I live at home and do not pay rent, although i do chores, like vaccuuming, washing dishes, mowing and cleaning the bathrooms. I do my laundry, my grandpa’s laundry and cook dinner sometimes too.
I don’t do my mother’s laundry unless she wants some blue jeans washed to make a full load.
Living with me: My 24 year old daughter (grad school), her fiance (working full time) and my 19 year old son (focusing on health issues–he’s lost 140 pounds in the last year! We look on this as a full-time job). The arrangement works very well for all 4 of us–the house is large and we each have a bedroom and living space of our own–24 year olds have family room, 19 year old the basement, I have the living room. We share bathrooms and kitchen.
We’ve worked out financial arrangements over the course of a couple years.
We all contribute to the routine chores (dishes, our own laundry, cleaning house).
We share the food costs–any one who shops puts the receipt in a basket. At the end of the month we split the costs and anyone short pays anyone over. Right now I pay for myself and the 19 year old.
It’s fairly ad hoc on who cooks. The 24 year olds are big into “fairness.” My son and I cook when we want a meal. It’s pretty much assumed that if you cook a meal, you make enough for anyone who might be hungry. You can label food as “yours” if you want it for your lunch or want a green banana to ripen.
Rent: Each of the offspring have the option of paying $50 per week or doing extra housework. Extra housework includes painting, roofing, gardening, cleaning garage. There is a lot of this work to do in an older home. Some months they do a lot. Some months they pay a lot. It’s cheap rent really, but it’s enough that I don’t feel put upon.
They chip in for car insurance, split the gym membership, etc.
We keep each other informed and are considerate about guests–but both the offspring and I have had social gatherings that were “exclusive” of others–19 year old has poker parties for example.
Technically, they should pay the same amount that they’d pay at lodgings with similar amenities at somebody’s home who wasn’t their parents. Get them used to the real world as soon as possible. If you think you are taking too much, bank it for them without their knowledge.
My disability check goes straight to them. It’s a lot easier that way. If I need money, I ask for it from them.
My sister’s arrangement is different. She buys her own food, pays her own bills, and helps out around the house. She’ll buy us stuff when we need it, and give out money when we’re in a tight spot. But she doesn’t actually pay rent. The piddly amount she could afford to pay really wouldn’t help, and she’d probably feel she no longer needed to help or buy us stuff.
Whenever I or my brothers have lived at my parents’ once we’d finished college, we’ve paid our share, as well as shared in housework. The last few years Singlebro lived at Mom’s, they would specify they were “sharing”, it was more like “roomies” than “grown-up son sponging off Mom”. Nowadays he eats with her and pays for the food; for him it would actually be more convenient and cheaper to eat with his coworkers.
Mom knows that it will be the same if she ever gets to be living with one of us. Given that she, her sister and her mother charge their children for visiting, it would simply not make sense otherwise; with those three, charging them is part of the whole enforcement of “this is my house, not yours, so getyerhooksoffMYkitchenpots!”
We invited our daughter and her new husband to live with us so they could get out of debt and save for a house of their own. They paid a token rent which was to cover the additional utilities and groceries.
Now that the new husband is history, and daughter is still here, she’s cleaning up the financial mess he left behind, so we no longer charge her rent. However, she buys some of her own food, she kicks in for the cable bill, and she does chores. And she’s saving money and working on her debts - I figure in a couple of years, she should have everything paid off, including us. Once it gets to that point, if she’s not looking for her own place, we will expect her to contribute more, if only to pay us back for building the apartment in the basement for her.
Dang, people. Really? I was expected to give “room and board” money from the time I had my first babysitting jobs at age 13.
I think timeline is something important to consider. The arrangement you describe sounds quite fair to me. The no chores thing is between you and her, of course and not an issue for me. I don’t think I’d be moved by, “But Mom, none of my friends pay rent!”. That wouldn’t do much for me besides make me think you have some maturing to do. But I would definitely pursue a timeline, were it me. I’d need to know there is an intended time for the arrangement to end. It doesn’t have to be carved in stone, but there should be a ball park time frame. If I was happy with the time line, I’d just leave things as they are. And I completely agree that parents who let their adult kids have a free ride, while working full time, aren’t really doing them a favour.
