Should children pay their parents board?

“We’re trying to educate them about real life rather than just letting them live off the bank of mum and dad,” Nick Beaugeard said.

“We could afford not to do it, but I think that would be doing them a disservice. As a kid, I never paid board, and when I left home it was an enormous shock, and I don’t want that to happen to the kids.”

Melissa Browne, a former financial adviser and founder of the eight-week My Financial Adulting Plan, said she was having more conversations this year with parents who were considering charging board for the first time.

‘I eat a lot, I drink the coffee in the house, I use things, so [paying board is] understandable.’

Emile Kwasner-Catsi, 18

“I definitely attribute these conversations to the cost-of-living increases,” Browne said. “The issue we have is that kids, including adult kids, might be staying at home longer to save money, but that’s now putting financial pressure on parents who are facing rising electricity, interest and food costs.”

Browne believes charging board is a good way to teach young people financial responsibility and help them transition to independence. But if the board is set too high or not communicated well, the child could become resentful or start to “treat the home like a hotel and the parents like staff because they’re a paying customer now”.

In setting a rate, Browne said parents need to consider their own financial situation, the young person’s employment status, how much they assist with household chores, and how much they use household resources, such as taking long hot showers or hosting friends.

For example, a family struggling with the cost of food might charge a portion of the weekly grocery bill. If the young person has variable casual work, their parents might charge a percentage of their take-home wages.

Browne said parents should still calculate the true cost of upkeep, so the young person learns what things cost: the accurate cost might be $250 a week, but the parents might charge $100 a week and expect the child to cook once a week, do their own laundry and buy their own alcohol.

The Australian Taxation Office confirmed there were no tax implications when children and other close relatives pay board or contribute to shared expenses in the family home.

Research by comparison website Finder from January 2023 found the average cost for a young person to leave home was $480 a week. That was a national figure that included $289 a week for rent in a share house, but not the one-off costs of moving and setting up a house.

Dr Edgar Liu, a senior research fellow at the City Futures Research Centre at the University of NSW, said the main reason for young adults living with their parents was financial. This included young people who could not afford to move out in an expensive rental market, but also parents who relied on the financial contribution.

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The 2021 census suggests nearly half of one-parent households have a non-dependent child living at home, compared with fewer than one in three couple families.

Liu said his research also found that children were more likely to stay at home if their parents had separated.

“There were the financial contributions, but a lot of them also made a conscious decision to keep the parent company,” Liu said.

“The younger people would say things like, ‘I just can’t bear the thought of Mum living here by herself’ or that ‘Mum needed my help to care for my younger siblings’.”

Most of the families interviewed by this masthead had sons rather than daughters paying board, and this is borne out in the statistics as well.

The census figures for NSW suggest nearly 60 per cent of people aged over 20 who live in the family home are male.

Emile Kwasner-Catsi has been working three jobs since he left high school last year to save for an overseas trip.

The 18-year-old barman, tutor and labourer pays $50 a week board to live with his parents in their rented home in Petersham, in the inner west.

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“Obviously, I’d rather not [pay board], but I’m really, actually, totally fine with it,” Kwasner-Catsi said.

“I eat a lot, I drink the coffee in the house, I use things, so it’s totally understandable.”

He believes paying board has taught him how to manage his money better, giving him a head start on most of his mates who mostly still live at home and don’t pay board.

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