To let DD spend Xmas money on whatever she wants?

[TheMoneyHasGone]

DD is 8.

She got £250 for Christmas, as well as lots of gifts. The expectation from some of my family and ExHs is that it gets saved, so I’ve put £200 into her Junior ISA.
But I personally think she should also have some spending money so I put £50 onto her rooster card.

She spent £30 on lol dolls and Baby Annabell clothes in Smyths Toys. Then she spent another £15 in B+M on notebooks, pens and other crafty stuff.

She says the B+M stuff will not only be used for fun, but she’ll use it to do Brownies Badges, and for her homework at school. She's asked to spend the last £5 at the sweet shop when it reopens later this week.

ExH isn’t happy though. He says his parents used to restrict what he could spend his Christmas and Birthday Money on so it was spent well and not wasted. He says I should take the toys back and get the £30 and make her spend it on clothes or a new pair of shoes - his parents always made him replace his clothes or shoes with his own money once he started getting it, never him buy toys or video games. He says it never did him any harm and helped him to know the importance of money. He very rarely treats himself now, he asks for it for his birthday or christmas and he spends very little on DD for her birthday or Christmas too.

She has clothes as she recently had a massive growth spurt so apart from school cardigans, she has everything she could possibly need, and she wears splints due to a foot problem (she has Cerebral Palsy mildly) so is restricted to wide shoes which I think personally are mine and ExHs responsibility to buy.

She did also get toys, board games and some bits of clothing for Christmas. And we go to the library fortnightly to borrow books and I always let her have free reign there of what she chooses - she's confident now in saying to the librarian "I liked this author is there anything else by them?"

Apart from age restricted products my parents never set restrictions on my birthday or Christmas money, they did make me save between half and 3/4s (depending on my age) so I did think £50 was more than enough for an 8yo to have free reign of. I now can budget down to my last penny, but still allow myself some treats as I was taught to spend money frivolously sometimes as a child and teen.

But WIBU? Me or ExH? If me then next time I will put restrictions in place.

Your DH sounds very damaged, don't let him rub his damage off onto your DD. You've done the right thing.

Your ex sounds complete joyless, making an 8 yr old buy her own clothes is beyond mean, nothing wrong with what you've done and she's bought a good selection with her £50

Is he for real? I'd have let her blow the lot. How utterly joyless.

YANBU. Letting them decide what to spend their money on is part of growing up and learning responsibility. You’ve saved 80%, she should be allowed to treat herself l.

You did the right thing although I would have increase the amount that she could spend. It's great you're teaching her to save but also enjoy the money. I taught my daughter the same thing. If she wanted to buy rubbish toys with it then she soon learnt if she had wasted her money. It's all about growing up.

As for buying clothes she has plenty of time to do that when she's older. Now is for toys.

I'd be letting her spend more than that, poor thing only 8 years old and most of her money being put into savings. Just seems so joyless.

Shes 8. Really important to an 8 year old is things like LOL dolls, stationary and sweets! The saving part was taken care of by the parent by banking the £200.

OP, your ex husbands parents sound really mean. I think what you have done with saving the £200 and allowing her to spend the £50 is fine.

I tend towards thinking that if a gift giver didn't want the money to be hers to spend as she wanted, they shouldn't have given it as a gift.

For a quiet life, I'd expect your ex to make decisions about cash gifts given to DD during his time and you to make decisions about cash gifts during your time.

You put the bulk of her Christmas money into an ISA.
The rest of her money is for fun and she can spend it how she likes.
That is a good lesson,much better than making her save all her money. Small amount of money to play with, a larger amount put by for a rainy day.
There has to be a.balance between being sensible and experiencing enjoyment.

He says it never did him any harm

Is that why he's an ex? Miserable git.

Your ex is a dick. It's yours and his responsibility to buy your daughter clothes, not using her Christmas money.

To be honest anything the ex said after that is irrelevant because they've already outed themselves as a nob for this comment alone.

l always wonder why people gift money and then try and control what it gets spent on like buy a gift card if your going to be like that. It’s her money she should be allowed to spend it how she sees fit

YANBU she can spend it on what she wants. I would encourage her to save 10% in a savings account.

Wow this is loads of money! I mean the whole amount she got, not the amount she spent

@TheMoneyHasGone my child is pretty much the same age and I think that from your OP the money that she has spent is an ok amount and what she's spent it on sounds good as well for that age. I mean she's got loads left and she's spent enough to get good things from what you said. So I can't see anything wrong with this

Sort.of gives the impression she might be quite impulsive as a spender.
Jesus wept, she's 8 and has spent HER xmas money!!
MN always plenty of joyless bores around.

