Summer holiday pocket money

[sylv165]

My 11 year old DD has been getting £5 per week pocket money over the past few years. This is for her to spend on a small treat, she usually saves most of it up to buy something that she wants and is reasonably careful with her money.

However, she is very sociable and increasingly independently arranging activities with her friends. We tend to pay for these days out, but we are now not even one week into the summer holidays here and the activities are endless ... and expensive! So far this week she has been swimming twice with lunch in the leisure centre cafe after, ice skating followed by mcdonalds, cinema trip with money for snacks, shopping trip with money for food, and now wants to go on a trip to an activity centre at the weekend which I have had to say no to as we just can't afford it. I just don't think she appreciates the cost of all these things when you add them up.

So I was wondering if I should maybe up her pocket money over the summer holidays on the condition that she has to pay for everything. Perhaps £20 per week, which would need to cover food when she goes out, entry fees for whatever it is, plus anything she wants to buy. It might help to her to prioritise - for example getting lunch at home rather than going to a cafe - and save us having to constantly deal with requests for £5 here and £10 there.

Has anyone tried similar and if so what sort of amount were you giving each week?

My dc are younger but as long as you can afford the twenty quid that sounds fair enough to me.

If it's because you can't afford it then of course it's reasonable as you don't actually have a choice.

If you can but just want to maintain some sense and teach her to budget then lots of those activities sound great and healthy so i would maybe agree an "up to" amount I would pay for activities and up pocket money slightly but not much for food /snacks

Thank you. Yes @SweetSakura I am not really against the activities, I am working from home so I would much rather she was out with her friends rather than stuck inside bored. I would be prepared to give her a little bit extra if needed, but I want her to appreciate that these things don't come for free and there isn't an endless supply of cash to fund her lifestyle! I think what currently annoys me is that I might give her £10 to go to the cinema, and she will make it her mission to spend every penny of that on sweets, etc. I have a feeling she would be a lot more selective with her own cash!

I would work out house much the average activities cost. Ie how much is swimming? And cinema? And activity place? As £20 is fine if they are under £5 each and you can encourage food from home, but if cinema is £14 it’s not much

@Caspianberg no, swimming is £3.75 and cinema is £5.60. Activity place is £25 though, and it is a full day thing so would definitely need food at some point. I think that would be exceptional and we’d have to pay for that separately, but we’d only be able to afford that once or twice over the summer

I think it's a great idea. It's so important to teach children the value of money.

I'd help her to budget and save money too. Make sure there is packed lunch stuff in that she can take. Maybe get her a keepy cup to take a drink with her. Teach her about vouchers/cheaper midweek deals and where to look for these etc. Give her the tools she needs to make this successful.

For the more expensive activity days/extra pocket money I'd come up with some jobs she can do to earn this. So maybe £20 a week pocket money with the offer to earn an extra £10 for doing xyz jobs.