DD hasn't been giving in all the lunch money I have sent

[Cannotthinkofawittyusername]

DDs school uses an online payment system or a top up machine in school. It is a finger print payment system. She is in secondary.

I don't really keep tracks about her spending on it as most of the stuff they can buy is healthy, there is a limit each day of £5 and I was trying to give her some independence, I roughly know how much she spends each day so would be aware if massively different so all I do is tell her to tell me when the balance is low and give her the money. The payment system does not like my card type for some reason hence she tops up.

They have been a couple of occasions she has said a balance lower than I thought it should be but did not think much of it, just presumed that she had had extra snacks or breakfast food (no issue with this sometimes she feels like having breakfast at school) and give her extra. On a couple of occasions she has said that they have charged her twice for a drink or such (it has happened genuinely before) and she has told the finance office.

Last night she said a balance way lower than I thought so I dug out the log in details. Say I had given her £10 she had topped up £8 , If I had given her £5 she had topped up £4. Not enough to dramatically notice until it has built up.
I give her notes so there is little chance someone has been taken money from her. It is more likely she has used it for sweets or such in the shops on the way into school.

She does get £5 pocket money a week from grandparents plus phone top up and things from me so I am a bit annoyed tbh.

More of a wwyd really?

or do you mean £5's not much pocket money?

how old is she?
if she's buying sweets (instead of going to nightclubs) with the money I'm assuming she's still quite young?

Yes she has £5 pocket money a week that she can do what ever she wants with from Grandparents. I do not monitor that at all. It is not mine to monitor. Usually she buys a magazine and sweets or stationary with it.

I do not give her pocket money as I already pay for clubs she attends and top up her phone as she needs to always have credit due to the amount she travels to school and clubs. Plus competition fees and exam fees etc but if she is going to the cinema or somewhere special I will give her the money to go.

Aw it's normal. She's smart enough to play the system and not starve.

I used to just pocket the 1.50 a day and go without lunch, then add that to my pocket money (5 quid in the 90s!) to go out with my mates maccys or bowling etc.

Woman i work with had exact same issue with her son. She warned him she knew and would top it up again for the term but said once it was gone that was it.
He clearly didnt believe her and carried on and ran out of money 3 weeks before end of term, so true to her word he was stuck with a packed lunch every day and not being able to sit with his mates in the same section of the canteen.
Funnily enough he didnt do it again the next term and top ups were alot less frequent!

I used to do this, and help myself to my clueless, bumbling, adorable Dad's change which he kept in an empty ice cream bucket in a drawer! He never missed it, he only put it in there to empty out his pockets and because he wasn't allowed to put it on the chest of drawers because it would scratch it

Me and my brother would raid it, go to the fish and chip shop for dinner (parents worked in the evening as they were musicians) and feed the dog the raw chops they left us to cook (hungry Labrador, no wonder he liked me best)

Mum would always compliment me on how well I washed up the grill pan from cooking dinner "It's like it hasn't even been used"! (did she know? OMG she knew!)

Same with bus fares at one point, though then we had a pass thingy like a season ticket but still did it with lunch money. Bought fags too.

Terrible we were. (And rather normal by the sounds of it)

Yes. She knew.

and I was trying to give her some independence

So she took that independence, good for her, if you don't like the choice her independence took, then you need to either decide to limit the independence or talk about alternative ways it could be achieved.

If you weren't concerned the amount she was spending was unreasonable, then I think it's unfair to be annoyed really, you were happy with her budgeted amount, and she wanted more freedom in how to spend it. It's a shame she needed to be slightly untruthful to achieve that balance.

I think all teenagers do this at some point. we had a card we'd top up with the cash parents gave. Mum would give me £20 for the week and I'd spend some at the shop on the way to school the first day to break the note up, put £15 on my card and save the fiver. Sometimes only put a tenner on the card and just get a panini for lunch at school and have £10 for myself. We all did it! My best mate used to walk to save his bus fares all the time.

Ellen Macarthur did this to fund her first boat.
www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/fameandfortune/8986485/Ellen-MacArthur-I-saved-up-my-dinner-money-for-my-first-boat.html

£5 a week pocket money is not a lot pink but that literally is only for sweets or a magazine and it all we can afford.

