Board: What is a reasonable amount to pay?

Question

I am 22 and currently living with my Aunty in Australia. We are trying to come up with a fair weekly amount for board - food, electricity etc included. Please let me know your opinions.

Answer 1

depends where you live and how much it would otherwise cost for you to rent a place, how much food she pays for (do you eat home or do you eat out or buy your own groceries?)  I reckon you should pay something between what you would otherwise have to pay and her additional costs of having you live at her place.  

I think you should definitely pay SOMETHING. After all, not only is she paying $ in extra food/electricity/water, but she needs to put up with you at her place too (well, she might say she loves your company...) Also, if you lived with your parents, you would pay board too, right? (I've had this discussion many a times with my friends.  I can't believe some ppl in their 30s do not contribute at all to the cost when living with their parents!)

Answer 2

split the bills 50/50.

Answer 3

Part of being a loving Aunty is being generous.  Don't pay her anything.  Later, when you are rich she can come live in your mansion.

Answer 4

There are a couple of ways of looking at the question.

On the one hand, you can attempt to determine the fair market value of the different services. For example, if you're living in a room, how much would a similar room rent for? As for utilities, in a situation in which multiple people live in a house, very often they divide the utilities. So: What would be half of the utilities? (Or maybe less, if  your Aunty uses more.) As for food, if you and she eat about the same amount, you could split the cost, or at least assign a certain portion of total groceries to you.

So, you'd add up the room rent, a share of the utilities, and a share of the food, and that's a fair way to do it.

Another way--especially if your income is low--might be to take a percentage of your income. That's sort of working backwards from the conventional approach when buying or renting--saying that you should spend no more than, say, 35% of your income on housing. But if 35%-40% is considered a reasonable amount to spend, and you don't have enough to assign the different costs as described above, then perhaps 35%-40% of your take-home income should go for housing.

It's likely that one of those two approaches will strike you as being fairly reasonable and workable. Take that one, and discuss it with your aunt.

Hope that helps.

Answer 5

If your aunt did not ask for any money, is OK to continue live there free.  But if you feel you should pay her some, you may want to offer her to help her with some basic bills, e.g. electric, water, food, etc.....  If she refused to accept assistance from you, just stock up her refrigerator once every 2 weeks, just to show your appreciation....

Answer 6

You need to work out what the power and gas costs then look at food maybe then you could offer her half.

But being her niece she will possibly not want to do this so just pop it into a bank account and give it to her at Christmas time.

Other than that about $150 a week is reasonable seeing most rents are way over $250 a week or more now

Answer 7

400