I have dealt with some of the same issues and had to laugh today when somebody e-mailed me that raising teenagers is like trying to nail jello to a tree. I am of the firm conviction that boys should be sent as hostages to another country when they turn 13.
When I turned 18 I got a job, and started paying my parents 300 a month in “rent”. I am now 23, and make the same as your son, and I pay my parents 500 a month, plus a 667 truck payment (Its my only toy). I pay for my own cellphone, diesel, clothes, etc. The “rent” payment includes room, food, and my share of car insurance. If my parents need it I will pay a little more a month. I wish I could get by on 50 a week rent.
In Nevada the law is that you have to supply a place to sleep. A family friend just went through this with her son. He was allowed in the house from 9PM to 8AM. At 8AM he was told to leave, and could not enter the house again till 9 that night. When he turned 18 he was not allowed back in at all. Her son was much worse than yours.
XJETGIRLX has a valid point on the work week. My curent job we have several minors to help out part time, and the number of hours they can work is determined by law, and if school is in or not. So summer break they can work full time, but once school starts they can only work w hours a week, and only between x - y on z days.
I would say you are being more than fair. Just get that 50 dollars the day he gets paid before he spends it.
No offence but you son sounds … well I dont want to say it as he is your son and I dont want to offend you. Anyway firstly, you should have started this with him as soon as he started earning that type of money. But thats all neither here nor there as you cant turn back time. Can you get him to change his phone? Here in Ireland and all over mainland Europe too, you can get a pay as you go phone, which basically means that you buy a top up card for it, and as soon as that runs out you cant ring anyone else until you top up again. It could cut back the amount he spends as hell constantly have to go to the shop or wherever to get the credit. It might be worth a try. I had one and my costs were less then they are now, with a bill phone.
Although its probably illegal to kick him out, personally I think you should threaten him with it. And keep put a month or so on it, if he sees your serious he’ll start to wise up, obviously if it is illegal its not very wise to go through with the kicking him out, but if he thinks your serious and HE doest know its illegal, then your plan may work.
If he decides to go then let him go. Hell be gone a couple month and relaise that he doesnt have someone to drop him to the 7 11 whenever he wants and he doesnt have a Mom to hand over his lunch money every day, hell get sick of the rent which will be alot more then $50 a week, and he will wise up and move home, or at least move in with his sister.
Good Luck with it, I really hope he changes…
Just some idle curiosity: If he works 8-8, and say he gets 6 hours sleep a night. How on earth does he send 3000 text messages a month??
Something else I just thought of: Do the parents of his friends know how much he loans them? Maybe if they knew they wouldnt be so impressed and would stop there kids from taking money from yours.
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Develop a system for getting the chores done without him. Let him know that he is welcome to participate in to goings on of the family or not. If he doesn’t he doesn’t get to participate in your dinner, TV, etc. Whatever you do for him. You want his room clean? Clean it yourself, putting anything you find objectionable, or at all distasteful to clean in bags and put them in the garage. The invasion of privacy is usually enough to motivate a teenager to take ownership of his own stuff. Do the same with any of his items you find in the living room or bathroom.
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you’re not going to teach him the value of the dollar, stop trying. Slamming the door, growing pains, I’m sure he learned alot from that interaction.
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Did you have it? Don’t lie to him, tell him no if you mean no. “because you owe me too much money and I don’t trust you to pay me back and you don’t pich in around here” is a GREAT reason to say no.
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He does, his money not yours, let it go, stop judging.
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Good for you! Whoop ass!
I help parents and teens negotiate this crap all the time, I’m pulling for you, good luck.
Isabelle, I think your conditions are beyond fair. They’re too generous, in fact. He’s earning money, and he wants to be a big shot without taking responsibility. It’s completely selfish, childish behavior. So if you want to snap him out of it or, at least, keep a control on it to limit its impact on you and your other sons, childproof his life.