I pay £15 for martial arts a week (she is on the club training squad so an extra £10 on top of that every few weeks) plus competition fees and exams, plus £4 a week for another club session she attends, £8 a week bus pass, her school dinners of around £20 and her mobile phone top up. I buy her clothes, toiletries and give her money for the cinema or such if she does go out so don't feel too sorry for her :)

This thread has brought back memories!
I used to get dinner moeny in cash, go to the shop on the way to school, buy 10 Sovereign, a can of coke and a snickers bar.
Morning break, I'd sell 4 fags for 50p each to the others, buy the cheapest lunch and save the rest for the weekend. By the end of the week I'd have enough cash to buy a big bottle of cider and more fags!
I'm not saying your DD is doing that, but you'd be surprised how entrepreneurial kids can be when they want to buy illicit things!

When i was at secondary school lunch money was referred to as cider money.

Ha ha!
Excellent x-post with Abbbinob!!

Agree this can be be common behaviour.

I don't think you said how old she is but I am assuming secondary school? £5 a week pocket money doesn't go very far, to be honest, especially if they have friends that like to go to Subway or Costa or the cinema or McDonalds or clothes shopping etc etc now and then. Even a magazine can be £4 these days.

Of course if it's all that can be spared they have to make do (I'm not judging btw as pocket money here has been sparse recently due to circumstances) but if you could afford to maybe add a bit yourself? It might be worth chatting with her. Unfortunately my DCs all seem to have friends with lots of disposable money and (DH more than me tbh) we don't want them to miss out on stuff if we can afford the extra.

I hope I'm not coming across as judgey or rude as I genuinely don't mean to be.

I was so careful and slow wording my post I cross posted with your last one! Crack on then, she has loads

My parents used to give me £5 for the week and I would buy a cup a soup for 20p and use the rest for magazines/cassette singles

At the risk of getting flamed - it's funny how many admissions of illicit fag buying are peppered in with advocates of the fingerprint-based clampdown :)

I just give DD a set amount that would buy her lunch...she doesn't, she buys junk, that's her choice really - she'll discuss it abstractly in that she'll agree that she's usually hungry because she's been to the shop at break then doesn't have enough for lunch...but then doesn't actually change that, lol.

She is nearly 16 though.

You are all a bunch of delinquents!! (probably spelt wrong)

Just to point out that the £5 a week is pocket money, she also gets near enough that much a day for lunch.

£5 a day is a lot! What card do you have that parent pay wont accept?

Give her a packed lunch!

I agree £5 a day is a huge amount for lunch. I don't blame her for skimming off what she doesn't need.
Have you actually costed out how much she needs for the day?

Our kids school do a "meal deal" which is a hot meal, drink and a piece of fruit or yogurt for £2. Sandwiches are around £1.20 Breakfast and brunch food is also available, bacon and hot rolls for £1.20, toast and butter 20p. Home made soup and a couple of slices of bread is 50p., Pudding 55p.

I give my kids £3 a day for food, they can then choose whether to have a hot roll/ brunch /breakfast or a bigger meal at lunch.

I 'saved up' my dinner money pound every day for a couple of weeks once before Christmas, wanted to buy presents for everyone.. I was taking an apple and two slices of bread for lunch from home.

My dad found my notebook listing presents I wanted to buy people and money I had including a careful list of all the £1 contributions.. He very gently pointed out that this was stealing, which just hadn't occurred to me!

It might annoy me, but when I look back on my teenage self I wasn't perfect either.

I was at secondary school in the early eighties and our school had its own tuck shop which sold chocolate and crisps. Guess where a lot of my dinner money was spent, until the day my parents decided I was to start having packed lunch (I wonder why they did that????).

yes it is £2.45 for a meal deal
£1.20 for a breakfast roll
and around a £1 for a warm drink.

She does not always have breakfast at school but as she leaves the house fairly early for school and sometimes doesn't feel like breakfast before she goes and lunch is quite late plus she goes straight to club from school and won't get home until 7.30pm tonight I like her having the option of getting it if she needs it.

The idea is that if she doesn't have breakfast she has to leave what she did not spend on her account so that I do not have to top up as much the next week as I cannot afford to waste money (we are on a tight budget especially with her existing classes). I know that sounds weird but when she first started secondary she was wasting money massively. My Mum topped her up £80 for the month to help me out a I had just paid out for uniform and was struggling.

She had the choice daily of packed lunch or hot dinner so I did not worry when some days she was taking in snacks and lunch from home, I presumed she was overwhelmed about using the canteen. Till I logged in at the end of the second week (we had no internet at home bar phones at the time) and she had spent £50 in 2 weeks while eating a full breakfast at home, taking snacks from the snack jar for break, and taking stuff from home in for lunch. Basically she spent £50 on slush puppies, milkshakes and cookies and cake while talking a full packed lunch. She went a bit nuts. Meanwhile I was scrimping at home and taking hardly anything for my own lunch at work!