Pocket money

[seeker]

My dd is 11 and she's starting secondary school tomorrow (eekk!) She has a new bank account with a cash card and she wants to have a monthly allowance to cover all her spending rather than weekly pocket money, dinner money and extra bits for going shopping and so on. Does anybody else do this and if so how much do you give you dc? My dd will need dinner money, emergency money (she's travelling to school by bus) phone top up plus a bit of going out shopping money. She's quite sensible, so I don't think she'll spend it all at once. But I have no idea how much would be appropriate. Any ideas?

How long is a piece of string? Add up what she gets for pocket money now, add on the costs you know like dinner money and bus fares. Then allow a few pounds for emergency use. Then decide whether the phone top-up and the going out shopping money is coming out of her existing pocket money or will be extra. To be honest, at age 11 I wouldn't allow much for those purposes, when she gets to 14-15 she will have a very different social life and different needs.

Add up all those figures and see what you come to. I would err on the side of caution - you can always review things in a few months and increase things if necessary, but it's very hard to take away money once you've been giving it!

It's good to give them money monthly, it helps them budget. We've given our three pocket money on a monthly basis since they were about 7, and are planning to move towards a proper monthly allowance for our eldest next year when she turns 15. We haven't decided on the amount yet but will take the strategy adopted above. Hers will also include a clothes allowance and she will be responsible for buying all clothes except school uniform.

My children all got a bank acciunt with a cash card when they were 14. We then gave them an allownce for clothes and other stuff E.g Going out with friends, Cds Make up.
I still buy school uniform and basic clothes ( although DD2 17 does not usualy ask me to buy her anything).
I pay for anything to do with school or college including lunches and bus fares.
When we were loking for accounts for them we found that a lot of banks did not do accounts with cash cards for unsder 14's. The one they have now does do one for over 12's.