@Neverhot Some of my family gave her £50-100, they did it with me when I was a child the expectation that some would be saved and some spent, it's always the way in our family. Others gave £5 and would expect it all to spent so it balanced out. She can still tell people she spent their money and thank them for it.

I think what you did was perfect - £200 restricted, £50 for fun. I don't agree with him that even that token bit of extra should go on practical things as well.

But regardless of mine or anyone else's actual opinion on where the money went, he is being completely ridiculous to think you should enforce HIS parenting decisions in your household. If he wanted to control the money she got from his family he should have kept hold of it himself to spend with her, which would not have been unreasonable.

That all sounds fine to me. I wouldn’t let her have completely free rein if she wanted things that aren’t age appropriate or whatever, but dolls and stationery? I genuinely can’t see the problem.

You did the right thing Op

I let my 10 year old spend £20 days on what I consider junk and the rest on things not junk such as quality items of clothing or something substantial. I’d never expect her to save or spend for the sake of it. As it happens she does save so when she wants to use her money to buy something decent she can.

What a great kid. And what a joyless childhood her father must have had. It's her Christmas present, from people who weren't sure what she'd like - so she buys something the girl she is right now wants. Clothes, shoes, bla bla are parents' responsibility, not a little girl's.

It clearly has damaged him? Besides, that's a bloody low bar to set.

At 8 I'd talk to DD about saving v spending.

what do your family think it's ok to spend with her savings?

EXh can go to fuck with her returning toys (probably too late anyway?) and if his family expect her to buy joyless necessary clothes/shoes with it, then they can tell her that's what the money is for. Not pretend it's cash for her.

let them tell her she MUST spend it on x. If she needed x I'd let her buy it. Granny can have the thanks if buying x boring gift, not the pleasure of giving her money to spend, then making you make DD buy school shoes or whatever.

DD knew what she wanted, spread her money around reasonably and knows how to save. I think she's great & it's down to YOU.

I'm not a parent so have no personal investment in this topic, but threads like this make me wonder about the intended eventual use of childhood savings, from both a practicality POV and an educational one.

The reason I quoted your post was because you used the phrase "for a rainy day", but what kind of rainy day might justify the eight-year-old dipping into savings? If they broke a window, would that come from their savings? Or would that seem to a parent like it wasn't a painful enough consequence, since the child isn't allowed to use that money for most stuff they'd want to buy anyway? I wonder what different kinds of purposes these childhood savings are for, and what different lessons people are teaching with them, or what purpose they or their children intend the money to serve later. Do people allow their children to dip into their built-up Christmas/birthday money in the savings account if they, say, want to buy a leavers' hoodie but haven't got enough pocket money in the piggy bank? Or maybe for going on pricey school expeditions? Or are the savings intended to accumulate through childhood and be accessed as a lump sum at the start of adulthood, in which case, a sum that would've felt like a lot to a child, and could've provided a lot of joy over a decade and a half if it hadn't been carefully salted away with the encouragement of parents, gets swallowed up in one car insurance payment or blown on a term of careless uni spending, or just seems like not so much money in the context of the first few paycheques. (I'm talking here about savings from money given to the child as presents or pocket money, rather than a savings account paid into for the child with the intention that it set them up in life at the beginning of adulthood.) It makes me wonder how much parents talk to their kids about what the eventual purpose might be of the £200 going to savings, from their £250 Christmas money.

I remember being 16 and looking at the bank book from my post office account, where I'd been encouraged to put some of my birthday and Christmas money throughout childhood and to deposit my pocket money whenever my piggy bank got filled up. I remember thinking as a kid that it was important to save and not to buy too many nice things, then at 16 seeing the accumulated sum and realising that in the adult world it really wasn't worth very much, and couldn't cushion me from proper adult rainy days. That childhood experience got me in the habit of saving, which is great, but I can't help feeling that few hundred quid would've bought more joy at 5–15 than it was worth to me as an adult.

I meant to add at the end of that, that it could've had the effect of putting me off saving — a whole childhood of holding back, rather than buying things to make my life a little nicer, thinking of the future, saving for a rainy day, and at the end of it all, not really feeling like it was worth it, because sums of money that feel a lot for a child to set aside can't really do that much for an adult.

Your ex sounds as if he had a grim childhood. Xmas money is for spending. Of course you should save some of it for her but let her enjoy having a wee splurge.