teenagers - how much dinner money

[purple15]

How much do you give your teenager. My two have been on £2.20 each a day. The bus is sorted so it is just for food. They have recently said the price of school dinners has gone up, but I am already at the cash machine constantly to find the money.

Just need to find out what the is a 'normal' ammount.

I would say £2-£2.50 is a fine amount!

Sounds OK to me too. My DS1 has a bursary this year, but I gave him £2/day last year, or a bit more if I was feeling generous! School dinners for DS2 are £2/day.

Mine take a packed lunch a couple of times a week and take drinks and snacks from home. DS2's school have Squid so I load up his account online and that saves the hassle of remembering cash.
DS1 is at 6th form and takes about £2.50.
I have thought of giving them a weekly cash allowance which they could use for packed lunches or to buy meals. The idea would be to demonstrate budgeting. However knowing my two, DS1 would keep it and starve and DS2 would spend it all in 3 days and beg for more

Now my 2 have packed lunches 4 days a week, and I give my 2 £3.50 each on a Friday when they have fish n chips for school dinner, which they like. The main dinner is £2.20, pud is 40p leaving 90p for a bottle of drink.
I found if I gave them dinner money other days, they spent it on rubbish, or, even worse, on sweets in the local shop to sell in school for profits, the little gits!

Haha, that brings back memories from my own school days of people selling their 'dinner tickets', worth 40p, for 15p or 20p so they had cash for sweets! There was a thriving black market...

I would give them ten pound a week and tell them to make sandwiches if they are still hungry.

I make DD packed lunches mon-thurs, Friday she gets £3.00 that's to cover lunch, juice and snack as come Friday my cupboards are bare

Can you find out how much the sandwiches/ hot meals/ cakes/ drinks are in their canteen? That gives you a good guide.

Dd1 is 13 and she gets £2 per day. She seems to think this is enough to get a main meal and a drink, I know it would be at the school I teach in. There are drinks available for her to take from home if she really wanted a pudding as well.

Mine get £2.10 each.
ds 16 (who is constantly starving 24hrs a day) tells me he can get either a big dinner, or a lighter dinner with a pudding for that, and
dd - 14 - doesn't like many puddings so usually has change to keep

We top up his lunch account with £15 a week. He walks a three mile round trip each day and plays a fair amount of rugby, so I can quite see how he can get through this amount of food. We can see a list of what he has bought.

At my boys' school you can always get "the special", which is a main meal and a dessert for under £2. Of course, if they choose to buy drinks (instead of water), or toast or bacon butties at break, or Greggs on the way to school, or sweets on the way home, then costs rocket.

They get £10 per week put straight into their account monthly, and it's up to them to manage it. We started when they were 12 and they've both coped fine budgeting, and are actually very canny about choosing wisely as they view I as "their money".

I give mine £3.

DD 1 gets £10 per week. A main meal and pudding costs that much at her school, although she often gets something different, but she always seems to have enough money. There is a cashless system at her school.

DD2 also has a cashless system, but the meals are more expensive, so she probably gets about £12 per week. I pay in £50 when she is running out of money.

DS is still at junior school, and we are billed termly for his lunches.

I've been giving FDD (15) £10 for the week and no complaints so far. But she doesn't buy drinks, I send her with a water bottle and if she wants coke/etc she can pay for it herself.