How much 'pocket money' for a 16yo girl?

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I know this has been done lots, but what is the going rate? At the moment DD only gets £10 a month but we pay for most things. I know of others who get significantly more but are expected to pay for everything themselves. Please can you share your experiences?

I and all my friends had a job at 16 (despite having very comfortable home lives- all worked as waitresses on Friday and Saturday nights in local restaurants) and twenty years ago would have been bringing home a couple of hundred pounds a month.
I think all 16 year olds should be doing something part time- regardless of whether they actually need to.

Mine works every Sunday and earns about £150 plus tips per month. She also gets another £200 per month allowance from her Dad (he also pays for her phone). I pay for netflix and Spotify and school meals. She pays for all of her socialising as well as toiletries and clothing and anything for friends birthdays etc.

My mum started giving me my half (I have a brother) of the family allowance when I was 16. Don't know if it's still called that, but I think it was about £80 a month. From that I had to pay for my college lunches (I was also free to make sandwiches and take them from home, she still paid for all the food) anything else I needed for college (nothing really past the first week or so), clothes I needed, trips out, and anything else I wanted.

I also earned money weekly from a paper round, and my grandparents gave me £20 a month. You're looking at about £200 a month in total, and I saved quite a bit of that.

She gets £100 a month. Expectation is she keeps on top of the dishwasher for it. Reality doesn’t always meet the expectation.

Her phone is a family expense, as are Netflix and Spotify.

She pays for just about all her stuff. I provide generic toiletries, and will buy underwear for her as she is not able to pop to Primark for a couple of tee shirt bras as many of her peers can.

If she babysits her younger brothers for me I’ll give her a little extra, usually to cover a takeaway or a charity shop session.

Wow £10 a month is nothing!!

Our 15 year old gets £10 a week, but she needs a bus pass for school so she gets to use that socially as well.

We pay for her phone, all clothes and any other school expenses etc. She also gets £10 a week dinner money in addition to taking her packed lunch

DD is 15, she gets £15. Mil pays her phone bill - £18 a month. She works Saturdays at a local tea shop and gets £12 a week babysitting 6 year old twins for 3 hours every Wednesday night.

My 14 year old gets 80€ a month. She pays for all her clothes and social costs. She can use family toiletries (own brand supermarket shampoo, shower gel etc) but if she wants her own special ones she pays for them.

I pay for school specified costs and outings as a family (if we all go to the cinema together I pay, if she goes with friends she pays).

We have a contract :) she wrote versions, we negotiated it and when we agreed signed it

We've had the arrangement since she was 13 and the amount won't go up or change until she leaves school. We live rurally and part time work is unrealistic.

It works well as an educational arrangement and practically.

My son is 13 and we have just upped his pocket money from £3 a week to £5 a week. He is well aware that pocket money will stop at 16 and he needs to have a part time job then.

All three of mine had/ have jobs (youngest dd is 16 now). The older two worked pt through school starting at 15 (lifeguarding). One was dancing 15 hours a week and took on some teaching there too. The good thing about sports/ dance is that the training regimen instils self discipline and so they are usually motivated enough to study, train and work as well. At 19 she’s in third year microbiology. Working alongside everything else is a great way to learn how to balance commitments. Dd1 works pt at university - so far she hasn’t had to take out any student loans and (fingers crossed) might graduate debt free. It’s entirely down to her work ethic and totally wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t worked through secondary school.
That said, youngest dd (now 16) can only work in the summer Holidays (she trains 4 full days a week so has to catch up on her y11 stuff late in the evenings as she has to miss a lot of school to train. She worked full time all summer (end of year 10 at 15) to help pay for her training program and spends.
My 17yo is on his gap year working to travel to Japan in the new year - he started work at 13 dishwashing before he was old enough to lifeguard.
I’m not a monster - we pay for their phones and if they need anything. But for general funsies or clothes that they just fancy, or out with friends, they earn their own money. It hasn’t affected their grades. Dd2 is planning on medicine. I’m not entirely sure how we raised three kids without pocket money, but they don’t seem particularly damaged by it

How much per month would people say is reasonable for basic clothes and trainers? (no school uniform) That the teen can add to if they want pricier brands?

It's all very well issuing blanket decrees that teenagers should have part time jobs, but we as parents have chosen where the family lives and in many cases the location of the family home makes school aged teens finding a Saturday/ after school job extremely unrealistic.

AuntyElle my teen doesn't have school uniform and her feet have stopped growing (so shoes don't get grown out of and suddenly all need replacing) and 80€ (£70) per month works for her. She saves 10€ in a seperate online account each month which so far she's never used (of her own accord, I didn't tell her to but she knows DH and I save) and plans what she needs/ wants.

She spent 70€ on Vans a couple of months ago, but not on the spur of the moment, she'd saved 20€ two months in a row seperately for the Vans and then 30€ allowance went on them the month she bought them.

