Son has spent all his birthday money on fried chicken and doughnuts

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My 13yo confessed earlier that he's been taking his bank card out each day and has been buying sweets, drinks, fried chicken etc for him and his friends for the last few weeks. Only today he ran out of money.
He's spent about £150. We had no idea.
I thought DH would be really cross when I told him, but he just sighed and said that it's a lesson he needed to learn.
I had no clue he was even taking his bank card out. He's only had it a couple of months so was clearly giddy on his riches. Idiot!

Please tell me that other kids have done this? Im a mixture of cross, sad for him, and quite bemused right now.

Ds 17.

£650 quid on perfume...
In one transaction.

😳

Sounds enormous fun. Mine did the same (and more on Fortnite) but now is fiscally very sensible. Boringly sensible. I wouldn’t be cross - impulse control and the teen brain are not always well aligned.

Wow this thread has been busy this evening!
To the couple of posters who mentioned him "buying" friends. He told me this evening it was pretty much always stuff for him and his best friend, who he's known since he was 5. So, I'm not worried about that!
I also know he's had his fair share of treats bought for him by friends since he started at secondary school.
We've agreed that the card will be held by me from now on, and he can have it when he goes out, most likely just at the weekend, with a chat about what he wants / needs to buy and how much money me has to cover that (none right now...!)

I'd forgotten until I read this! When we were 11, me and my friends used to save up our pocket money, then spend it all at once on chocolate and crisps and make ourselves feel sick!! Never as much as £150, but would have happily spent that and more, had we had access to that amount of money 😂

When I turned 18 in the mid 80s my grandmother gave me £100...no stipulations from her on what the money was to be used for. She had also done the same for my older brother when he'd turned 18 the previous year, so I had a pretty good idea that it was going to happen....

I spent £80 of the £100 taking myself and my then best friend (who also turned 18 on the same date) to the nearest city for a day out. I bought all the CDs and clothes I'd had my eye on for the past year...I remember we also went mad buying perfume and other stuff in The Body Shop (back before it had been sold to big business). We had lunch in a nice cafe...I also bought my mother a film on video that she'd been wanting for ages, and my father a UB40 CD. They had an almighty go at me when I got home for 'wasting' the money. They made me feel like the biggest, most selfish bitch on the planet.

I still look back with real fondness on that day, it was a good, fun day (apart from the end). I hope my friend does too, I always think of it and her on my birthday every year.

Well, as well as my profligate bubble tea habit, I blew a load of savings as a youth.

i was the first in any of the extended family to go to uni. Generous relatives sent me money — when added to my holiday job savings, I had £800 ish. Equivalent to £2k nowadays. Blew the bloody lot on booze, takeaway and psychedelic wall hangings for my crummy flat. And don’t regret in one bit.

also @Nancienoo bubble tea is delish. I don’t like milk, so I can’t comment on the milk tea varieties. I get black tea with the tapioca pearls. It’s the most uniquely refreshing drink I think I’ve ever had. I had to give up booze for medical reasons, so it has become my nice treat instead of wine.

I'm impressed that children have physical cards. Where I am many (most? All?) teenagers have their bank cards linked to their phones.

My teens have enough to pay for lunch at school at least weekly and I try to ensure they can afford movie tickets and burgers etc as they want. There's a savings account linked that they are able to move money from ds16 has mostly used his but wants a trip to South America next December so will be getting a job soon. Ds13 has spent more than I would have liked of his savings on monopoly sets. But he has now got his eyes on a new musical instrument, so I expect he's going to slow down his other purchases too.

I think teen boys with access to money will always spend it on food. No matter how much we want them to save or how much food we buy for them. I hope that the fact that I get notifications whenever they spend helps keep them in check a little, but I wouldn't be shocked hearing that a friend had spent as the OP's son did.

As a teen I babysat Saturday nights and most of that money was spent the following week. And it was good money for the 90s. It wasn't till I was living alone that I started to budget at all.

I had £3k left to me when I was 18, I spent it all on nights out, cheap clothes and fast food.

Its parts of growing up, if I had that money now god I’d invest but you (hopefully) only do it once as you bitterly regret it once you realise what you could have had and what little you have to show for such a lot of money.

