Talk to me about allowance

[misspollysdolly]

DD is 13 - she will be 14 in early-October. She is generally pretty well behaved, gaining in independence but at times very angsty and stroppy. For the most part a normal teen I guess

We have never been a pocket money family but she does have a savings account and I have just changed this over from a 'passbook' account to a card access account because I am planning to start giving her some sort of allowance. But there I am a bit unsure of what is reasonable and realistic....!

Can you all tell me how often your teens get money given to them, how much they get and what they are expected to use that money for - and what they are not. TIA.

[Mosschops30]

Curlew that's good for you and that you had the finances

She's not driving yet, h is apparently gonna pay for her lessons

[Sparklingbrook]

How much are driving lessons Mosschops? I dread to think.

[Mosschops30]

God knows I haven't even looked into it. The ex is sorting the first lot

[BillComptonstrousers]

My 13yo gets £50 a month, but she has to buy all clothes from this.

[Rufus43]

Dd and ds2 get a pound for every year old they are and it is saved. When they start senior school they will get the money in cash

Ds1 is 14, he gets £15 per month, we pay for clothes, gifts, phone, sweets, comics ( if he wants one which he doesn't usually) books etc

He doesn't socialise much at the moment, on a one off we would pay for cinema, McDonald's etc but if it was frequent we would probably put him on a budget, same for clothes when he gets into them!

I don't want him having a paper round at the moment and there are not many other jobs here for children his age, I would expect him to get a job at 16

I didn't get much pocket money when I was a teenager, when I left school I got the child benefit and I had a Saturday job

[Sparklingbrook]

DS1 does the free paper round once a week Rufus. Two hours on a Wednesday evening. I didn't want him doing the newsagent one at 6am every morning.

[bigTillyMint]

DD gets £20 a month (plus I pay her £15 phone contract) She is opening a bank account with a cash card next week when she turns 14 and I will pay £25 a month into it. She is also earning a bit from gym coaching so she can pay her cheques into it.

And she reckons her mate's dad is giving them jobs for the last 2 weeks of the hols so she can pay that in too!

[Rufus43]

Yes sparkling the free paper round is a good one, very popular round here. Just thought that we used to pa a gardener £15 to mow our lawn once a fortnight during the summer, we now pay ds1 £10 to do it (not that big a garden!)

[uggmum]

My dd is 14 and part time jobs round here are hard to come by. She does volunteer at a riding school for disabled people. She spends all day Saturday there and will also go in the school holidays.

[musicposy]

Mosschops, I'm sure McDonalds don't take 14 year olds. It's illegal for them to work in most of their areas, for one thing, and they can only do very limited hours. My 17 year old works there and they have said they cannot consider taking my almost-14-and-desperate-to-work-there daughter until she is 16.
I think it's reasonable to give an allowance at 14. I want DD2 to concentrate on her schoolwork at this age. Once she's 16 she can get a job. The allowance for DD1 stopped at the end of Y11 last year and after the money ran out she soon started looking. But even at 16 it took her months to get a job. They are not easy to come by at 16 round here, let alone 14. I also don't want my tiny 14 year old (she looks no more than 11) out on a paper round alone, which would be just about the only thing available to her. So for now I'm happy to pay. I'm pretty confident she has a good work ethic (she envies DD1's job) and won't still be at home at 30!

[Sparklingbrook]

That's true posy. DS1 is going into Year ten in the new school year. I have no idea whether the paper round, football matches and training etc will be too much if he is to get school work done too.

[misspollysdolly]

Oh good heavens! I last checked into this thread on Friday when there were 4 replies!! Thanks to those 4 and the rest that followed! I'll admit, mosschops (et al - need to read with a bit more attention later!) part of my reservation about giving an allowance is that I really really want the DCs (and we have four so DD1 sort of sets a precedent) to appreciate the value of money an the effort involved in earning it. However FWIW, we have been trying hard to get some voluntary work secured at our local library during the summer hols - she is a school librarian and wants to be a librarian at present (also loves reading, good with children, people, etc) and have been told that while they would love to have her they cannot because they do not have a suitable policy/child protection policy in place for youth volunteer schemes of this type - grr! She's currently too young to earn anything other than from me for chores (which effectively this allowance arrangement would amount to) and on the voluntary side, it's not for the want of trying

[BackforGood]

My secondary school aged children get £1 per month, per year of age. So my 14yr old dd gets £14 a month from us. She then chooses to deliver the local free paper which earns her about another £7ish a week.

