A seven-year-old boy who pays rent and bills will grow up with “a real sense of confidence with money”, his mother says. Asher Bird, who lives with his parents and two brothers, Jonah, eight, and Simon, 10, in the US state of Michigan, earns $6 (£4.52) a week for chores and pays his mum Samantha $3 (£2.26) to cover expenses. The seven-year-old also already has an investment portfolio and a financial planning diary, which Samantha hopes will prevent him from making the same mistakes as his parents.
“I didn’t grow up with a whole lot of financial education and so going out into the real world, it was quite a shock and I really struggled,” she told Sky News. The mum-of-three and her husband Seth found themselves $40,000 (£30,118) in debt as a result of mismanaging finances and accumulating credit card payments in 2019.
Samantha spent a “tough” two years living on a very small budget and “learning everything I could about money” from free books at the local library before settling her accounts in 2021.
“I learned when the stakes were very high and it took me a long time to dig out of it,” she said. “Now I need to make sure that doesn’t happen with my kids.
“I wanted to give [them] a little bit of a head start in a way that was safe and in an environment that was light-hearted. I’ve noticed a real sense of confidence in my kids with money.”
While it is rare for families to introduce rental charges at as young an age as seven, the trend of young adults living at home during their twenties and thirties has made the question of whether parents should charge their children money a hot button issue.
Over half of UK parents charge their adult children rent for living at home, according to a Compare the Market survey from 2023, 65.5% of whom said did so to help cover food and energy bills.
Introducing financial contribution schemes during the teenage years and early twenties could also help to promote monetary awareness and benefit youngsters in the long run, Carole Fossey, whose 21-year-old son still lives with her, said.
Carole was unhappy when her own parents began charging her for rent at a similar age, but decided to ask Guillaume Ravailha for £300 a month – 15% of his income – to ensure he was helping towards household finances and prevent him developing a sense of “entitlement”.
“He felt the same way, but we got over that,” she added. “Although every time he sends it to me, he puts it through on my bank account as ‘extortion’ or ‘charity’.
“I do think this generation of children – and it’s completely our fault for spoiling them – are a little but entitled sometimes and expect things to be provided that I would never have expected when I was that age.”