Pocketmoney Discussion Thread

fay144

When I was 10, I was given about £6 per week, which broke down as:

80p * 5 days for school dinner money
50p per week for brownies
50p per week for karate or swimming
£1 left over for spending

Anything left over from dinner money etc was mine to spend.

I think 7 is still a bit young to introduce that sort of budgeting? Depends on the child, though, I guess.

System

my daughter gets £20 a month [she prefers monthly to weekly] with the possibility of earning an extra £5 if she does all the "jobs" does well at school and sees to the guinea pig without moaning. she likes playing with it but is not so happy to clean it out!

medge_2

I've just caught up with this forum and must say it's great to hear people's viws about pocket money. I feel you have to do what you feel happy with & every family is different. I've tried pocket money for chores but it doesn't seem to work for me. (I think I'm too soft)! My daughter is 17 and doing 'A' levels so she gets £50 put into her bank account each month and I pay her £15 mobile bill. My son is 14 and gets £5 a week & I top up his mobile with £10 every few months. I have to watch him, though, as he's still at the stage of spending his money on sweets & comics!
They do help around the house but it's a constant battle, even to get them to put their plates in the dishwasher.
I think it's a good idea to start a pocket money chart when they're young so they get used to it. Too little too late for mine!

foreversomeday

I'm 19 and don't really remember what pocket money I got when I was younger. I remember in primary school we had a "sweetie day" and we got to go to the shop on the way home from school and pick some sweets, but we didn't have pocket money. I used to have a subscription to Art Attack magazine and my (younger) sister got Noddy. I remember being all excited on the way home from school if my mum said it had arrived that day!

I know we did get pocket money when we got older, possibly late in primary school or when we started secondary school. We used to get a fiver or tenner when we went to visit my Grandma in the school holidays, which seemed loads at the time! I think until a proper weekly system was started we just got given a certain amount of money for the day if we were going anywhere to buy souvenirs. We did have weekly activities - ballet, brownies and then a music theatre group, but I never associated any of these with costing money, apart from that we could only afford to do one at a time. I remember choosing music theatre over guides.

As teenagers I remember the figure of £6 a week, but seem to remember it going up by £1 on each birthday. My mum was always short of money so we knew we couldn't ask for anything big but if we wanted to buy something we couldn't really afford easily, e.g. a mobile phone (And we could persuade her it was needed..!) she'd usually let us have about half the money from our savings accounts, which were topped up by our grandparents. I wasn't allowed to touch that account without mum's permission until I was 18. We had free school meals and lived close enough to school to walk, so that wasn't an issue. I paid my own mobile phone bill (PAYG) and the occasional times when I got the bus to meet a friend in town I paid for too, as well as things like going to the cinema or friends' birthday presents. School trips, books and the like were paid out of our savings accounts.

My mum tried to implement chores for pocket money but it never really worked as she'd forget which had and hadn't got done, and by that time I had a paper round anyway. We used to have a whiteboard with a list of jobs under each of our names which needed doing by the end of the day, unless we had good reason. They always got done because we had talked about the system beforehand and agreed to it.

I got a saturday job in a shop when I was 16 and didn't have any pocket money from then. I used my own money to pay for absolutely everything except clothes, although I didn't pay keep. (I was getting EMA which covered food and bus travel during the day/week.) I got £16.?? a month, equivalent to the child benefit paid to my mum that wouldn't have been available had I come out of education and got a full-time job, to spend on clothes but I'd have probably got into trouble if I'd saved it up and bought a pair of £80 trainers!

I think this approach worked really well for me. I wasn't happy with my pocket money, so I was offered the chance to up it by doing extra jobs - eg cleaning the bathroom. I declined because I was too lazy! But I got the message - a little bit of effort can get you more money, and decided to get myself a paper round. I still use the idea for the clothing allowance and put a little bit aside each month (I'm working full-time now) for essentials like clothes, shampoo etc. so that I know how much money I have to spend on other stuff like DVDs and don't end up unable to afford deodorant:rotfl:

Interestingly enough my OH never got pocket money at all, just asked if he wanted something and as soon as he was old enough he got a full time job, a credit card and an overdraft, and racked up loads of debt! His attitude to money seems more, spend now, think later, whereas I tend to think it through first and work out what I have to spend.