I lived with my mother (and my son) from 18-22 or 23. Her arrangement was that as long as I was in school, I could live there rent free, but leaving school was my signal that I was “grown up” now, and rent would be paid. I think it was $300 or so a month, less than half what my first apartment in the same city cost. I think it probably was a good motivator to keep in school, and as a teacher, school was always her priority. Up until recently, I shared her notion. But I’m beginning to think differently for several reasons, the main one being the crappy state of the economy right now.
The other is that my son, while just a lovely, lovely person, is also a bit immature and suffers from depression and anxiety which makes his daily life a struggle. He’s 17, and really panicking over deciding what he wants to do with his life, if/where he wants to continue college (he’s in an Associate’s program right now), career, etc. The idea that he might have to move out in a year terrifies him (and me, too).
When talking about this with my partner one day, he (partner) talked me around to his way of thinking. We decided that family is family, and as long as my son is willing to be a good roommate (and we talked at some length about that - namely, respect our space and time, call when you’re going to be late, do chores as needed), he’s got a home here as long as he wants it. True, we may move around a lot, his bed may one day be a couch or the pull down of an RV, but he’ll always be welcome under my roof without rent.
My daughter, the precocious little princess? I’m gonna start charging her rent next week. It can come out of her milk money. 
Seriously, I think you need to consider your family dynamics first, and the individual needs of your family members next. What’s right for one kid is wrong for another, just like every other parenting decision under the sun.
ETA: Too early for grammar…
My adult child lives in one of my houses, my other two adult children live in another one. No they don’t pay rent. Circumstances allowed me to help them when they needed help, if I ever need help I am sure they will be there for me, but I don’t need their money just to make a point.
My daughter once took a house and lived in it for three years while fixing it up to re-sell it, profits were good and her share was considerable, My youngest in Orlando is doing this now. Next year my granddaughter will move into a condo rent free while she is in college.
I would do anything for my family. They never have a problem doing anything for me.
I think it’s a lot harder to make it on your own now. Example: In 1978 I worked as a waitress. Minimum wage was $2.65 an hour. I rented a house for about $150 a month. Rent was 57 times minimum wage. Now minimum wage is around $8.00 an hour. Rents are what - 100 times minimum wage? Expenses are a much larger proportion of income than they were 25 years ago.
You say that but several people here have said they never paid rent at home. She’s a good kid, swear. She has always paid her share. But lately…I don’t know maybe it’s just time for her to fly. I don’t want her to fly away yet though! My idea was for her to stay at home, get through college (she’s just now starting) and build up a little savings. She complains that after she “gives” me money, she has nothing to save. I see different. I see her having fun with the income she earned, which is great! But yeah, you have to pay your bills too.
If you really need the money I don’t think you would be remiss to ask her to pay a little rent and I think if you are giving up what could be your bedroom and sleeping in a communal space that only strengthens your case. You may want to do what my parents did when I graduated college. I was welcome to stay with them rent free for the first 6 months after graduation while I looked for a job. At that point if I hadn’t found somewhere else to live I would have been required to pay them $200 a month in rent. Had something happened and I lost a job or was injured I know they would have let me continue to live there at no charge, but the expectation that I get out on my own and pay my own way was very apparent. I only stayed there for about 6 weeks after graduation because I could not handle living in the same house as my family but it was nice to know that if I was not able to find decent work that I would not have been homeless.
Ask her if all her friends jumped off a bridge, would she jump too? Seriously. If she’s going to play the childish “all my friends are…” game, you should reply as you would to a child.
