What do you do with your Child Benefit?

[emmaalwaysinadilemma]

My mum was horrified when it came up in conversation that I put half our child benefit payments aside to pay for our annual family holiday. The other half goes into a pot mainly for the DCs' clothes, and other odd bits they need. She thinks this money should be put into a savings account for them - which it would, in an ideal world, but there's no way we could afford to take them on holiday then

I'm now curious about what other people spend it on, and if my mum is right that it's a bit unfair of me to spend it on holidays?? As I said, if I didn't do this then the children would have no holidays as we simply couldn't afford it.

Ours goes into savings accounts for the kids. To be honest I have grappled with the "if we can afford to save it, do we deserve it?" dilemma, but we are pretty frugal. We switched from shopping at Tesco to Lidl after DS was born, only have one takeaway/month and haven't been abroad since our honeymoon seven years ago. So I think it would be very difficult to accurately judge whether each family "needs" CB.

Ours has always gone into the family income. You can theoretically imagine that the money is used for X, Y, or Z if it helps the way you budget, but if all money is going into the one account and then all coming out of it, what does it matter. Can't see why it is something to get worked up about.
I know when dc1 was born, the Child benefit we got covered a tin of formula and enough nappies for the week, so I agree with @TenOclock (I think it was) who suggested that was why it was introduced - to make sure every child had their basic needs met.

@Ilovecheese53
Absolutely if i hadnt saved that , id be spending another 3 years having to top him up financially , though i'm acutely aware that when he turns 18 the trust fund money is his and he could blow the lot , but his been warned this is what the money is for, and i wont be replacing it if he blows it. So fingers tightly crossed but his pretty sensible with money thankfully.