This kid needs to have his money directly deposited into a bank account to which he has limited access. At the very least, his check should be direct deposited with $50 put into a separate account for you. (And $50 is far far more than reasonable.) If he isn’t willing to curb his exorbitant spending, properly manage his bills and contribute to his household for his own upkeep and to assist his single parent mother then he should have his money managed for him until he’s ready to move somewhere else.
If he doesn’t contribute to the household, limit his access to household amenities. Let him have only the food you serve him. Put combination locks on the fridge and cabinets that your other sons can access. If you’re doing his laundry, stop. Let him buy his own supplies and take his clothes to the laundrymat. Give him no access to home phones, televisions or computers. He’s not contributing to the existence and maintenance of any of these things, so why should he get access to them?
His cell phone is in your name? Cancel it! If he needs a phone so badly, he can toddle off to Wal-Mart and buy a prepaid phone and be responsible for paying to renew his minutes.
Talk to a contractor about moving the thermostat into your bedroom or another room that you can lock. If he can’t keep his hands off of the AC controls, take them out of his reach. If that’s not possible, look into replacing your current thermostat with one that can only be changed when one has an access code.
Most importantly, you own his car and provide insurance? Then control his car keys. If he hasn’t filled the tank for himself, he doesn’t get his keys. If he hasn’t done his chores, no keys. He hasn’t given you his weekly maintenance? No keys. He breaks household rules? No keys. Keep them in a lockbox. Driving your car, mostly on your dime, is a privilege. Make him earn it.
He’s got 1 year to learn to grow up, be responsible and learn that every aspect of life has a cost built in and that there will always be some authority in his life which he must respect (or face the consequences) and he needs sme strong controls to get all of that into his head in the brief period of time you’ve got.
Get tough, stay tough and hopefully he’ll end up a better man in the end than he’ll be if he’s allowed to continue on the course he’s presently taking.
Works out to about 5.5 messages an hour.
I don’t even think QED posts 5.5 messages an hour. 
I read and responded to your first post about your allowance problem.
You are doing the right thing. Forget about this shit that he is the closest thing to peer that you have in the household, “being a single mother”. My sincerest apologies, GRECK, but that is exact behavior that got Isabell into this mess in the first place. He is not your “peer” and he never will be.
Trust me this may not be pretty, but you have taken the first step to guide him into a responsible life.
For legal purposes, if he leaves it is of his own volition, when the cops show up that the door with him in tow, your response should be “He ran away, Officer. I set some household rules that he did not agree with and left. I’m sorry to cause all this trouble. Thank you for returning him to me!” Let him in the door, hug him and let him walk out the door again after “the fuzz” departs.
You have been taken advantage of for long enough.
Kids are SUPPOSED to make mistakes and torture their parents and waste their money; they have to get it out of their system, or they’ll do the same thing at our age and REALLY mess up their lives.
But don’t give him any more money; and cancel that phone as soon as you can (the penalty might be less than his bills); and if he won’t clean the bathroom, lock it and don’t give him a key (now I’m losing it.)
We’re going through the same thing with my step-son; they’ll learn how to handle money or they won’t. All we can do is nag.
And there are plenty of ways to blow money besides up your nose; I believe you that it’s not drugs.
Just another one chiming in that it’s past time for some tough love.
At this point, the only two things that you can really hope to teach him is that his actions have consequences and with privilege comes responsibility.
He doesn’t keep up his end of his bargain with you, and you do not feel obliged to keep up your end of the bargain with him. No more rides – the boy can afford a car. No more money – the boy has more money than any 17-year-old needs. And if he blows it on “steak dinners and flowers for his girl,” then he’s going to get to experience a couple days without lunches. That’s the consequence of blowing your moolah on crap to such an extent that you cannot feed yourself. In fact, I’d probably start charging him for all his meals by making it clear that if he expects to eat at home, he can start kicking in some grocery money. And some rent. And some money for the electric bill. And cut off his cell phone; why should you put your good credit at risk because of his irresponsibility? A $600 cell phone bill? Ridiculous.
