Did you use your child trust fund voucher and do you pay into the account?

[milliec]

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I did put the free bit into one of those middle-option accounts (shares, but moved into cash slowly as they get towards 18). I've only put in another £100 or so. Money from his great granny has gone into a different savings account (guarenteed bond) and his grandparents are opening a savings account for him too. I want him to have some money coming to him at 18, especially if it's the norm for kids then - to fund a gap year or whatever. But I'd like some of it to still be under our control, just in case he's like my DB at that age

Oh god I hadn't considered that aspect of it! My parents had a trust fund thingy set up for me and my sister that automatically came to us when we were 18 but it didn't occur to either of us to fritter it away or blow it on drugs/alcohol-we spent it on university. I was just assuming dd would be as sensible as me (!) but if she is anything like her father then she would just waste it-eek!

I do think it was partly the relationship we had with money growing up-eg my parents didn't have a huge amount, we had to earn our pocket money, buy our own clothes etc out of it (apart from school uniform)once we hit our teens so we learnt to budget quite early on. We also paid our own way through uni(with student loans). DH on the other hand came from a wealthy family who just handed over money whenever he asked, if he blew it there was always more and his money was just for fun as rent, food etc were all paid for. He has only learnt in the last 2 years that it isn't limitless and that he needs to be more responsible with it.

But, as some of you have pointed out, that isn't the only thing that determines it and no matter how much we teach the dc about the value of money they will still be their own person and who knows what their priorities will be age 18.

Eek!

We didn't invest it so it was invested for us. We pay no exra in, as I am under no illusions that an 18yr old will want to spend money on the same things that I would view as 'appropriate'.

We save elsewhere and will judge waht money we want to provide based on what we think is important, Uni mainly, I think.

I will expect them to earn thier own money for most other things such as travelling, house, car etc, or will make a judgememnt at the time.

I fundementally disagree with the notion that you 'need' or 'shoulod have' a wad of money at 18.