Funding teenagers - help please??

hayleyjg

Hi.

I am a newbie to this site and this is my first post.

I am looking for advice on the best way to fund teenagers expences. What do others do? Do you pay a monthly allowance out of which they have to buy everything (including clothes) and if so how much is appropriate. I have a 13 year old and need to come to grips with this issue as I know that I spend far too much on her each month!!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Alikay

Our 15 year old son gets £20 per month pocket money, plus about £5 per month (varies) from his grannies. 12 year old son gets £12 per month plus the same £5ish from the grans
This is just for them to spend on games,comics, sweets, presents for family etc and bus-fares into town if they meet friends but I usually give them lifts out and about.

If they have new clothes we will spend what we're willing (usually equiv. to Next/BHS prices) and if the item is more, they have to pay the difference. Sounds mean I know, but DS1 only wants cool branded stuff, and DS2 has a serious Converse habit and I simply won't pay that sort of price for what are basically plimsoles!!

Daughter who is nearly 18 and at college gets more (£75 per month) but has to do her own ironing and buy a lot more from it (haircuts,toiletries,stationery, undies etc). She doesn't get EMA and gets £20 per week from her job. She doesn't have a lot spare, I know but there are opportunities for her to gain extra (eg if she makes sarnies for college then she can pocket the £2.50 a day we give her for lunches). When she goes to uni next year she will be used to budgetting and not having a lot of spare cash.

wigginsmum

Stepson 16 gets £20/month pocket money and £30 contract phone. He works weekends and holidays in his Grandad's cafe to earn extra money. The phone was on condition that he would pay DH back - a year later we're still waiting for the first instalment, but DH won't chase him for it. He had a PAYG phone last year in DH's name paid by Direct Debit but ran up £250/worth of texts in just over a month so we confiscated it and had to pay off the debt with our savings. Personally I think he gets far too much and DH isn't strict enough with him, but that's another discussion.

Stepdaughter 12 gets £10/month pocket money but gets clothes and the occasional top-up for PAYG phone bought for her.

Neither of them live with us so I don't know what they get from their mother and stepfather.

Philippa36

My DS & DD get £10 per week ~ my DD (14) is happy with the amount and manages to make it last reasonably well. My DS (16) complains that everyone else gets more than he does and he can't manage :rolleyes:

I do buy clothes and other bits for them but only on an as they need it basis!

msmicawber

I've been thinking about this for a while, but have just done a new budget, so thought I'd put it off for another few months until I've checked that I haven't overlooked anything.

At the moment I give my 13 year old £5pw and 10 year old £4pw pocket money and am budgeting for clothes for the first time. Since my 13 year old DD isn't very good with money, I plan in the future to give her 2-weekly, then monthly pocket money and in the long run an allowance to get her clothes from. That way, I hope she'll learn to budget and the consequences of not budgetting. I'll do the same for DS when he's a little older too. I wouldn't ever expect them to buy shoes, though.

I don't know if that helps.

lynseyf

15 years ago when I started secondary school my mum started giving me £20 a week, this was £5 pocket money, £10 for lunch money and £5 for the bus ( we lived 2 miles from the school). If I walked and took sandwiches I got to keep the whole £20 as pocket money which I did.

I started working 10 hours a week at 17 and got another £20 for this (wish we had minimum wage then!) and was given the option of keeping on getting my pocket money and paying for everything myself ( clothes, haircuts, toiletries etc) or stopping getting pocket money and my mum keeping on buying my clothes etc. I took the later option as I liked being able to choose my own stuff.

When I left school at 18 I started working full time before I went to Uni then part time while at Uni and didn't get any more money off my mum. She did always however occasionally treat me or buy me a new winter coat if she thought I was looking taty (sp)

scoobydo_2

My kids are 14ds and 13 dd , I'm divorced from their dad and on my own . I give them £10 a month and they get the same from their dad each month . I buy their clothes and everything else the money they get is for buying what they want . I am choosy about what I buy for them which doesn't always go down well but they get the designer stuff I can afford from TKMAX , if they really want some thing they have to save .

janeawej

i give both dd's 13 & 14 £35 per month, they have to buy their clothes ect although u buy school uniform and exras and make sure they have a pair of shoes, coats and undies dd1 14has loads of cds and not many clothes dd2 13 has £400 in the bank and enough clothes!!! it seems to help them budget and i have had no complaints so far!

cheshiremum_2

My daughters are 20 and 24 now. From their early teens I gave them their family allowance. They had to manage this themselves which included clothes. It worked really well . They learnt to budget, and I never got mithered in the shops.

sundin13

I'm struggling with this too, DS (14) has been getting £5 pocket money per week, but then doing both an evening and morning paper round (£10 and £12 respectively). Once school starts in September I want him to give up his morning paper round because he's too tired - but I feel I need to offer him a way to make up the lost income.

• I can't increase his budget and make him responsible for clothes etc. because he will spend the money in mcdonalds
• I can't ask him to do more chores around the house, because in general he does an absolutely rubbish job - we have a daily battle over the dishes, which are his regular pocket money job
• I can't ask him to babysit his brothers, because he's just not mature enough
• I can't give him dinner money which he can keep if he makes sandwiches, because he'll not make sandwiches, just spend the money on Dr Pepper and chocolate bars.
  
  Oh, and then there's the phone top up. I want him to have credit on the phone so he can call me and let me know where he is...but then it gets used up - so what do I do. Pay for more myself? Let him do without, but then be worried because he can't call me?
  
  If anyone's got any suggestions I'd be most grateful

Savvy_Sue

sundin13 wrote:

Oh, and then there's the phone top up. I want him to have credit on the phone so he can call me and let me know where he is...but then it gets used up - so what do I do. Pay for more myself? Let him do without, but then be worried because he can't call me?

If anyone's got any suggestions I'd be most grateful

Well, you could call HIM even if he hasn't got credit, and make sure it's at the most embarrassing time possible. Or you could say "Yes you can go out IF you've got credit on your phone. No credit? Stay home ..."

Can he change to a Sunday morning paper round? Or Saturdays and Sundays?

Don't know if that helps at all ... it's my youngest who's the problem, too bone idle to get a job, and I think I'm going to have to stop funding his social life to get the message across to him that money doesn't grow on trees!