To be gobsmacked at his pocketmoney??

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My little brother (big age gap) is 16.

DH and I went to visit the family this weekend and it came up in conversation that he gets £50 a month pocket money. Half in a DD and half in cash.

I asked what he does for his money and apparently he washes the car every now and then.

I mean..... WOW! Thats a lot of money.

My DD will have to do set chores each day (such as loading the dishwasher) for her pocket money.

Or am I being unreasonable and this is the going rate now.

No problem. I'd give them a high interest loan and deduct it from next months allowance.

plus a 'going overdrawn' fee, with a bank review after 3 months with the threat of reducing their monthly income to ensure funds are available.

They'd sort it out quick smart I bet.

My parents gave me 5 quid a week which had to cover going to the cinema or roller rink at the weekend.. they bought us new clothes on special occassions like going on holiday, christmas and birthdays. I was not at the height of fashion as you might guess but they did always spend their money on overseas holidays once a year and sunday trips out..

However I still remember the times we spent and i would hardly still have the clothes.. or they wouldn't fit!

But times have changed and it is quite sad.. kids have to have the latest clothes and gadgets to fit in so i suppose parents have to dish out.

I wanted a big family but this thread is slowly changing my mind

My son is 13. He gets £4.50 a week. He's expected to play a part in the running of things such as washing up, hoovering, tidying up after himself, getting the bins in. We pay for everything necessary such as sports fees, all clothes, friends birthday gifts etc.. Doesn't seem much when compared to some here, but he managed to save up for an HD tv for his room on it, so I don't think he does badly at all.

Rubyreins - my parents did the 10p per week for each year of your life thing as well! I remember desperately wanting to be 10 so I could hit the £1 mark!!!!

Tryharder tell your friend to send their dc to Air Training Cor - as they will get flying lessons for free.

Crikey am actually quite amazed at how much some children get, but I don't think mine do too badly.
My 15 year old dd earns £20 per week doing 2 paper rounds and my 13 year old dd gets £5 per week doing papers but can earn more if she wants.
Neither 7 and 5 year olds get anything.
If anybody needs anything i'll give them their portion of the family allowance to go shopping and get what they need.
Theyve both got a few hundred saved in their bank accounts so can't be doing too bad.They pay for their own phones.
I shall have to have a rethink.

If he paying for lunches at school/ college out of that allowance I'd wonder how he was managing on so little.
My allowance at 16 was more than that 20+ years ago. It was set at a rate that allowed me to bus to school and buy lunch. OR I could get up earlier cycle and take sandwiches . Then use the allowance on what ever else I wanted.

My DD is 14 and gets £5 a month phone top-up and that's it. Every so often her grandparents give her a tenner or something and she always gets about £70-£100 at Christmas and birthdays, which gets stashed away in her drawer. I buy her clothes, although if there's something expensive (like Converse trainers instead of non-branded ones) then she has to buy that out of her own money. If she goes to the cinema I pay for her ticket, give her a bag of popcorn to take and she buys anything else out of her own money.

When my eldest went to secondary school I gave him £60 a month ....his dad gave him £100:

£50 a month dinner money
£10 a month phone
£10 a month hair cut
£30 - he was FORCED to save
£20 a month for clothes
£30 a month for going out

He is 19 now and we still give him the same amount (we agreed we would until he leaves college - he goes to uni this year) . He is a great 'kid' and has always managed his money well (Used to check his bank statements) - he has never asked me for extra money.

I dont give this money in exchange for chores around the house ... don't really believe in bribery ....he does chores because he is part of our family.

I will do the same for my 7 yr old when he goes to secondary

Will someone adopt me please

We never got pocket money as such, in our teens i have a vague recollection that my mum gave us our child benefit which was maybe about 30quid or something (?) but really not sure if that was a regular thing or not. I had paper rounds from 13 then a whole range of jobs supermarket, cleaning, waitressing etc and just used my money from that. My parents did pay for all essential clothes, school trips etc and I can´t say I went without.

It doesn´t seem as common now for teens to have jobs, not round here anyway, so not sure what will happen when ds is a teen (long while to go..)

i spose to look at this in fairness we should see what % of parents money is given as pocket money.
if you earn more you can afford more. and vice versa

OP, £50 does sounds excessive!

Interesting to read the other going rates!

I'm 36 now, and I used to get £12 a month until I was 15, for which I had to sweep and mop the conservatory floor every Sunday as a minimum of helping out.

