Talk to me about pocket money/allowances for dc, please!

[tenlittlecygnets]

How much do you give your 13yo and 16yos? What do they have to buy/wjhat can they buy with the money?

Curently we give ds £2.50 per week but he can do chores and earn more. He just buys what he wants - we buy him everything he needs.

dd 16 gets £40 per month but this includes her buying any clothes that are not essentials, plus going out money. She had a PT job too. She does no chores (at least, she didn't before lockdown...)

Would be interested to hear from others! Are we being mean??

I'm also wary of taking away that need... To earn money and go and get what they want... Tricky balance..

12yo DD1 gets £15 a month on her Osper card and her phone paid. 8yo DD gets £8 per month on her Go Henry. Both get money given to them randomly by my dad.

She needs mine went into sixth form they got £80 a month, for going out and clothes. I figured it was bare minimum survival.

But they all had jobs on top of that; DD in particular regularly earned over £100 a week. I pointed out that she had more to spend on herself than she was likely to have for years, as a student or young professional in first job and flat. To be fair, she did save some.

DD13 gets an allowance: £70 per month. We pay for her phone, school lunches, school uniform. She pays for all her other clothes, socialising, presents etc. She's pretty careful with her money, and always has some left over (she budgets for Christmas, for example).
Primary DC get £7 a month, which they can increase up to £10 by doing jobs. Will review once they're at secondary school and more socially independent. One of them, particularly, I suspect will find it hard to manage money.
I want them to have enough money that they can make some decisions for themselves other than just budgeting hard, but not so much they don't have to think about it. (I realise that we are lucky to be able to think of it in those terms rather than strictly in terms of what we can afford.)
We are saving them all some money every month for when they're older as well - though I imagine those accounts aren't doing to well at the moment!

Ds 14 gets £50 a month for socialising, sweets and drinks and anything he buys when out with friends. Also £8 a week from my mum so £82 a month in total. He is quite good at saving. We wouldn't expect him to buy any clothes or necessities like deodorant out of that. We pay for his judo and his guitar lessons and obviously all school lunches etc. He willingly gives up almost 4 hours a week volunteering at a local community cinema(normally) which he loves so that is valuable work but unpaid.

No set chores here either but will go to the shop for us, lay the table, make us a cuppa, empty the bin.

Mine get £20 a month till they are 16, then £50 a month but they pay for their own home clothes. Stops at 18 unless they go to Uni.

Oh yes, phone and school trips paid for too. It's not like teens can really get a Saturday job nowadays and clothes etc don't come cheap. I guess it makes a big difference only having one dc as we don't have to share the money round.

Both teens get £40 per month and phones paid for.

They also get brought essential clothes e.g would buy jeans/coat/jumper if they needed them due to a growth spurt/change of season.

If they want to just have lots of clothes but don’t actually need them then that comes out of their own money and they often have vouchers from birthdays/Christmas.

TBH they quite often run out of money as one weekend cinema trip can easily cost £20 and the same for a trip into town and a meet up at Costa.

They’re both good kids and grateful so I don’t mind giving them the odd £20 here and there on these occasions.

Thanks. Lots of interesting responses. I think we need to give ds a bit more responsibility - and money. DD is very good with money and good at budgeting: she buys a lot of clothes from Vinted, thus saving money, and sells on her clothes too.

£25 per month for both dd (16) and ds (13). They dont spend much of it tbh.

14 year old DD gets £30 a month which she usually spends on skincare, fake tan, body sprays and things like that. I buy all her clothes and necessities.

I gave mine (now 21 and 19) £25 a month plus paid for their phones and topped up their school account for snacks (they took a packed lunch every day). I did that until they were 16 then stopped and encouraged them to get a weekend job - which they did pdq!!

Oh and I paid for clothes, shoes, whatnot...