Should children pay their parents board?

Rose Beaugeard of Dee Why is happy to pay 15 per cent of her income to her parents for the privilege of living at home.

The 22-year-old university student is studying to become a doctor, and working part-time as a barista. From her wages, she pays board and funds her own expenses, including her car, phone, clothes and social life.

Rose Beaugeard – who pays 15 per cent of her salary to her parents while studying to be a doctor – with her mother, Linda, brother Damien and dog Bailey.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

“It’s totally logical,” Beaugeard said. “I don’t think that there’s any issue with paying board. I think it’s quite fair. It’s important when you’re an adult to be contributing, even if it’s just to family.”

Beaugeard appreciates that the board is calculated on a percentage basis rather than a flat rate. Her parents asked her to pay board when she got her first part-time job in high school, but she had a reprieve when she stopped working to focus on year 12.

The Beaugeard household is one of about 660,000 households in NSW with children over the age of 15 living at home, according to the 2021 census. Beaugeard’s two younger sisters also pay board, but her brother, 16, is yet to start working.

More than 912,000 individuals over the age of 15 live with their parents or grandparents in NSW. That includes dependent students aged 15 to 24, non-dependent children in the same age range, and non-dependent children over the age of 25.

Rose’s two younger sisters also pay board, but her brother is yet to start working.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

The trend for young people to stay at home for longer means many parents are grappling with whether to charge board and how much.

Some are opposed on principle, believing it to be the job of parents to support their children until they can afford to be independent. Others charge as a tool for financial education or because they need the money.

For Rose’s father Nick Beaugeard, his main motivation is the life lesson for his children: to teach them financial skills and prepare them for adult life.

“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.

Meanwhile, Liu said better-off families often said they charged board for the learning experience and saved the money to return as a lump sum when needed.

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, 18, with his father George Catsi at home in Petersham.Credit: Dean Sewell

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.

“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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