Glory box/hope chest, anyone still doing them?

[Mother Goose]

But I also wouldn't charge my kids board either, they're my chickens and I'll take care of them as long as they need me to. Although, charging something you will ultimately give back with interest is a clever idea, one I might entertain.

You make it sound like charging older children board is a negative thing - as though it is done to benefit the parents or shirk responsibility. But I don't perceive it this way. My Dad had me pay a nominal amount of my weekly wages to him for board. It was a fixed percentage of my income (which changed from week to week as I was full time casual with penalties for various shifts) - so I always had money to do as I saw fit. My Dad was a single parent and struggling to pay off massive debts incurred by my Mother so I wouldn't have begrudged him asking me to contribute to the house as a full time working adult. It taught me independence, financial responsibility, and budgeting - much easier with a Dad who would say "Ok, you can't pay me your board this week because you stuffed up. But you have to make it up - lets work out a payment plan" instead of a landlord knocking on the door with an eviction notice because I couldn't pay rent. I believe that adult children who are working should stand on their own two feet. If my DD gets a job whilst in school, I won't expect her to pay board - but I would expect her to purchase some of the "optional extra's" she wants (like magazines, movie tickets, those outrages pants her Dad would have a heart attack if he saw on her and so forth). I feel that paying board (whether they get it back or not) is helping them to learn financial responsibility - an essential life skill.

[Cranky Kitten]

I'm another that didn't really have a "glory box" as such, more raided my mum's holiday house for a few bits and pieces to help with setting up my first place and spent a couple of weekends trawling garage sales (gold mine for fitting out a house on a shoestring budget) to get my first lot of furniture and so on.

The things she and my aunt between them taught me were far more valuable than any monetary/material assistance - namely how to manage a home, cook, clean and look after myself. I've never forgotten my mother's advice when I first rented an apartment on my own to never ever ever get behind in the rent, and always pay the power bill on time. Anything else can be sacrificed if it gets bad enough but those were the essentials.

[briggsy's girl]

i got myself through uni (living on campus) and into my first house not having to buy anything as mum had essentially set me up with a glory box. some of it was useless trinkety stuff that is still in boxes (only kept because i am sentimental and they come from my Nan!), but old mugs, the dinner set they got when they married etc - they were still fine for me to use when i went to uni!! they bought a kitchen set (pots etc) that we were still using until we moved last year (donated to a family in need cos we don't have enough room to store them for E at this stage). there was some awesome tupperware in there too - but also some real crappy old stuff from my Nan that had picked up sort of a napthalene smell that i've not been able to get out in 10 years lol

we will eventually start one for E - cutlery, crockery, utensils etc. so much of what we use every day is from DH's mum and is still in fantastic condition (cake making stuff etc) that one day i'm sure it will still be fine to hand on to her. wish stuff now wasn't so "disposable"!

ETA - not sure i'd do anything with material unless i knew it was good storage - just in case moths or vermin got in.

[Amy_jellybean]

OMG, I just wrote a massive post on tapatalk and then my phone battery died and I lost the whole thing

My mum and I made a joint decision when I was 13 about my glory box. She asked if I wanted to start one and I said yes

It started with smaller things like cutlery, dinnerset, mugs etc. When I got to about 16 we started buying linen, towels, toaster, kettle etc and we just kept adding to it. By the time DH and I moved into our first rental together we literally had everything, the only thing we had to buy was washer, fridge etc and most of our family helped us out with hand me downs.

About 2 years later we decided to build our own house so we moved back in with my mum and dad to save on rent. We stayed with them for 6 months and we wanted to pay board but they wouldnt take it They said they wanted us to save the money and put it towards stuff for our house. So we cooked twice per week and always gave them some money towards groceries etc.

By the time we moved out of their house we had saved around $25k and had enough money to buy all new furniture and appliances for our new house. We gave all our old stuff to friends to help them out.

Im so glad I had a glory box, it saved us SOOOO much money when we moved out of home. I will def be starting one for my kids and I can honestly say if mum and dad hadnt help us get on our feet so much from the begining there is no way I would be sitting by the pool in the greek islands sipping a ****tail while I write this post.

[Floweryfields]

I did one - was only talking about this yesterday - I used to layby a pile of 'homey' stuff regularly and when I moved out, I had pretty much everything I needed for my home.