How/What are you teaching your preteen dc about money?

[Earlybird]

What are you teaching your preteen dc about money (earning, saving, spending) and how are you doing it?

And how do you respond to constant magpie tendencies (seeing something shiny bright and new and wanting to take it home to the nest? )?

Dd1 (11) has an allowance and a cash card. She then has a time delay between seeing something & getting the money to buy it.

Dd1/2 both have extra jobs around the house to earn extra money.

weekly allowance (monthly once they start secondary)

magpie tendencies seen as part of learning curve: the allowance is limited and once it is gone it is gone

Dd is ten, she gets her pocket money. If she wants something she needs to save for it. She won't get a pocket money advance if she doesn't have enough.

DCs are 10 and 8, they do chores round the house for money. I let them set their own "chore company" and set their own charges, so it's 15p per pair of polished shoes, 30p to polish the dining table, 30p to put the wash on etc. If they work really hard they can get £5 in a week, they can buy whatever rubbish they like with their own money, we pay for their clubs, they pay for the tuck shops at the clubs. We involve the DCs in doing the family budget spreadsheet, so they know where all the money goes in the household.

Also DS aged 10 cooks one family dinner a week, with a budget of £3 and use of store cupboard ingredients.

Dd (10) gets pocketmoney. She has to save for anything non-essential.
She does get extra money for chores.

DD(12) gets £3 a week. She seems happy with that although other friends get more/have cash cards, etc.

I think I will change it to a monthly allowance when she turns 13, but I'm not sure how much!

Should say, she also has a bank account with all her unspent birthday / Christmas money from over the years! She doesn't fritter away her money!

Oh and DS(10) earns £1 a week for tidying and hoovering his room. We pay for anything he needs. He will get the £3 when he starts secondary school and also has a very healthy untouched bank account!

Currently I give dd a weekly allowance of £8. £4 goes into a bank savings account that (so far) has not been touched, and £4 is available to spend/save up.

The issue for dd is that the things she would like to buy (sylvanian family/accessorites, wii games, i-touch, etc) require months of saving, and she gives up with a 'what's the point' attitude - and then whinges/whines (many of her friends have these items provided by over-generous parents).

I know on some level it is teaching her just how much her items of choice cost, and also is teaching her to wait. But so far, it seems that she is learning more frustration than delayed gratification.

I'm not sure the 'lesson' is working......how do the rest of you handle this? My response so far is a weak 'why don't you put it on your Christmas list' which doesn't seem effective.

I think you are quite generous, Earlybird- that's more than I give my almost 15yo. Personally I think the frustration is part of the learning curve and that it may take a few years before they turn it to anything that you as a parent will see as productive. Imo the point of pocket money is to allow them to be immature and make silly mistakes before it matters.

Hmm - thanks for your thoughts.

I agree that frustration is part of the lesson. It's just that dd is often with children whose parents have significant disposable income. Those parents regualrly buy their children toys/books/clothes/etc for no reason at all. Dd is envious (understandably) at the inequity, and thinks I am not generous.

The allowance was to teach her about the value of money, budgeting, saving etc - but it is hard for her to wait/save for things that other friends are given for no reason at all (I will 'make' dd wait for a birthday, Christmas,etc).

But, I guess that is life...learning to manage desires, envy, instill patience, appreciation for nice things, etc. It's just she seems quite fixated on money (or the perceived lack of it), and is quite materialistic atm

DS (11) gets £25 a month. This is for all school lunches (I buy all ingredients for packed lunches and he can choose to make a packup or buy lunch at school), trips to the cinema with friends, contributions towards friends birthday presents and he will need to buy Christmas presents for family out of that too. We pay the subs for all his clubs, but he has to pay for tuck at youth club, and contribute half towards any extra activities - say scouts ask for more money to cover a more expensive activity. He will also have to contribute towards scout camp costs.

2 months in he stil has about half the first month's money unspent. He hasn't been out to the cinema, nor had any birthdays to fund. He can save the extra towards Christmas, and scout camp next year. So far so good, he can chose to splash out on something if he wants to, but is choosing to put things on his Christmas list instead. Fair enough, he doesn't ask for much. We feel that he will learn to budget better having what seems a significsant amount of money to handle.

We've built up to this by giving a set amount at ththe start of a holiday and saying that was it (say £10 for a week). We'd buy icecreams, but any sweets, holiday mementoes, crap from the museum gift shop had to come from the tenner. DS was so good at handling his money that at the end of the summer holidays he had enough saved from the previous holidays where he had chosen not to buy bits and pieces, that he could buy a reasonable lego set.

My 10 yo gets £2 a week, my 11 yo £3 a week. They have to do chores to get it. The money is purely for sweets or to save up for something. My 11 yo is good with money and has saved up about £40 for an xbox game he wants. My 10 yo is rubbish with money and is always after an advance which she never gets.

I pay for everything they need, clothes, school dinner money, clubs, party presents etc. So for example next week my 10 yo is going to the school disco. I paid for the ticket, but if she wants sweets or a drink while she's there she pays for that herself.

They both have mobiles. I put the initial £10 credit on them and they have to pay for top ups themselves. My 11 yo has topped up £10 in 6 months. My 10 yo has somehow topped up and used £35 credit in 3 months (using b'day and holiday money her gran gave her).

I have found teaching them the value of money hard work. The 11 yo does seem to be getting it, but the 10 yo is some way off yet.