Caroline Duddridge, the grandmother of six, and mother of five, charged her family for the christmas dinner she hosted. Duddridge stated that she charged her family due to the rising food and electricity prices.
The price she charged her family had changed due to their gender and age, as she charged $3 to her youngest, 3-year-old grandchildren, and the ones betwee 9 and 12 are charged $6, and adult males $20 and adult females are charged $13. As the grandchildren doesn’t work, the parents are covering their “bills.”
Duddridge had shared that the family members who doesn’t want to pay, are uninvited. She stated, “Expecting one person to pay for the entire meal and prepare it, clean up, [and] have their heating and electricity used is too much. The amount I charge for dinner includes electricity.”
Before she charged her family, she created a family holiday expense jar, so her family would leave money in it for the holidays to come.
The jar deal ended with argument, as she shared, “Some weeks everyone paid, and other weeks some of the kids forgot or didn’t have change. It ended up with some of my adult kids paying more and others not paying as much.”
She lost her husband when it was 2015, and she is receiving a monthly widow pension of $1,200. And she had no other money source to create a budget for holidays. As whole her family comes to dinner, she needs money to provide food to them.
After the age of 60, she started to work again, as she couldn’t live with the payment she received as a widow. She worked as a assistant to a teacher.
In 2016, she started the money jar, because she couldn’t afford the dinner she was supposed to host at the holidays.
As she is aware that some of her family members are not happy with her charging, she said, “I know some will moan,”
“But I will eventually receive cash from them for the meal.”
And her family is free to bring beverages to the holiday dinners, as she explained.
What do you think? Let us know.
