Pocket Money

[JumpingJackFlashing]

Just out of interest, at what age did you start giving your DC's pocket money and how much?

[DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen]

6- £2 per week.

[JiltedJohnsJulie]

Think they both started getting 50p at 6. DD currently gets £1.50 a week, dependant on jobs, DS is 13 and gets a monthly allowance paid into a bank acvount which he pays for his phone from.

[JumpingJackFlashing]

Thank you. DD is turning 6 soon and i was thinking of 50p to a £1 and it going up by 50p every birthday as it did when i was a kid. But i wasn't sure if this was reasonable these days! :)

[JiltedJohnsJulie]

I think it's fine. They have so little concept of money at that age so you're just getting them used it handling it

[RayofSun]

DS8 started getting £1.50 per week aged 6. I met a lady who worked in debt management at CAB. She does this with her daughter and recommended the following. She divided whatever amount into 3 eg 3 x 50p. Her DD has 3 piggy banks: every day spending, short term saving and long term saving. She gets to choose how she distributes her money between the 3 piggy banks but at the end of each quarter/ year (your choice), whatever her DD has put into long term savings, she matches. She teaches her the value of saving and the concept of interest and growing capital.

I thought it was genius!

[Sillytheothecat]

I read an American book - The Opposite of Spoiled and roughly followed their advice. By boys 6 and 8 get £2 to spend, £1 to save and £1 to give each week. We started about 6-8 months ago. Works reasonably well, although they do eat more sweets now as not an awful lot else to spend money on week to week. The younger one will buy something in any gift shop whereas the older one buys a few sweets and saves the rest. Not sure yet if that's age or just different characters (I suspect the latter!)

[JiltedJohnsJulie]

I still the book any good Silly?

[Sillytheothecat]

Quite good, bit too American and very much based on very wealthy families (or at least well above average income), but I like the idea of children learning to manage their own money. I've a feeling the amazon reviews give you a good feeling for the main messages.

[skankingpiglet]

We've just started giving our 2.8yo money. It's a lot sooner than we'd planned but she's been asking a lot of questions about money and she's always been someone who's motivated by a reward of something like chocolate buttons and smarties. We figured it's better than sugary bribes. She gets coins (1, 2, or 5p) for completing chores (putting clothes in the basket etc) or fulfilling certain daily conditions which would otherwise be on a sticker chart, which over a week adds up to around 75p. We let her spend it at the weekend if she wants to, but so far she has chosen to spend some and save some. Her nest egg is growing She of course doesn't fully grasp the concept of money by any stretch (she can only count to 20 for a start!), but that's the point of doing it. She was going around the supermarket just chucking things into our basket as she fancied it, so I'm only aiming to have her begin to understand why that's a problem initially.

As she gets older we'll introduce guaranteed pocket money split into saving and spending, in addition to chore money. It's what my DM did with me and I think it worked quite well.

[MrsTerryPratchett]

As soon as they won't eat it

Three in DDs case. Her age every week in dollars. So that would be half their age in the U.K.

[ShelaghTurner]

7 and she got £2 a week. Forgot her pay rise at 8 and at just turned 9 now I raised it to £2.50 per week. It goes onto her Osper card monthly so she can use it on Amazon etc.

[JumpingJackFlashing]

That is a really good idea //RayofSun, thanks! I will definitely do something similiar with DD. Probably do 50p long term saving and 50p spends just to get her used to it and match her savings at the end of the year. I will give her a pay rise on her next birthday!

[RueDeDay]

DD was 4, got £1 a week but if she saved for something I matched it. She spent the first few months buying kinder eggs and now (age 6 and on £2 per week) is regularly saving for and buying things that cost £10-£20. For me this is a better system than 'long term savings' which are really hard to grasp for her, but it still teaches her to budget and save for things that she really wants.

[skankingpiglet]

MrsTerryPratchett I had to explain the first couple of times they didn't contain chocolate.