I don’t regret it now, I was young and have great memories and will spend the rest of my life making wise decisions and paying bills, it’s kind of a right of passage I think, bless him 😊

No, nowhere like a milkshake. Revolting cold milky tea. I can't imagine any health benefits.

What's the repercussions of having spent it? Will it inconvenience him at all? The only way it becomes or is a lesson is if it will stop him doing/ having other stuff. Maybe sit him down and ask if he wants help how to manage luxuries v's savings. I do think that kids (within reason) should have some financial control to teach them- even the mistakes if approaches properly can be used for learning. Forcing saving done around them, I don't think has the same impact as them being in control and realising why the saving some for later actually matters.

He enjoyed it and treated his mates and has also (hopefully) learned from it. Could have been far worse.

Also fried chicken, yum.

I'd be happy with that. My kids are younger but addicted to those £1 arcade machines where you put the money in, turn the handle and get a shitty, plastic ball containing a shitty, plastic toy.

£150 on that would be a tragedy

KFC with friends = good times.

I was given 1k when I was 16 as was my sister, years ago so worth far more now with inflation. I saved mine and she wasted all of hers. Many years have passed and she never learned that lesson.

I tried bubble tea about 20 years ago this was not in the UK, I really didn’t like it.

It's £150 well spent if he learns that subtraction is a very real thing.

I got my DCs bank accounts when they started earning babysitting money. They didn't fritter it away because they knew how many hours of dealing with toddlers it would take to top up their accounts again.

Sorry, posted too soon..

But it was their money to spend as they wished. They earned it.

My son will spend every penny in his card since he got his own card at 13. On junk/fast food mainly. I can't give money in advance for school travel fare because he will spend it.

I dread to think what happens to the money in his ctf account when he get his hands on it, I wish I never join the scheme. 🙁

At least he knows what he likes.

I hope he will evermore refer to this as “a brief period of wealth, when chicken was plentiful and I was rolling in donuts.”

Once he's 18 you can't control it anymore. It's his to do what he wants with.

I was so excited when I got my first tranche of student loan I bought a very expensive stereo. I had never had money in my account before. Then I couldn't afford food for the rest of the year. Better your son learns this lesson at 13!

@sianiboo That all sounds really lovely! So kind and generous of you and what better way to enjoy a gift?

😂

Teenage boys are like bloody golden retrievers aren’t they? They never stop eating, never think about consequences and they’re still pretty adorable. My DS was exactly the same. At his school, the canteen charges your credit card. My DH noticed he suddenly had a GINORMOUS bill from DS’s school because DS had decided he was Bob Geldoff, amd was feeding the world. (No one can drink THAT much chocolate bloody milk!) Obviously DH unplugged access to the card, and then he got his first PT job (at Mc Donald’s ironically) and now he’s Scrooge Mc Duck because he knows the value of his money. He’ll absolutely let me buy him crap, but he thinks twice before being Mr Generous.

I live in China and it’s been everywhere here for decades but it’s treated very much like a special treat - like going out for a milkshake or something, only really consumed on days out with friends and not as a part of a normal daily diet. It has the normal health benefits of tea and milk and if there are any real fruits added then obviously that too, but also contains loads of sugar so no, not especially healthy. View it like you’d view a milkshake or a creamy, syrupy coffee from Starbucks rather than how you’d view, say, a black coffee or a green tea!

(Not criticising it, it’s yummy!)

After my mother and her younger sister had moved out my grandmother and my aunt moved to a small flat, just the two of them, my aunt was a teen.

They had a couple of bills come in and money was quite tight.

My grandmother took my aunt to the local city and they had a nice lunch and bought glossy magazines and fancy chocolates.

That evening my aunt said that maybe they shouldn't have splurged. My grandmother's answer was that, "These, are the essentials of life".

Sometimes it's nice to have a little splurge.

OP It's a lesson in life.

It is his money to spend on what he likes. It wasn’t on vaping or drink etc. It was sociable and fun. He won’t always spend his money on chicken and donuts. If you are disapproving about his spending and take his card away, he might be tempted to spend it on something really bad next time. I would be!