SHOP PRODUCTS
Houzz Logo Print
ocarina_gw

Board Money

ocarina
13 years ago

Hello All,

My Husbands reads a forum of cars and etc but there's a section on it which is called ''non car related'' and it contains post of all kinds and yesterday there was one called ''board money''. It started a whole discussion between us and I would like to know what you ladies think of this. Basically the post was about getting your adults children to pay board money once they reach financial maturity.

My mom was a mono parental mom of 2 and worked real hard to keep us afloat and me and my brother both started working when we were 14 and at that point we started paying board and were responsible to buy the things we wanted (such as cellphones, computer, video games, etc). We were both working part time (we were still at school) and would make an average of about 130$ per week. And she would claim 30 $ off of us per week for food, electricity and especially petrol for drop in/drop off to work ha ha. And the rest would be ours to spend as we wished. During the summer we would obviously work full time and she would get the charge up slightly. I think this was a very valuable lesson as obviously it taught me what life was all about. That nothing came free that I had to work for it. And when I moved out since I was already ''used'' to paying an amount of my salary each week, and that I was already ''used'' to do things for myself (such as laundry, pay my cellphone bill, etc) I didn't have that much trouble adjusting. Obviously instead of steak I was eating cans of tuna but overall I was fine.

Obviously now this sparked a debate between me and my husband as he thinks slightly different. Of course he thinks adult children should help financially but he thinks the amount is not important. As long as it teaches them to hand out money when asked. Well I agree partially, yes this is important for them to learn. But if you charge them board for 5$ a week, it doesn't prepare them for the real world.

Last year when his adult daughter and his boyfriend were living with us, we would pay everything and we would struggle with the bills at the end of the month and I asked him to ask them to help financially. He set the charge at 10$ a week per person. So 20$ for both of them. I thought this was ridiculous especially with the amount of food and energy they were consuming. But my husband was adamant he would not charge them more. ( Btw for those of you who remember my post about ''am I the wicked step mom here'' well they moved out and now have their house and our familly relationship has improved as now the oldest even told me she ''understood'' why I was mad at them all the time for not cleaning as she faces the same problem at her house). His excuse for not charging more was that they needed to save to move out and to pay stuff for their baby. True enough but they were making about the same as me in salary and only paying 10 $ each I thought it was pushing a bit but I went with it hoping that they would save up. And obviously they didn't. Each weekend we would see them blow everything up on clothes and new stuff and not saving a penny and in the end when they finally moved out (because of an ultimatum from my husband), we were left with hundreds in dept (and we still are) as we could never catch up with the bills. I just think this is not the right way but I wanted to know what you all think.

Board money yes or no? At what age? and how much? Let me know what you think!

Ocarina

Comments (7)

Sponsored
Michael Nash Design, Build & Homes
Average rating: 4.9 out of 5 stars254 Reviews
Northern Virginia Design Build Firm | 18x Best of Houzz