She's never once asked for money since she switched from pocket money to allowance about 18 months ago, because we drew up a clear contract which she wrote out, defining exactly what she's responsible for and what we pay for.

She buys all clothes except the sports kit her football team ask us to buy, and I pay for bras if she goes up a size because that's out of her control (in the same way if feet were still growing I'd pay for shoes if outgrown rather than just wanted). She pays for all social expenses with her friends but not her entrance etc on family outings. She pays for her actual phone but not her usage. She buys people birthday and Christmas presents although she doesn't have to, it's her choice.

It's plenty. More would create the wrong approach to disposable income imo as later when working with all bills to pay many people don't have much leftover to spend on just any old thing they fancy.

It is really difficult for 16yo to find P/T work IME .

My DD ( 17) is too young for places that sell alcohol for example . (There was a job in our local Co-Op but had to be 18+)
She applied to resturants and retail too .

My DS has been searching 'Indeed' , places like B&Q can be flexible but he has his Uni to work round .
And the number of places that don't even acknowledge !

But - pocket money.
We pay for phone , she has a travel card, I buy her toiletries and essential clothes (shoes, jeans, coat etc) . She doesn't wear school uniform now .
We give her lunch money but she sometimes takes lunch from home
She buys anything else .

• Unhelpful observation I know but... it really amuses me how adamant parents are on threads like this that teens should be able budget and manage on very limited amounts

When I was 15/16 I had a weekend job, used to get between £50-80 a weekend. Paid for my own phone credit, all clothes, buses and socialising. My best friend used to get £160 a month allowance and didn't have to work. Had buses and phone credit paid for by parents. Im going back 17/18 years.

Mine 16 year ago just got everything paid for days out Xbox games etc he said he didn’t need any money

My dd2 is almost 16 and gets £75 a month, plus phone paid and Spotify.

She has to pay for outings, bus fares at the weekend (she has a school bus pass that doesn't work on the weekend), any fancy clothes and make-up etc.

We buy basic clothes and shoes, toiletries, family outings to eg the cinema, holidays etc. And keep the fridge stocked up with stuff for school lunches - if she (or her big brother, 17) want to eat out at lunchtime that's their money, packed lunches are free!

She's starting a weekend job soon, and so will be buying more of her own stuff, and we'll expect her to save a bit of that.

I had a full time job at 16.

I paid for everything myself

DisneyMadeMeDoIt that's why the amount and what's paid for needs agreeing between parents and child. Your point as a 14 year old should have led to a discussion and negotiation and decision that you'd continue to use family toiletries and have your bus pass paid for, and budget for the rest out of your allowance (or whatever arrangement left you effectively neither better nor worse off but responsible for budgeting and prioritising a portion of your expenditure and never putting your hand out for random top ups).

The allowance is IMO the right thing at the point where teen and parent disagree about spending priorities - for example I use own brand shampoo, shower gel, deodorant etc and keep the family bathroom stocked with those and sanitary ware for everyone who needs them to use freely. However if DD wants a brand of shower gel costing 5 times more than the one everyone else uses she can choose whether it's enough of a priority to spend her allowance on, or just use the same own brand stuff as the rest of us.

If that makes you laugh then fine, it's a peculiar thing to laugh about but it does nobody else any harm.

The point of an allowance is for teens to think about what to prioritise and not just expect everything bought for them and either passively accept or angrily rail against seemingly arbitrary parental decisions without any control except by wheedling/ begging/ tantrums.

Kids with no money of their own are generally either clueless and very passive and unthinking about money or very entitled with no sense of financial priorities.

I started getting an allowance after a horrendous clothes shopping trip with my mum during which she vetoed everything I liked. At around the same time she shrank my absolute favourite top in the tumble dryer and insisted it was still wearable and didn't need replacing and I was ungrateful.

I was very happy to take over responsibility for buying and washing my own clothes at that point, and the allowance system took the stress off my mum too.

Mine gets 50 a month and I pay for her phone

We give 16 year old DD ( in year 12) £15 a week, and she works 14 hours a week in one of the big supermarkets, which pays her £116 a week. We still buy all of the clothes and selfcare products that we think are essential and pay her phone contract and bus fares and meals at school. She's working hard and enjoying having her own money to spend. She's also saving money into a Help to Buy ISA and some other savings products, and really learning how to manage her own money.

My teen doesn't go out at all apart from the holidays, and there arent buses so i drive her. She's also having a driving lesson every week (shes just 17) plus i will pay her train fare if she wants to go somewhere on the train. She's happy with the amount, which is the equivalent to a 2 or 3 day month working at the local pub

£45 p/m but I pay for phone, Netflix etc, I’ve noticed he tends to spend it on treat foods mostly

Thanks, AgnesGrundy, that’s really helpful.