How much allowance for teenagers?

Roberta1

Yikes! I give my 13 year old £4 per week!

I buy all clothes, food and school dinners, but this is her only spending money

gibson123

£150 is not a lot of money if that is ALL you get.

Here is a breakdown of my daughters budget:

Bus fares - 24 days at £1.30 = £31.20
Guitar lessons 4 x £10 = £40
Horse-riding = 2 x £18 = £36
Clothes tin = £20
Lunches = £10 (for drinks)
Spends = £12.80

If she wants anything else she doesn't bother with horse-riding.

Mojisola

If you're working out a monthly payment which is intended to cover things that happen every week, you may have to allow a bit extra -

12 payments to cover 4 weeks spends = 48 weeks.
Weeks in year = 52.

We worked out our kids' monthly money by looking at weekly money multiplied by 52 and divided by 12.

Some months there was a bit more to spend out and they had to save for that from the short months.

FatVonD

I won't be showing this thread to my son :eek:

DS was getting £28 per month but he's opted to spend £17 of that on a contract phone (well, £12, the other £5 is insurance because he will lose it) so that's now down to £11 but that's just for spending on games/magazines etc.

He is generally quite good with money though, he usually has any Christmas/birthday money sitting in his account for ages. His phone is on Virgin as is our land line and my PAYG so we can call each other for free.

I pay for lunches/clothes and give him money if he's going out with his friends. The thing I find odd is people saying their kids have to buy their own toiletries, am I missing something, do you mean if they want something special other than what is normally in the bathroom?

martinthebandit

How much :eek

Spoil the bairn, ruin the adult springs to mind

Still, each to their own I suppose.

But you really are storing up problems for their future

jane130

Crikey your kids are lucky , My 16 year old gets £20 a month and we pay her £15 mobile bill but we also buy all the clothes and toiletries , pay for school outings etc - I was only saying to my hubby the other day maybe we should start giving her more of an allowance as she will be starting 6th form in sept and won;t be wearing school uniform everyday .

jinty271

martinthebandit wrote: »

How much :eek

Spoil the bairn, ruin the adult springs to mind

Still, each to their own I suppose.

But you really are storing up problems for their future

Do you have a family?

I only ask because you don't qualify your judgement based on experience. Did you try this experiment and it went wrong?

I should add that the regime we follow with our 15 year old, was also applied to our (now) grown up sons (23 and 21 years old ) . They both have their own house - allbeit rented while they save for a deposit- plus a car and all the other things that go along with being an adult. They most certainly are not ruined, and have worked very hard. My lads work extremely hard, putting in very long hours in the hotel industry, and are the most polite, well grounded lads you could ever meet. Neither of them have a ha'penny of debt , either, and pay all their household bills in advance.
Therefore it has worked very successfully for our family, however I suppose it does depend on the child, and whether they are mature enough to understand budgeting.

Certainly, none of my children were spoiled, and we absolutely did not store up problems for the future, in fact, quite the opposite.

Shandygirl

Roberta1 wrote: »

Yikes! I give my 13 year old £4 per week!

I buy all clothes, food and school dinners, but this is her only spending money

Sound the perfect amount to me,i used to get 50p a week till i started work.

jinty271

It would also be an interesting experiment for the people on this thread who give smaller allowances, but all seem to meet more of the expenses, to actually sit down and work out the numbers ( honestly) of how much they hand over every month - they might be very surprised !

DylanO

Youngest brother (15) gets £300 a month to cover everything. It's not that much when you consider that his bus and train fares to school cost over £120 a month.

He doesn't get paid for household chores - everyone does/did them because we should, but, like the rest of us, if he wanted any more then he would go and work at the business for a few hours/days, depending on the amount. He (and his friends) make a bloody fortune come summer when it's time to clear out the rubbish left by the previour tenants so repairs can be made.

17-year-old gets £400, and with the same deal as above, and my 22-year-old sister gets £800 every four weeks, but that's because she's at university in a stupidly expensive city and isn't allowed to work due to her course.