Pocket Money

[Zaria]

How much pocket money should I give the children (they are 9 and 5)? I want to teach them about money and saving/spending it, but can't decide what would be appropriate. What do other people do? I have no idea what is normal !

Also, do you get your children to do jobs in return? (like maybe cleaning up the leaves, helping in the house) and do you reduce it if they are really naughty?

This feels like a minefield - help!

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we've done 10p per year too, up to 11. trouble with us is that youngest, aged 8, always anticipates it and we never keep track which defeats the object a bit. i think 10p per year is enough but it would be better (for us) if he were actually given it each saturday and when it was gone he had to wait. (or he could save it...)

no jobs in return here though. no reductions for naughtiness either - we withdraw tv privileges (or playstation or PC) for that.

does this help at all, zaria???

we give our 6 yar old £1 a week. not because we are loaded, but because anything worth buying seems to be at least £5 and we felt that value would be lost if he had to save months and months for anything decent.(what i mean is that he had come to think of coins as just shiny things that didnt do a lot,and also when i say value i dont just mean monetary i also mean concept of the system of buying....does this make sense..sorry have been up a lot in the night with new baby!!) i have to say that he is very good at saving and we have had to bite our lips over some of his choices but isnt this all part of it?..he also gets fined for bad behaviour as a last resort which i am considering putting into another jar so that he can see what he is missing out on....he doesnt do jobs in return but is expected to do things any way as part of his place in a family unit.hope this helps....i agree it is a bit of a minefield and we spent plenty of evenings trying to sort out how it should all work!! imagine what a strain it will be when the really big issues come up!!

We give £ 1 a week to 9 and 7 yr old on condition that their room is in a reasonable state on Sunday (it isn't for the rest of the week - but they are getting better). They can also earn extra money (10-30p) for jobs - getting in the washing, hoovering etc. So far they have managed to save £7 x 2 each, to spend immediately they had got enough on digimon figures. Oddly enough, now they have started doing jobs, they do them for free if they realise that I am tired or upset.

Copper, I really like the simplicity of your system, it gets away from having to do something (like tidy bedrooms) all week, and then what do you do if its tidy for 6 days and messy for 1. My boys are pretty good at tidiness, but mornings are a nightmare, so I might make this the baseline for pocket money, then other jobs on top. Do you have any kind of black mark or fines?

So far the threat has been enough! We did threaten to take off 10p for every swear word - my 7 yr old is unfortunately very attracted to swear words. I think it has helped because I don't seem to have told him off so much for this over the last week.

The idea of getting the room clean for Sunday was so that I could issue threats on Saturday!