. 18 was the only age I’ve got enjoy 100% disposable income.

Paid about £350 a month at 19 (london, decent enough job) I didn’t contribute to food or anything like that though, seemed really unfair at the time.

Got it all back in a lump sum as above, it was great 😀

Oh, it might have helped if someone had explained and broken down the costs of running a house to me at the time as well gas/council tax/mortgage/water etc

Maybe the idea that her rent barely covers the council tax, let alone the mortgage might make her realise 🙂

I paid rent from the point I got a job of any form. Seems perfectly normal.

Seems a bit harsh, depends if the money from 40hrs a week will be pissed away or saved for the next year’s studies.

Doesn’t sound unreasonable.

I didn’t have to pay out until I’d finished uni, once I’d done that and was bumming around riding bikes and saving for the snowboard trip of a lifetime. It wasn’t much, about £40 a week but I guessed it helped a bit.

One of my mates has a good job, company car and still lives at home and pays sweet FA. He doesn’t even clear stuff like glasses out of him room. God knows what he does with his money.

I”ve always been against the idea of charging kids ‘rent’. Sure get them to contribute, like do a weekly shop every now and again, and encrourage them to save as much they can, but the idea of charging your kids like you would a tenant seems pretty bizarre to me. As far as I’m concerned they have as much right to live in the family home as the rest of the family. I guess it depends on your own financial situation, and how your request for ‘rent’ comes across. If there’s any hint that you’re looking at it as a way of cashing in on your kids growing up then you could forgive them for being a bit peed off.

Charge it, save it, give it back when they want to buy their own place.

Lovely idea that, in principle.

Except, by that time, it’d be like handing them 88p to put toward a new car.

Still doing education full time and I assume not tossing it off while doing it?
Don’t charge.
Working for a living then yes take some. I got charged about a tenner a week and tried to pay more but wasn’t allowed.
Moved out and bought a house 6 months after finishing my apprentichship when earning decent money.
Bought a washing machine a year or 2 after that ;0)

When and if she leaves home will she claim Housing benefit to pay the rent on her new place, because she will have no idea about rent otherwise.

My folks did the “charge it, save it, give it back” thing when I started work at 18. Did all the overtime I could and bought my first place at 21, moved in with a mattress on the floor and a garden chair to sit on.

Plus a fridge, a freezer, a microwave and a washing machine my mum had bought at staff discount rates using my saved rent money.

Knowing how kids (and mine will probably be the same in 7 years time…) like to spaff money on crap these days, we intend to charge 25% of take home pay and we’ll save half for them. It’s already been discussed. They know that at 18 they will be either working or studying, and we will not be keeping them indefinitely.

Edit – sorry, just read the OP properly. I didn’t pay till I was out of education – summer and weekend jobs the money was mine till I left school and dropped out of poly.

If she really will waste all of her earnings then by all means take some as rent but make it clear you are saving it for her.

Absolutely normal! FWIW my 1st weeks pay was £7.26 (1972) & my Mum let me keep it! After that, I paid ‘board’
My stepson however has a ‘soft’ Mum & he’s only just started paying at the ripe old age of 27 after paying off his student loan/motorbike etc!
Get her contributing.

Once they stopped full time education yes they paid. Reality check. But only after they had finished education. Seemed reasonable. That was our house rules. Yours may be different

“Charge it, save it, give it back when they want to buy their own place.”

This!

“All the usual luxuries (sky tv, unlimited mobile, unlimited internet etc)”

now there’s a nice opening gambit 😆

Maybe don’t call it ‘Rent’. No point being accused of acting like a profiteering slumlord, when you can just point out that they’re contributing towards bills and food etc. Unless you’re renting your house of course.

My sister in law is 31 and still lives at home rent free. The only bill she pays is her phone bill, she shares one of the cars so never puts diesel in it, basically drains everything and will burst into tears if someone tries to stand up to her as if the whole world is against her. Add to that the fact she’s a bloody primary school teacher!
I say charge her board, I paid it and paid my own phone bill, even at 17 when I got one through my old mans work place. Also might be worth limiting her on her phone, even when I was only working 25 hours a week I paid my own bill so I had to make sure I’d put enough aside. Otherwise she’ll get a massive shock when the time comes for her to have to fend for herself, I agree about saving some of it to give her when she moves out though. That’s a good idea.

threaten to kick her out?

she’ll soon pay up

Paying at least a token towards the family when they are using full facilities normally helps in reducing the problems of kids taking advantage. It depends on your financial situation if that pays for a takeaway or is actually paying bills.

