What allowance do you give your 16 year olds?

[rookiemere]

Hi
We're trying to work out what is fair as an allowance for DS.

I'd be interested in what other people give per month and what it covers e.g. clothes, extra food outside meal times etc.

For context DS16 gets £80 per month and this is meant to cover gym £10 plus clothes and outings. However as he does a lot of sports he says he spends a lot of it on food.

DS goes to private school and it does feel as if his peers have the latest gear and can afford things. We are comfortably off but don't like to waste money and it feels like DS is continually asking for money.

**£200 per month

It's not a terrible thing for your don to learn that if he wants expensive clothes, he has to get a job and pay towards them, that these things don't just fall into your lap - someone has to be earning the money for them. It's also not a terrible life lesson to learn that other people have different levels of income - it might be becoming an issue if he's developing a sense of entitlement from private school friends ( wants expensive things but doesn't want to do the work to pay for them), but doesn't see that actually he's privileged compared to many other children!

My dd is nearly 15. She's desperate for a job and is looking. I give her £50 per month for going out with friends and things she particularly wants. I do buy her skincare, most clothing, shoes, phone. Mostly I give her the allowance so she learns to make choices around budgeting/that money doesn't grow on trees.
Its amazing how much more careful she is when it's her money being spent.

@ImAvingOops yes we were worried about him assuming that expensive clothes are a right, rather than a privilege and a choice.

I hope a reasonably generous clothes allowance of £60 per month will enable him to make choices, as it's enough that two months worth would buy the more expensive items or - like the rest of us - he may learn to wait for sales to come.

This thread has been really helpful as a benchmark and we've now decided that he will get £100 per month to include gym and a separate £60 clothes allowance, obviously items for sports and necessities not included in that.

Yes Indeed, when my DC started getting the clothing allowance they did shift in their thinking , and started looking at the cheaper clothes shops. H and M etc.

15.5 year old DD gets £30 a month. We pay for school transport, essential clothes, phone and hobbies. I can’t believe how much some of your kids get! DD gets more than lots of her peers.

I don't. We pay for a phone contract and monthly bus ticket but they have a part time job which covers other things

I’m also shocked at some of the amounts. Kids who have less handouts for nothing end up with a stronger work ethic for sure. This played out in my school friendship group and I won’t make that mistake with my kids.

2 teens at private school. Both have part time jobs. Maybe he would appreciate the value of his allowance more if he had to earn money too. When he asks for more money I don't understand why you haven't encouraged him to find a part time job to top up his lifestyle especially if he wants designer clothes.

Local fish & chip shop currently have a sign up looking for someone 4-8 on a Friday night. That leaves plenty of time for sport & study.

Genuine question - how can you afford to give this much a month? I earn just over min wage, DD is just 16 and about to start 6th form. I want to give her an allowance, but how could I afford 100+ a month when I only bring home 800+ myself?

Mine is also a boarder, she gets £80 (is £100 but she wanted latest iPhone 2yrs ago and said she'd pay for the contract which is nearly up) to buy weekend treats and specific clothes she wants. Big ticket clothes/trainers she gets for Xmas/birthday.

80-100 seems to be the norm for her year group.

I based the £12 per week plus phone, clothes & college books on the amount of pocket money the local authority says a child in care should get.

My son works part time as well as getting ‘handouts’. He works 8 hours a week term time as well as studying for 4 A levels. Over the summer he’s worked at least 30 hours a week, apart from when he was on holiday. I’d say that’s a strong work ethic as well as him knowing that he has parents that help him out too. Not sure why that’s a mistake.

Presumably people’s earnings play a big part in how much they give. You can’t give what you don’t have. Does she have a part time job? Just give what you can and combined with a part time job, help her to budget.

Ds gets £50 from us and £30 from his grandparents. I also pay for his phone.

He has a part time job so generally does ok and seems to have enough money each month.

My 2 both boarded for 6th form. I gave the elder £150 a month and paid their phone bill - that had to cover everything - clothes toiletries socialising (mainly coffee as the pub was off limits) and the train fare for exeats every 3 weeks. DD2 got £100 a month for the same purposes as her train fare was a lot cheaper. DD2 is very into her designer clothes and skincare but is a demon in the charity shops and Vinted (and pretty good at selling on Depop when she gets bored with something). Point out to your son that there is plenty of secondhand Ralph Lauren on ebay etc whihc is sooo much better for the planet.

