For those of you with older kids at home, what do you do regarding dig money?
I’ve got an 18 year old and the agreement was that as long as he pitches in around the house (bins are his responsibility - emptying into the wheelie bins and putting out whichever one it is that week) and attends his college course then he can keep his money. He’s at college 2.5 days a week and then work for the rest, clearing around £900 a month.
The issue is he is always fucking “forgetting” to put the bins out. Even when I’ve bought him a fucking echo so he can set up reminders etc.
There’s myself, my wife and the 5 kids (10-18) so there’s a fuckton of rubbish. Missing it even once causes massive ballache. Thing is, he’s always forgetting.
Came to a head this morning because, once again, he forgot. This is after messaging me last night 15 minutes before he was due home asking to have someone stay, so I changed all my plans to accommodate. And the shit didn’t put the bins out again.
I feel like I’m going round in circles with him and it’s beginning to really affect me. Stressing to fuck over bins, what even is that!
Only thing I can think of is to start charging him dig money now. I’m sick bending over backwards for him not to pitch in with this one thing.
Does that seem reasonable? Or am I being a crabit bastard? What amounts are people taking from their weans etc here? Was thinking £100 since I easily spend more than that on keeping the lazy shit each month.
Edit to add - Dig Money meaning money he pays towards household expenses :)
I think it’s more than fair to say if he’s earning and living with you, he should be paying (even on top of the chores). £100/mo is more than fair on £900 earnings, I’d even go so far as to say £50/week is reasonable given the prices right now.
As for forgetting the chores, if he’s anything like I was at that age, I’d imagine he doesn’t care enough about the negative concequences of forgetting to do the chore to care about remembering, which is a hard thing to beat. It’s unlikely he understands the importance of doing chores, which will obviously create problems for others in the years to come as he moves into houseshares with others.
The best solution I can think of is a two-pronged approach: speak to him and explain you’d like for him to be more responsible since he’ll be forced to be responsible for himself when he moves out. Second, start charging for keep too, but offer a return on rent if he remembers to put the bins out by a certain time (one that isn’t too late for you, since you will be the one that will be doing the job by default). Another idea I’ve seen, if you feel guilty taking more money than you need from him, is to keep aside some or all of it as savings for him, to give to him when he moves out to allow for him to pay his deposit and for anything he needs to buy when he moves in to his new place.