'WIBTA if I asked my adult daughter to pay for her share of the family vacation?'
"WIBTA if I asked my adult daughter to pay for her share of the family vacation?"
I have 5 kids, 3 with my first wife (22f, 16m, 16f) and 2 with my current wife (8m, 6m). We are planning a two week trip to the Dominican Republic in spring of next year. My wife and I are paying for the youngest 4 obviously, but as my daughter is an adult with a full-time job I expected her to pay for her own part of the trip.
This is by far the most expensive holiday we've ever been on and have been saving up for it for a couple years. She only pays £300/m for rent and utilities at her mom's house and shouldn't have any other large expenses as her car has been paid off for a year.
When I told her she would be paying most of her own trip she initially agreed and didn't have a problem with it. A week ago I was confirming dates and prices with her before I booked and she decided that she no longer wanted to pay for the trip. I only wanted her to pay £1400 for the trip about 600 less than the price per person.
I understand it's expensive for a young adult but she had previously agreed knowing this is what I would expect her to pay and said she was saving for the trip. I also told her she didn't need to pay me all in one go but that I needed at least £700 from her before I book the trip and she could pay the rest within a year. I think this is reasonable.
I've put off booking the holiday for the time being in the hopes she'll come around. I've told her that if she doesn't agree to pay then the rest of the family will still go without her and she'll miss out. She thinks it's unfair that she has to pay when I'm paying for the rest of kids (they're children).
She pointed out we never went on a vacation like this when she was still a child (we mostly did caravan holidays in UK/France) and I'm therefore giving her siblings experiences she never got. She also says her friend's parents still pay for them to go on holiday with their family. My younger daughter is also upset about the possibility of going without her sister and says it will ruin the holiday for her.
My ex-wife also thinks I'm being unreasonable as she agrees with our daughter about her not having the same experiences as the younger kids because we had less money when she was younger. My daughter's stepdad has offered to pay me the initial £700, but I feel weird about taking money from him.
As an adult I really think my daughter she take on the responsibility for paying for herself, but WIBTA if I don't let her come if she continues to refuse?
Edits:
I'm paying around 11k for this trip which is roughly a quarter of my yearly income. I wanted my daughter to pay £1400 which is maybe 6% of her yearly income. And yes she does only have minimal expenses, £300 for rent is nothing where we live and she couldn't rent a bedsit for double the price.
A large percentage of her income is disposable and she saves lots living at home. Bear in mind I have a mortgage, soaring electric & gas bills, as well as 4 minors to provide for. She's had 9 months to save 700 but didn't even need to because she already had more than £700 saved 9 months ago.
She now has another year to get me the other £700 and I have no plans about being that strict about payback. This summer she went with friends for a few days to Disneyland Paris, I paid £300 towards this trip as a her birthday gift. This summer when we went on a cheap holiday to Cornwall, I paid for all her expenses then.
My daughter helped plan this trip from the start and we democratically chose almost every aspect as a family and she knew from the start how much I expected her to cover for this holiday. If she had said this didn't work for her, I could of picked different/cheaper holiday.
The assumption that my daughter is regularly being treated unfairly to her siblings is not accurate. When I was her age, I was already her father and working 2 jobs (happily) to provide a good quality of life for my daughter and her mother. I am happy that my daughter's young adult life is more carefree than mine got to be.
If she was struggling financially or even just living on her own paying rent/bills I would never ask her to pay this much for a trip. And yeah, I have weird feelings about my daughter's stepdad for always refusing to be the bad guy and let our daughter learn to be more responsible.
Here's what people had to say in the comments:
Ambitious_Policy_936 writes:
You feel weird about taking money from her stepdad, but not her? Yta.
lightblue_sky writes:
I think OP knows he messed up when he realized 22f's stepdad was willing to step up when OP won't.
Nomeindecisi writes:
Stepdad is paying a portion for 1 person. Op is paying fully for 6. Not really fair to compare the two. That being said, if 700 is being paid then 700 is being paid. Why stepdad didn't just give it to the stepdaughter to give to op, who knows, but not sure why it matters where the 700 comes from in the first place.
HarleyHix writes:
Mad props to the stepdad. At least she'll have one father figure when this one alienates her.
SwiftieAtTheDisco writes:
I have a feeling step-dad will be walking her down the aisle if she ever gets married.
DontAskMeChit writes:
Aren't you ashamed as a father that another man has more compassion for your daughter than you do? YTA. Make it right and pay her way for this FAMILY vacation.
Fickle-Seat-1654 writes:
NTA. Now that I am in my 20’s if I was to go on a family trip then I would be expected to pay my way and I’m okay with that because my parents don’t have that kind of money to pay for everyone.
Jessie-yessie writes:
YTA for sure. You said you w been saving up for years, she hasn’t had time to get that kind of footing. And she never got an experience like this as a kid, so don’t you think her time is overdue for a treat? Like seriously, you’re going to exclude her and have her miss out on more? And clearly the siblings seem taken aback by this…