I don’t know why she thinks its unfair that she, with an income of her own and being over the age of 21, should be expected to pay for things she uses. You also said
She really, really needs to lose that attitude. Landlords, banks, car dealers, supermarkets, utility companies, etc. etc. will not take that excuse - why should you?
I lived with my parents for six months after taking the Bar - spend a month looking for work, another month working a job that paid almost nothing, then saved up for a few months while working at a job that paid a decent wage. I didn’t pay rent, but I was expected to make monthly payments on money I’d borrowed from my parents for law school. (Of course, I still do that.) I also took over cleaning that cats’ litter-box, a chore my parents detest - for that alone, I think they’d be happy to have me move back in.
Never brought anyone home, of course. This was an apartment, not a house - it would have been … awkward.
Were you born during the Great Depression or something? I find this appalling. My parents made me put my baby-sitting money in an IRA. I had retirement funds at the age of 16 or something.
Regardless,
My parents really don’t need my money as they’re quite well off.
About 6 months ago my dad retired and started his own business. Rather than liquidate assets or take a loan that would have required interest, he asked me for a short term loan of my savings at that time (a large sum, not $500). Which I handed over without a peep. He paid it back very quickly since he got his contracts quickly.
The fact that my parents didn’t treat me like a stranger at the age of 18 goes a long way towards why my sister and I maintain the relationship that we do with them and why I would be more than happy to sign over the entirety of my paycheck/life savings if they needed it (and because they’re not whiny leeches either, they wouldn’t ask unless absolutely necessary or if it made sense from a business perspective). Really, it’s more than understood that by the time my parents hit their 80s that they’ll live with one of the two of us. That’s just our culture.
Again, if I were a leeching loser who wanted to smoke dope, play on the internet all day and do nothing productive with my life, I doubt they would have been as nice to me over the years. Really, some people don’t need to be treated like shit at 18 to go on to be successful individuals.
My parents supported me financially through school and college. Once I got a job at the end of it, I brought up the subject of paying rent. By that time my mother was a widow and my father’s life insurance etc had paid for the house and given her a decent amount to live on.
She said that until I had a permanent job (I was temping at the time) she would not accept money from me, but I could pay her by doing chores. So I did, and eventually when I passed my driving test and got a car, that came to include taking her shopping and running errands for her.
Within a year I had a full-time job and I started paying her a fixed rent to cover room and board although I always told her when I was going out and didn’t want food. I did my own laundry and ironing etc because I saw no reason for her to do it, she had her own life going on and didn’t need to be clearing up after me.
Rushgeekgirl, if your daughter is an adult and in full-time employment, she should contribute equally to the running of your household. The excuse that her friends don’t do the same is childish and immature, as (probably) are those friends! Also, if she overspends that is no excuse for not making her payments to you. Nobody else out in the real world will accept that excuse and she had better get used to it.
My parents wouldn’t expect me to pay for room & board if I lived with them again (I’m 29, but haven’t lived with them since I was 19).
They would, however, expect some sort of contribution, especially if I had a full-time job and no other responsibilities outside of that. I’d be cleaning the house, cooking, and of course paying my own bills (like a cell phone).
I think the problem here isn’t necessarily the money, though she does need to learn some responsibility with that (if you have a full-time job, but pay no bills and no rent, there’s no need to overspend on anything - especially when she says she can’t pay you b/c she needs to save). She doesn’t seem to want any responsibility - by 21, a lot of people are ready to move out because they want to be adults and not be taken care of by their parents anymore.
If you’re OK with not getting any rent, can you make a deal with her that instead of paying for rent/food/bills, she has to save $XX per month? It might help her budget her money better and realize that she does need to be responsible.
I’m not sure I understand. Do you think her paying her share of the household bills is treating her like shit?
If it were me, I would charge my daughter 1/4 of what she makes working as room and board. If I needed it, I’d use it for household expenses. If I didn’t need it, I’d bank it in a separate account without telling her and gift it to her when she moved out on her own and needed it. What is going on with her friends is irrelevant. Your daughter lives in YOUR household.