And if he is smart enough and hard-working enough to be a foreman at a 10-hour-a-day job, then his disregard of you and your rules unfortunately must be intentional. He is disrespecting you, and it is past time you stopped tolerating it. Tell him the gravy train is over. If he is old enough to work like an adult and be paid like an adult, he is old enough to pay his own way, just like an adult.
Good luck! 
What? What?
This kid has not just tortured his mother. He has used his mother. There is a difference.
Yes, a 17 year old is allowed to make mistakes. “Let me take a shit on you” is not a mistake.
Let me get a cell phone with your credit card, so I can run the bill up to $675.00. Ooooopppps, I can’t pay that bill since I sent 4,000,000,000 text messages last month at $0.10 a minute. I can’t afford that. It is your credit, so what the fuck do I care if your credit is ruined for the rest of your life. I’m fine, as long as I have my comforts.
You must get up an hour or more earlier, so that you can drive me to work at my convenience. I do not give a shit about the gas money that you asked me to pay. Fuck you, you can afford it, you are the adult and you are supposed to do this for you children.
I make $500.00 + a week. How dare you ask me where I spend my money or ask me to contribute towards the house!
I do not pay rent. I do not pay car payments or insurance or the electric/cable/phone/gas/health insurance. Even at 17 years of age, I make more per week than a lot of people and I still ask you - Mom - to drive me to work, give me money for lunch, feed me, do my laundry, clean my room and to allow me to live rent free in your household.
No! No! No! No! They MUST to learn how to handle money. The best advice I have heard a father give his teenage son during the father/son talk was
In order to contribute to my college education, I give my parents ALL of my money. Every single penny. Every friday I get a paycheck, borrow the manager’s pen, endorse it, and hand it over to my mom when she picks me up. I get back a bit less than 10% of what I make, which isn’t much to start with. It’s perfectly legitimate - I fully agree that I should be making as big a contribution to my education as possible. And since my parents provide free room/board/entertainment (we go out for movies) and other essentials, I don’t really need any more than that 10% - in truth, I don’t really need that.
But still - if my parents told me tomorrow all I had to pay was $50 a week, my reaction would be “Sweet! You guys are awesome!”
Is it legal for a minor to work 60-hour weeks?
Isabelle-
Although I agree with your decision and with most of the other advice offered to you I have to caution you strongly about cancelling the cell phone.
I work in collections I have worked in many different cellular portfolios. Cellular company contracts are just that, contracts. I would suggest you find the original contract that you signed and read through it very carefully.
Most cellular company contracts are for lack of a better term “roll over” contracts which even if you have gone past your initial term you are still required to meet certain conditions as long as you retain service.
Some companies require written notice to cancel service even if you are beyond your initial term.
Most cell companies will change your contract date if you change your service at all which means you are now required to finish the initial term over again from the date the service was changed.
I would not suggest cancelling the service at all if you are still under the initial term the fees charge for doing so are usually exorbitant. I would suggest confiscating the phone and paying the monthly service fee until the end of your service contract and then cancelling the service if you choose to do so.
Best of luck
Sleepless
I’m guessing here that it’s then not his cell phone. It’s your cell phone and he’s using it. Go ahead and cancel the account if it’s in your name. Kind of hard to rack up hundreds of dollars of phone calls on a dead phone.
With my parents the rule was: Until you’re 18, you can live here. After 18, you can only live here free if you’re in school AND attending. If not in school, you can live here but you will sign a rental contract. As Dad was on Active Duty at the time, he also had another rule: The foregoing only applies when home is off base. If home is on base and you’re not in school: write to us so we’ll know you’re okay.
My parents ici “Eighteen and over the side” my dad used to say, and he was only joking a little.
Under 18 and living in his house: No job during the school year (“school is your job”), but job in the summer (if old enough to legally work). No payment to him of any expenses whether employed or not, but you live in his house you live by his rules, and there is an expectation you aren’t pissing your money away. If employed, no allowance, no gas money, access to the car only if you’re in his good graces and you fill it up, sure as hell no cell phone. Pay your own way, sunshine; that’s why you have a job. If you don’t like the house rules, get out.
