Year 7 dinner money - how much do you give your child??

[bossboggle]

Need info about dinner money!! Neighbour's son is taking £3 per day (just started year 7). Has spent £19 over six days!! How much do you give your child for their dinner!! Need advice. Can get butties at break time and does not leave a lot for dinner - advice please!!

My dd is now in year 9. At the moment she is taking her own lunch and I supply money for drinks.

However, when she is eating food bought in school I would give her £25 per month. I would supply drinks to take to school.

Initially, when she started year 7 she did spend more as it was a novelty to be able to have the freedom to buy (and choose) whatever she wanted. But this soon calmed down.

What age is year 7? Im in Scotland and ds has just started first year (he will be 12 in a few weeks) at the local Academy. He gets £3 a day.

I presume you don't want him to have a butty at break AND a lunch as well though do you?! I give £3 a day which is enough for a baguette and a drink, or if he wants a pastry at break he has to have water at lunchtime.

£3 a day.

But dd took £20 last week to set her account up as they do cashless catering/finger print scans.

I've told her to limit herself to £3.

She managed initially. She takes water for break time, has pasta, a drink and cake at lunch time which comes to £3. But the last few days she's also had a pizza slice at break time.

This week she just took £10 as should have had £8 left over from last week.

I've warned her she's going to get to Friday and have no money!

My boys have £2 per day. (They get it in a monthly allowance which goes into their bank account, and it's up to them to manage it.)

We eat a main meal at home in the evenings and £2 is sufficient for them to get a main course at school, or a sandwich if that's what they want. Drinks are very expensive - so this way they are encouraged to drink water.

I don't think they usually buy snacks at breaktime - they don't like the queues!

£2.10 per day, which is the price of the "meal deal" at my son's school.

DD's primary meals were £2.10 per day and high school's is similar except that she can buy sandwiches or pasta or something different if she would rather. I was thinking about £10.00 a week, but a bit extra on Friday if she runs out.

DD's school specifies £3 per day too, which should cover lunch and a breaktime snack. We give her £30 a fortnight to put on her card and if she overspends she's on packed lunches.

£3 a day, but I got stroppy about paying for drinks.
DD now takes these and often only needs £10 on her card.
I also slip her the odd £5 note to cover forgotten, empty cards, lost pens (library sells things at cost) and odd bits of fundraising the exchange group do.

Will need a more formal system as DD2 has just joined her and wants packed lunch on sports club days.

DD1 grabs school sarnies at break for this, but DD2 is way, way fussier about food.

My dd1 is in S1 (Scottish equiv of y7). She's 12.7. School dinners are £2.50 here (Glasgow. Thought I was getting ripped off as theyre £1.15 in the primary!!)

In a fortnight she's allowed to leave the grounds at lunch on tues and thurs. Near to a main road, lots of shops, cafes, a Maccy Ds, Greggs, Subway etc plus 2 chippies.

We've come to this arrangement: on Monday we give her £12.50, enough for a school lunch every day. She can choose to take a packed lunch which she makes herself, and can keep the £2.50. She can get a school lunch. Any money left over on Friday she can keep.

She's made a fair few packed lunches in the first month back, and she sometimes goes to the park after school with her friends, they take it in turns to buy the slush puppies! (I found this out when I asked her what the blue stain on her nice new White shirt was from!

Hi - we have the cashless finger print system here - it seemed to be working. My son has misc food allergies, but we wanted him to take some control about his choices, and not just be restricted to packed lunches, so we are doing a combination of both - but am pleased to see he is going to the canteen with his new friends in Yr 7 and this is part of the socialising going on - having the responsibility to chose is a big thing for him.... so far so good !

Got his account yesterday and found out on the canteen days he has been helping himself to food totalling about £4 a day !! Including bits of fruit which he could easily have taken from home ( and drinks, too ) - we had a'budgetary control' meeting last night where I have tried to get him to stick to a £2.25 budget on canteen days and to try and get him to take the extras from home if needed. I'm so happy that he is making his own decisions, it is an important step for all of them, so am not coming down too hard yet, only when the next account comes in!!

I put £20 a week on DS's squid card (cashless system).

They limit it to £4 a day but so far he has spent about £2.70, although he does take a drink and snack for break.

My year 8 and 10 DS's are allowed to spend £2.10 a day of their cards. I give them bottles of squash and a break time snack to take with them to school to keep costs down.

My son has saved a lot by taking his own drinks and having a decent breakfast. he still gets the odd week when he is ravenous - we reckon that may be growth spurt, because there is no other obvious reason.

He takes £3 but never spends it all.

The canteen does cooked good, basically main course, veggies, some type of bread and pudding for £2 - water is available free. They can go in and buy things like crusty filled rolls, cookies (apparently 40p), bottled water 50p. My daughter has sandwiches but I've now carries £2 a day on her as she forgot her drink and lunch the other day!

Mine takes packed lunch but gets a £5 a week allowance - that has to cover any extra snacks, mobile phone PAYG money and ice cream with her mates if she goes to the park - so far working well - if she takes a snack (fruit,cheese,crackers) from home she realises she has more money to spend on phone credit etc.

She has an old film cannister in the "false" bottom of her schoolbag (we sewed a little black pocket in there) with £10 in pound coins in it for emergencies.

at bytheway

Clearly we're not the only paranoid parents.

Dd has a envelope adressed to a teacher with a fiver in it stuffed in the darkest recesses of her bag.
Fortunately the taking stuff and hiding it nonsense from primary hasn't resurfaced and they seem relatively honest.
Accept for her coat which reappeared we've not lost anything that wasn't her fault.

Surely this is going to depend where you live?

I was given weekly lunch money in secondary school, £8 whilst everyone else got £2 a day. So if i wanted to splurge one day I'd have to scrimp the next. Worked really well and i generally had money left over at the end of the week to put in my piggy bank.