Both of mine have worked since they were in year 8 - babysitting, music practice supervision etc etc and found themselves a cushy number sitting on a reception desk studying in the Easter holidays for £100 a day.

16.5yo ds

• £15pm from me (writing this realise the ds1 got £20 at the same age, so I'll increase it).
• £20pm from his dad (separated).
• For the last couple of years he's also has the ONS covid survey money if he participates, currently £20pm. I get Tesco vouchers and give him the cash.

• £7pm phone contract paid by me.

(12gb data, unlimited minutes & texts).

• £250pa clothes allowance (just entered 2nd year of this), to cover anything extra things he wants - I'll cover uniform, school shoes, basics (underwear, basic jeans, trainers, tshirts etc). In reality hes brought a few things but probably not spent the £250 last year.
• Sports fees paid by me (judo £2pw + £21pa, hockey £60pa + £3pw pay and play + £5-£10pw match fees).

Currently working 21hrs a week over the summer @ £7ph. Work experience with my employer.

Gets ad hoc Christmas and Birthday money from relatives.

When he starts 6th form I'll cover travel. If he wants to take food from home I'll make sure it it's available, if he wants to buy food he will have to pay for it.

Overall he doesn't spend all he gets, but mostly cos he doesn't really go out - he plays his sports and he games.

I am feeling quite mean on this thread- hope my child never reads it! we used to give £8 a week and pay for phone and clothes ourselves. Now she has got two jobs over the summer and she will continue these in 6th form so we have stopped pocket money altogether. We are both low relatively low earners and she hasn’t really moaned about the amount of pocket money, though in the holidays was asking for a few extra pounds here and there and did say her friends all seemed rich compared to her. That said it has given her the impetus to get work so she can get a gym membership .

DD16 gets 80 per month from us.
I give her 30 a week for her school lunches/snacks./coffee
we pay gym, phone, buy essential clothing, books, school supplies.
We pay for hair appointments.
She has a job in a cafe and earns 50 per shift. Usually works weekends but she’s put loads of hours in over summer and is really enjoying earning her own money.
She is much more thoughtful with her spending now she has to earn it.
We also buy tickets for events/theme parks/
Teenagers seem to cost a bomb. They cost me so little when whey were kids, they’d eat anything, clothes were second hand or passed around from friends, activities were walks and parks. Who knew.

@wishmyhousetidy and those on lower incomes- the challenge for us is a nice one, we are lucky enough to have good salaries, and as we chose to send DS to private school I feel it would be unfair for him to have radically less than his compatriots. If he could see that we had no spare income, then I'd like to think his attitude would be a bit different.

Anyway radical overhaul again after talking to DH and showing him this thread. We're now giving DS a monthly sum of £180 which is to cover all clothing and hair cuts, apart from school and sports related requirements.

We've also asked him what he's buying in the supermarkets on the way home and stocked up on those things in the house so he doesn't fritter away so much.

I'm hoping by giving him a sizeable sum he will understand that the one off requests won't be agreed, and he can make his own budgeting decisions regarding clothes. If inflation and cost of utilities rises so much that it's impractical to give so much, then we'll need to rethink .

Oh and he seems to have a ridiculously gruelling rugby training schedule as he has scraped into the firsts. The only day he could conceivably take on a part time job would be Sunday, so I'm not going to push it for now. Still frustrated he didn't try harder for one in the Summer but that's over now.

We pay for phone (although he's just upgraded so only paying half now) and gym membership which is £28 a month, plus I buy basic clothes, pay for haircuts, toiletries etc. and sometimes slip him a tenner for food when he's going out.
He has a part time job to pay for his social life and trainer habit.

Oh eck I feel like a right tightwad now. DD 16 gets no allowance as such. I pay her phone (£7 pm) and her gym membership (35 pm) incidentals such as bus fares and school lunches all paid for but if she wants to go to the cinema etc she has to earn it by doing jobs.

clothes are usually £100 shopping trip every season so £400 per yr ish.

Some of these amounts are insane to me!

@Whycantibetangy I'm with you...on the one hand I feel like I must be tight, but on the other hand ds knows that if he wants something he has to earn it.
State school here, and all of his friends have part time jobs.

@rookiemere but why would he have looked for a job this summer if he knows you're just handing out cash.

Because my two are at a private school I have tried even harder to make sure they have a real concept of money.

@alrightfella we gave him the £80 I talked about in first post on the basis it wouldn't be enough to get him through the summer.

To be fair he did get one days work at a friends Dads - was a set job - and bolstered the money through dog walks which he gets a fiver an hour for.