Over 18 and at college: He pays tuition, books, rent, and allowance. If you don’t think the allowance is sufficient (which it wasn’t), get a job, understanding that if your grades go in the toilet, he will no longer pay for anything. You can come home during the summer under the same conditions as in high school – get a job, and obey the house rules. Don’t like telling him where you’re going, who with, and when you’ll be back now that you’re “grown up”? Live somewhere else.
Over 18 and living at home: Nope. You have a chance to go to school on his dime. If you choose not to, then welcome to the real world. Get a job and get an apartment, and he and Mom will see you on Sundays for dinner.
Don’t get me wrong: My dad is a totally open-handed, generous guy. We had an implied contract that we would work hard at college and he in turn would pay for it, and as long as we didn’t let him down, he didn’t let us down. To this day, if we really need him, he’s there for us, even now when we’re all in our thirties. If our back’s to the wall, we can call him.
But he believes in “you work for what you get.” And he did not believe that giving kids money and freedom without responsibilities taught them anything worth knowing.
I understand that it’s summer and he’s on break, but what happens when he’s back in school? Does he still work? Do his spending habits continue?
As for the phone, I agree that you should look into your contract before canceling. In the meantime, take the phone away. It’s hard to make a call when you don’t have a cell phone.
He is making a man’s income with a child’s responsibilities. Based on my life experience with scenarios like this I would make the observation that, for a variety of complex reasons, mothers as a rule, and especially single mothers, are often extraordinarily ineffective at disciplining near adult sons and especially so for a kid making a substantial sum of money.
You are in an impossible situation, and given his income you have little effective authority over him except to nag and bitch at him which is not good for either one of you. The bottom line is that he needs to be out of the house and he needs his own car and to be paying his own way. I know a lot of other well intended posters are recommending a laundry list of reforms if he intends on staying in your house, but IMO given the context of your situation if you want true “respect” from him you aren’t going to get it with him in the house. Period. It’s just not going to happen.
He needs to be bitch slapped by the real financial demands of life to break out of fiscal retard mode. If you’re not willing to tell him to pack his bags and move out nothing will change. Nothing.
Let us know how it goes. You’ve gotten some good advice.
Don’t do any more of his laundry or cooking. If he changes the thermostate, change it back, and tell him, “When you contribute to the electricity bill, you can have a say in the setting.” A lock for it is also a good idea.
I don’t know how many bathrooms you have, but if you have two, you and your younger sons use one and let him use the other. Out of toilet paper? Well, then, toddle down to the store and get some.
You are providing him a roof over his head. If he doesn’t show appreciation, then do as little for him as you can.
Don’t get into fights. He is still a minor, and you are still the parent. You do have power over him, if you will only use it. Hell, you can even force him to give up his job! (I don’t know that I’d go that far, but it’s an option.)
I haven’t the time to read through everyones posts, so forgive me.
As too what boy earns that kind of money at that age?
An old boyfriend of mine, at 16 - in school full time- was earning money as a carpenter for a flooring company that was equal to his teachers. By the time he was 20, he was earning about 50k and working 90 hours a week. He got out at 21 because he wanted a life.
Encourage your son’s hard work ethic, but explain to him that money doesn’t always fall from the heavans like that.
I think what he needs is direct deposit. And, since he is a minor, you as a parent can set up the account where he has no access to withdrawl money from it. Only deposit. ( I’ve done this with my kids, but they are 3 and 5.) That way, if he wants money he has to go through you.
With freedom comes a certain amount of responsibility and with responsibility comes a certain amount of freedom.
It seems to me that he has all freedom and zero responsibility.
He is being the man or big fish in the little pond with his friends, and they are taking advantage of him. People with money to burn are always surrounded by people with matches.
Tell him to go out with his friends the next weekend with only a $10 in his wallet. Watch the hilarity ensue.
Good luck!