He still thinks his way is better! I'm trying to convert him to MS ways!:A

3KIDSNOMONEY

My kids 11, 8 and 4 don't get pocket money. I did try it, but as they don't even tidy up after themselves, i.e. put washing in basket i decided to stop it. I do however pay for most things for them but they don't get any regular source of money. Wish I could work out a way to get them to tidy up after themselves,

bendabomb

My ten year old daughter started secondary school in September. The bus fare is 9.00 per week. i give her a tenner and it's up to her if she walks or rides. So far she has caught the bus once! She uses this money to buy presents for friends' birthdays and for non-essential clothes.
It obviously depends on the nature of the child. This daughter is tighter than me and saves as much as she can, so I don't think it is wasted money. My younger girl is much more profligate, so I may have to think again when she gets to secondary school. At the moment she gets a fiver a month at nine yo.

LyndsayJ

Really interesting to read what other parents do. My eldest son (now age 10) has had pocket money since he was 5. He initially had 50p a week but we found that although he got really excited about going to the shops to spend it, all he could buy with that amount was sweets, so we increased it to £1 so he could see the point of saving up for a toy sometimes.

He now gets £15 a month, of which £5 goes directly into his bank account. This is partly so that the remaining £10 can be reduced or increased depending on things like homework and bedroom mucking-out and partly so that he always has some money in his bank. This is because one of the main reasons I think pocket money is a useful tool for children is for them to learn about giving presents (as well as getting them!) and I think they should make some contribution towards the main presents at christmas and birthdays (ie for me, dad and grandparents etc). I don't expect them to pay for the whole thing but do feel that, just like me, they have to make some small sacrifice in order to do something nice for the people they love. We feel we'd rather get something small that the children have chosen and contributed towards than something bigger that they've had no input into.
Not everybody's way, I know, but there we are, we all have different ideas on these things, as this discussion has shown!

sarah*a

DD currently gets - nothing! I top up her phone by £10 when I can afford to. I buy her what she needs toiletry wise and basic clothes etc. She gets the occasiional treat if she comes shopping with me - but only if she doesn't moan about how long it takes/boring shop/carrying bags etc.

I give her £10 a week which is for school lunches for 4 days (1 day she goes to school from her mum's) - I have agreed to match anything she saves at the beginning of December for her to buy freinds/close family xmas gifts with (the proviso being that she must have a sensible lunch everyday not just go hungry) In the 3 weeks since she went back to school she has saved a total of - nothing!:p No chrimbo pressy for me then!!

However, she is 13 in 3 weeks and we have sat down in the last few days and agreed that we will open an account for her - with a cash card - and once a month I will pay £10 into it and I will also top up her phone once a month - making it £20 a month from us. From this she is expected to buy anything I do not consider essential. She is also to buy her own friends b'day gifts (with the odd exception of really long-term close friends who we would buy for anyway) friends xmas gifts and close family xmas gifts.


She also gets (far too much) money from her mother - which DD calls her 'have this so I don't have to actually spend time with you' money - this she can spend on whatever she likes. If she manages not to lose it!! :rolleyes:

:cool:

x-Princess-Vikki-x

I'm 17 and get £35 a month from my parents as pocket money & £10 a week from EMA.

i also get money at the end of every year depending on my grades at school/college.

i have no part time job but i am looking, and my mum says that if i dont find a job soon i wont be getting anymore pocket money lol.

i suppose i'm quite lucky after reading this! But i do save my money and dont spend a lot of it

sunshine62_2

[FONT=&quot]My DD (10yo) currently receives pocket money as set out below. The £2.50 she ends up with in cash each week is based on the value of a magazine and some sweets. Her brother, (8yo) is on a similar arrangement. In theory, this works well for us. In practice, as they never handle the money for clothes, etc., I feel they don't perceive it as a real or necessary expenditure. My next plan is for them to put the money into "piggy banks" themselves as opposed to me checking it off on a list.

£ 6.50 per week
[FONT=&quot]Savings - £ 1.00[/FONT]
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Clothes - £ 1.00[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Gifts - £ 1.00[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Charity - £ 1.00[/FONT]