To say i’m not topping up my teens school account anymore

[Gmee]

I have a teenager who does not eat breakfast in the morning despite having plenty of time she’s usually scrolling or faffing about with her hair.
She’s gone back to school this week and spent £20 on school lunches by thursday and text me on Thursday morning break to top up her account.
I can see the history online where i pay and she’s buying double quantities of things morning break then lunch! I’ve had this conversation with her because she will eat junk like 2 pizzas a cake slice for morning break, then a sausage roll x2, chips and cake x2z

Full meals are actually cheaper than the little bits she buys, I’ve tried to tell her eating junk food isn’t the way to go and she will feel worse and hungrier but I obviously know nothing. I actually refused on thursday to top up her account, she had enough to buy a full meal and water but i’ve told her a million times stop buying 2x the amount of food or going back twice

Is she definitely buying it all for herself? Yanbu. Unless it turns out she is getting stuff for a friend.

I'd give her a set amount each week, and when it's gone it's gone. If she runs out mid-week she can take packed lunch to school.

I have this issue with my teen too. No breakfast, then buying crap at school costing me a fortune, and the inevitable "Do I have lunch money" text around midday which is code for "Top up my account"

It's the drinks that drive me crazy - spending £1.50+ on a drink that's basically squash, but refusing to take in squash from home. And even when I offer to buy the drinks they sell in school for much less elsewhere refusing because that would be embarrassing!

Get her to take something from home for morning break. Something like a cereal bar and a carton on juice.

She can then use the canteen for lunch.

It's not easy when the canteen offers tempting junk food but if you only offer a packed lunch once the weekly budget has been spent she may just buy at lunchtime.

DD gets £2.50 a day (£12.50 added weekly) and anything more she wants needs to be taken in from home.

If she runs out she knows it won't be topped up so doesn't ask.

We have gone to adding little and often because when I put it on monthly her friends could see she had lots of money and pressured her to buy them things.

Well this could be used as a great way of teaching Budgeting your income and expenditure!

I'd give them a set amount each week that you can afford and could get them sufficient food. They have to understand that amount is absolutely IT - if they splurge on stuff early in the week you will not be giving them any more money that week.

If they run out of money they go hungry or have to make their own sarnies to take in.

Of course if you can't afford much at all then they will just have to endure packed lunches from home. Oh the horror 🙄

This!
How else do teens learn about budgeting if they don’t actually have to do it.
One of my DC’s when she was a teenager asked if she could have the cash instead and then take in food from home. 😂

she has things she could take in for break, “ “non embarrassing things” of course. Then she comes home and eats all of that too. I will agree a set amount and once its done its done. She said I want her to die of starvation so no dramatics here at all.

I had this issue when I topped up a lot she brought food for her friends, she said its not happening anymore…

This, word for word. My dd has worked out her own strategies, ie if we have bagels and stuff in that she likes some days, she’ll end up saving some of her daily allowance to use another day.

yanbu to just tell her she has a weekly budget, to stick to it, and if she’s still hungry to take supplementary food from home.

And she told me not to give her the full month’s money as other people asked her to get them stuff.

are you sure your dd isn’t buying for someone else?

We had the same, in the end he didn’t take any notice so we swapped to packed lunches. There are 4 of us in the house and no one else was having anywhere near £20 a week for lunch. I used to put a fiver on every couple of weeks so he could get a bacon roll on a Friday morning. Now he works and his lunches come out of his own money. After a few months of using the cafe nearby he now goes to the supermarket and buys things for the week, he sees the sense now it’s out of his pocket!

Sorry I missed your last update, op. Buying double of the same things does sound like she’s buying for a friend, doesn’t it?

Shes buying for friends. Give her a set amount of cash and let her decide how to use it. Maybe she will decide to eat in the morning and save some money at the end of the week.

She’s old enough to make packed lunches. Get enough sandwich ingredients to allow her to make 2 sandwiches, so if she doesn’t have breakfast at home, she can have one of the sandwiches for breakfast.

Set amount, don't vary it. She can get a job or take in food from home.

Your job here is to teach her that money is finite before she goes to uni and is potentially given (or can borrow) large sums to do a term.

It can also be eye opening to a teen to understand how much you have to earn before tax and NI to give her the £20 in the first place; and what she would have to do as an equivalent to earn it. A cleaner will earn £10.50 an hour minimum wage and do most of a normal sized house in 2-3hrs. Possibly just my tween but she was flabbergasted to learn that the £10 she had spent on a book without a thought was the equivalent of hoovering and dusting the whole house for someone else was a salutary lesson.

I put enough on for £3.75 a day which is one breakfast item at 85p and a meal deal for lunch at £2.90. He has breakfast at home, the 85p is just so he doesn't feel left out as the classes all go for breakfast together ( it gets a hot chocolate, or cereal or pastry) If he were to abuse the budget I put on he'd have to start making his own packed lunches.

(I top up monthly with the £3.75 daily budget)

Mine take packed lunches by choice.

i give them an allowance, and have set them up with debit cards from age 11. Any lunches must come out of their allowance - they need to top up the school account using their debit card. So it’s entirely their choice whether they spend their allowance on school lunches or prioritise it for buying other stuff.

£3.75 a day?! Yikes

You can call the school and request a daily limit- well, ours does.

Ours uses scopay.

These kids are so so lucky. Would it be worth having a conversation, not just about budgeting, but about poverty and neglect? You can frame it positively, encouraging a gratitude mindset.

This!
I did this with my daughter after I discovered the amount of bacon sandwiches she was buying at school then having nothing for lunch!

In DC school, the "junk" queues are quicker than the dinner queues. DS wouldn't have time to eat if he queued for a meal.
He now takes packed lunches Mon-Thur.

Take her to the supermarket and give her the cash (so it's visual) you would put on her account for one school meal deal a day for the week. Tell her she can buy her own lunch stuff and keep the change, or you put the same amount on the lunch system with no top ups.

You may find when she has the cash in her hand her attitude changes.