Once I was 15 I was sent to work Saturdays in a garden centre for £2.65 an hour. No more handouts apart from a fairly extravagant 21st birthday present of a second hand Golf car. (my first car at 17 I bought myself working at the garden centre and also Burger King in the holidays, I was desperate to drive!)

As as result I tend to only spend what I have, rarely use my over-draught and don't take out credit cards/debts unless they are property/investment related. I do feel this approach taught me respect for money.

My friends who had pocket money and clothes allowances till they were 20 or so are the ones who can't control their money and spending even now...

why are some of you saying these teenagers are getting pocket money for 'doing nothing' or 'sitting on their arse all day' ?

my step mother used to say similar, which i resented greatly after sitting through a 3hour french a-level exam.

It bothers me that child benefit is given to the kids to piss up the wall spend as they like. I assumed that it was intended to cover absolute necessesities like food and clothing ... or is that not the case? Aaaarrrrggh! This thread is going to have me agreeing with the poster on the CB/Tax-credits thread.

I'm starting to see why the EMA is so generous.

Just reading this thread, I was having a conversation with my DH about it and actually, as a family we didn't have a lot of money at all and there were 5 of us when I was little. So I used to just get £2 a week pocket money and started working from the age of 11.

However, even that didn't really buy me what I felt like everyone else had. I could never afford nice clothes or nice treats etc and my parents couldn't afford to give me the money.

But instead of learning to save and budget, when I got my wages I would just end up wasting it on things that others would consider normal, like slightly nicer toiletries than the cheap ones. So my money was gone very quickly.

I think because of this, when I started to work fulltime and earn better money, I would spend it very quickly and ended up borrowing from the bank etc. So having very little as a child to spend on myself, I ended up getting into debt as an adult, it was suddenly like having a free rein.

I now have my own DD and having cleared all my debts off about 5 years ago and buying our own house, I am very conscious of debts and budeting now - but then I am nearly 36! So when it comes to my DD, I don't want to spoil her, but to the same degree, I don't want her to be so short of money that she wastes it when she does get it. It's all about balance I guess...

I am OP.

He does not pay for food,phone, haircuts.... etc.

The money is his to do with what he likes. He has £0 outgoings.

At 16 I got £40 a month from my parents and earned about the same from a saturday job. This was 18 years ago. It did have to pay all clothes (except school uniform), school bus fares, lunches , all social and leisure activities and driving lessons (£10 a time). It really helped me learn to budget. I would cycle to school, make sandwiches, mend tights so I had the money for more fun things. It was great practice for university.

And the rest of life

at 16 i cleared tables in a cafe every saturday for £14 a week.

that was easily enough to go into town and get drunk.

my pocket money was £20 a month. that was mine to fritter.

this was in 1996.

A quick calculation on an inflation calculator tells me that money now is worth almost twice (half?) as much as in 1990. So, £50 today would get you about £27 20 years ago. So there's no need for everyone to be wetting themselves.

Personally, I got £5 per week about 10 years ago, so not a lot compared to the £100/£50 per month bandied around here.

However, it was never enough, to my mind. £5 would get me to the city centre and back and nothing more. Hardly the life of riley. And I was supposed to magically buy clothes out of it. I hated never having any money and got a job at 14.

When I have children, I hope to be able to give them enough to join in with reasonable things that their friends do. And I won't be making them get a job at 14.

I wonder how many of the people throwing their hands up in despair spend £50 per month on magazines/chocolate/clothes/haircuts/treatments/gym memberships/wine and other non-essentials. Quite a number, I'd think.

disclaimer I realise plenty won't as well.

at 16 i cleared tables in a cafe every saturday for £14 a week.

that was easily enough to go into town and get drunk.

my pocket money was £20 a month. that was mine to fritter.

this was in 1996.

It depends how wealthy the parents are and also, as others have said, what the child has to buy out of that money.

if you didnt give your 16 year old any pocket money, I reckon you'd spend more than £50 on them over the course of a month. So IMHO better to give them the money upfront and teach them the responsibility of making it stretch the month than just buy them stuff out of your pocket as and when they want something.

however, I think giving pocket money without making kids do chores is a BAD way to go. It teaches that you can get money for nothing which is obviously not the case if real life.

I had a sayurday/ evening job from 14 so didnt get any pocket money from then on.