To make DD buy her own lunches?

[Thailandherewecome]

DD is in the first year of 6th form. Currently I pay for her train pass and give her £25 a week for lunch. DD complains frequently that this is not enough but can’t be bothered to make lunch to take with her to make the money go further.

She has finally managed to get a part time job and if all goes well should take home >£500 a month which is obviously wonderful for her.

Would I be unreasonable to continue buying the train pass but ask her to get her own lunch? my reasoning being is that she need to learn the value of money and making choices how you spend it (she is currently terrible with money and will spend it the second she has it). Obviously she is still very welcome to take lunch from home if she doesn’t want to waste her money.

If it makes any difference £500 is a lot more disposable income than I currently have left each month.

Or am I being really mean?

This is the approach I have taken with my DD who also has a part time job.

Came here to say this. I might knock it down to £20 a week , she can top it up or take a lunch one or two days a week. I will be doing this with my college age kid next year.

This made me very sad to read, I'm sorry your mum wasn't adequate x

At our local collegf, young people on a bursary get £4 a day for lunch, only on the days they are timetabled.
I think id gives her something that she could top up, or she could take from home, but also I liked the idea of showing her how much she'd have to work to pay for the expensive lunches she is expecting you to pay for..
How many people do uou know has cash to buy a lunch every day? I dont know many!

I wish I'd learned the life lesson that taking a packed lunch saves a fortune when I was 18. I could have paid off my mortgage several years earlier...

This is exactly my thinking. DD is very entitled and is very much ‘it’s only £X’ when it is my money.

For that reason we have explained DS from an early age (he is 10) that money doesn't grow on trees. If you always buy them everything, and shower them with gifts, they grow up very entitled.
I would still give her £3 daily for lunch and pay her bus pass. It should be sufficient for a sandwich.

Thanks again for all your thoughts. Plenty of food for thought, no pun intended!

Just to clarify, I will of course continue to buy her train ticket.

And DD if very lucky and the pay is quite a bit above minimum wage so not as many hours as it might seem.

I absolutely do not want to penalise DD for getting a job. Not least of all because it’s taken an AWFUL amount of encouragement to get her to look fur a job. It’s a great opportunity and I’m made up for her 😊

As I mentioned though DD is very somewhat entitled and terrible at managing her money and I really feel this is an important lesson to learn about priorities and choices. I’d much rather she leaned this lesson now while the stakes are a lot lower

100% with this. She needs to learn it now. And it’s almost counter productive that she’s getting paid more than minimum wage. I think sometimes that helps to solidify the ‘how much?! That’s an hours worth of work!’ thing that’s really helpful at their head thinking this £ = this of my time and it starts to have more value.

What I did with ds1 when he got a job was put £15 onto his dinner account and he could then choose whether to take food from home when that ran out, or pay for it himself. He generally paid himself because he didn't want to take food from home.

I wasn’t that bought a fresh sandwich, a chocolate bar and can of coke

Many moons ago, my step daughter came to live with us

Now where she lived previously was very cheap , hairdressers a fiver for a cut etc ( where as I was paying £35 )

And of course as a teen she wanted and wanted

So I gave her the family allowance and said that's yours. She had a bus pass, could take what she wanted for lunches. We bought her essential clothes shoes etc, and she had use of the family toiletries, Anything extra she had to budget for out of her allowance and whatever else she earned for doing extra around the house - 1999 - £68 a month FA and a possible £20 a week extra

She soon learned that named brands weren't worth it in most cases, and learned that a pack up from home made her money go further

She's 40 now and a mother of 3, and she too can stretch a pound

I think that if you having the makings of lunches at home - foods that she does like - then let her make lunch or fund it herself . She does the same with the eldest who's out earning on an apprenticeship- make lunch or pay for it yourself