Not directly connected to any chores, although they are all expected to do stuff around the house.
We pay for 'subs' for Explorers and for camps, etc, registration for DofE, that sort of thing. They pay for phones, and any "non-essentials" they want (for example she went to the pictures today)

[homebythesea]

DS 15 gets £70pm to cover the ridiculous amount of toiletries he gets through and social life incl food and travel. We also pay his phone contract as he would like quite literally die without it

At the outset we intended it to cover clothes but the rate of growth of feet and body makes this unrealistic but I only buy what I think he needs - any extras he has to pay for. He has learned the hard way that what he has is all he has - several times he has had to turn down trips to the flicks due to lack of funds mostly caused by a bad Starbucks habit

[AlphaBetaOoda]

Dd1 (almost 14) gets £22 a month, pays for her own phone, social life, treats ( including non essential clothes but I give a lot of this for birthday/Xmas etc)

Dd2( almost 12) gets £15 for the same.

Birthday/Xmas money goes into their card accounts or savings now ( their choice).

The only option work wise is the free paper & there's a waiting list & pays about £5 a week. Once they hit 16 there will be more options as there's loads of cafes in town.

Both have to do basic jobs at home, helping get tea ready/washing/dishwasher/tidy their room. They're not too bad at helping since I've had SPD.

[Theas18]

Thought I'd replied to this!

My DS gets " bankrolled" in a frugal way even though he's 17. He'd love a job. My view is his "job" is studying and doing what he needs to re university applications etc. At the moment that also includes volunteering.

As long as he carries on taking school seriously, not minding primark jeans etc I'll pay. If he wants superdry that's another matter!

THe girls manage to "earn" bursaries by singing that we let them have (when at home the bursary intent was to reimburse parental costs). DS can't do this now ( but did as a treble) so we give him more "spends" to allow a bit of a social life.

Might seem odd to those who give allowances to buy everything and " teach them to manage money" but so far it seems to have worked. DD1 is at uni and is very good with money.

[nurseneedshelp]

DD1 aged 12 gets £20 a month to spend on crap, £20 a month into her bank account and I also pay for her phone contract each month. So prob about £60 per month! Sounds alot??

I also buy all her clothes etc

She does the bare minimum around the house........

[Theas18]

nurseneedshelp....

That is undoubtedly much more than my DS gets a month. His phone is £7 SIM deal.

She needs to start pulling her weight in the house. My kids do a fair bit, but mostly informally as in " I'm at work you have a teacher day/are on holiday please do the table and hoover the lounge" or "there is so much cleaning to do, it's Saturday, we all want to sit and do nothing but I think noone should sit down till we all can- you do X you do Y and I'll do z" .

[fubbsy]

My dd age 14 gets £40 per month into her bank account by standing order. This is for socialising, toiletries, and clothes. We also pay £5 per month PAYG credit on her phone.

She has a small 'business' making fashion accessories, mostly sells them to other teenage girls. I am amazed that she has managed to make some money at it.

[PaulSmenis]

DS is 14 and gets 40 per month.

Can I ask you all how much you spend on clothes for your teenagers? Do you spend loads or are you more frugal?

[Sparklingbrook]

DS1 (14) really likes clothes but he doesn't want much. In the house he slobs about in 3/4 trackie bottoms, and has a couple of pairs of chinos plus a load of Primark t shirts.

At the moment I think he has enough so any new stuff he can buy.

[bigTillyMint]

Paul, I don't really have to buy anything much for DD(14) as she has so many clothes (and hasn't grown much in a year so it all still fits!) and buys her own out of her pocket/birthday/earnings money. I buy uniform, underwear, PJ's and the odd pair of leggings.
Plus £££ gym leotards and other sports stuff!

I buy a bit more out of school stuff for DS(12) as he is still on £3 a week and has grown 6" in the last 6 month! Plus uniform, underwear, PJ's and £££ footy boots and astros and other sports stuff!

[Caster8]

Can your DD do paid babysitting? You may need to get her some first aid training. Not sure if they do paediatric first aid training for people that age.
She could put a card up at the newsagent's.

[BackforGood]

Paul - here we just replace when they are outgrown. Then I scour charity shops then move on to the cheaper 'market' type places on our local high street. Until very recently, my dcs have all been lucky enough to get bags of 'hand-me-downs' from cousins (although unfortunately they are now bigger than said cousins ). Particular things they want tend to arrive as a birthday or Christmas prezzie. My older two (17 and 14 now) have both bought themselves the odd thing out of their earned money from their jobs.
Caster Not many people are willing to let younger teens babysit. My dd is a yr older than the OP's dd, and has always been very 'mature' for her years. She's done loads of 'mothers help' type stuff, is a Young Leader with the Scouts, and has first aid, etc., as well as babysitting experience (where I've been sat in the house, but not actually done anything, or where she's looked after 4 littlies for several hours when the parents were doing some volunteering on site.... to give her the experience) but she can't get any paid babysitting anywhere yet. :-(

[valiumredhead]

Ds is 12 and gets a total of 20 quid a month from Dh and me plus his grand parents. We also pay 7 quid a month for his phone.

He can do extra jobs if he's saving up for done thing specific.

He's just earned an extra tenner for a fab school report