(Not a parent but used to be a kid)

Or just ask her to pay for the broken laptop, phone and boiler while you were away last week. She did tell you all of those, right? 😉

Charge and the phone bill as well. I did. Whats the point of not calling it “rent”, it wont instil any sort of responsibility calling it “savings”. And, I’d also make sure she mows the bloody lawn as well.. (as long as she doesn’t screw it up).

As with everything “it depends”

Do you need the money or it’s a principle only?
What will she do with the money if you don’t take it? Piss it up the wall of save it?

I’d be inclined to think that charging a 17yo rent as a principle is a bit petty but that’s just a personal opinion.

Whats the point of not calling it “rent”

Because ‘rent’ is a financial transaction between two parties where the renter is profiting from the rentee. You really think it’s a good thing to be seen to be profiting from your kids? I can’t ever imagine a situation where I’ll take money off my kids, even if I was down to my last penny. Teaching them financial responsibility and that nothing comes for free is one thing, but there are better ways of doing that than taking their hard earned cash off them if you don’t really need it (it’s a different matter if you do need it though).

Soon as I started my apprenticeship I had to pay £50 a week. In 1997 this was a fair whack when my 1 st year pay was £1.88/ hour!
Turns out they kept it and used it to pay for my rent when I later went to uni.
If my living costs were as cheap as that now I’d be over the moon!

Going back a few years now, I basically paid for sky tv, bt broadband + telephone and £100 a month to parents on each pay day. Worked out about 20% of my wages.

I was a bit grumpy at the time but in hindsight it was perfectly reasonable and I learnt to money manage better.

It soon motivated me to earn more also so I had more cash to spend on going out.

Bloke at work doesn’t take anything from his 26 year old graduate son, he works every hour he possibly can never has any money to spare and drives a V plate Laguna.
His son has just bought himself brand new Mini Cooper! As a reward for getting a pay rise!
Takes all sorts.
I paid a third of my YTS “wage” and continued at a third of take home till I bought my own place at 23.
Different days now, can’t imagine trying to save a deposit for a house on minimum wage etc.

if your kid has a hobby or two, how about encouraging him/her to save some money for that instead of paying rent?

When i was 17, i worked all summer in two jobs and sold kit on ebay on the side so i could get my first bike. That summer taught me to save up and be independent from my folks. It wasn’t punitive and it rewarded me with a bike (and improved sense of my capabilities).

It was called ‘board’ back in my day and it was expected that once you started earning you’d contribute to the household (there were 4 of us kids).

Learning that you don’t get something for nothing and also it costs just to live. Better get used to from the off! Plus the folks weren’t well off anyways.

Over the years (what with going to uni later in life, the grand old age of 25 or 26!) I was in and out of the parental household. Always paid my way, as much as I thought was fair and reasonable. When I was saving for a deposit and I got a pay increase I always increased my board unasked…

Never bothered about it, my daughter costs a lot less to keep now she has finished uni and gone to work.
What does a few meals cost and youngsters have it hard enough these days, not out to make money from my own kid
Rather she invested in a decent pension so she can retire at a sensible age
She has never given us any grief and nice seeing her enjoy life whilst she is young

I wish my parents charged me “digs.

Was a spoiled only child growing up so figuring out how stuff was paid for shocked & ruined me for years.

However much it is, I’d like to think Ill be charging my kids a substantial amount of their income. Stick in savings for them.

You really don’t learn about life until you have to choose food over rent and hope you get away with it until your next pay check!

When I was a kid many years ago living in the east end we really were broke, mum had to borrow my ten bob birthday money to buy grub for dinner. Sometimes down to our last half a crown for the gas meter and the foreign coin in the electric meter.
I knew exactly how much things cost when I went to work, but would hate my kid to ever live like that
So chuffed that she has got good qualifications and a professional job after working hard to achieve it, seeing her happy and relatively well off is more than enough recompense for me (she has to have enough cash to buy nice camera lenses which her poor old dad can then borrow)

Bloke at work doesn’t take anything from his 26 year old graduate son, he works every hour he possibly can never has any money to spare and drives a V plate Laguna.
His son has just bought himself brand new Mini Cooper! As a reward for getting a pay rise!

I’ve seen this a few times. ‘don’t tell my Dad how much this cost me/saying I’m borrowing it whilst my mates abroad working’.

How do you think a young lad living at home in a small semi with his parents can insure and afford a Impreza/Clio sport/etc etc? The parents are scraping by. The kid is parasitical.

OP its not out of order to ask for a contribution. When your daughter was <16 she had no income. She now has an income. If she still thinks you are out of order then shes at fault. Not you.