Monthly Allowance & Bank Account for 14 year old Boy

[wackyraces]

Was thinking of opening a cash card account for my soon to be 14 DS1 for his birthday & pay in a monthly allowance.

Who is the best bank to open an account with?

How much is allowance is reasonable, I was thinking £25 per month as he already earns about £12 a week from paper round & £5 per month from taking my mums dustbin in everyweek.

And what do I say this money is for?

Advice would be very welcome as a dont want to come across as out of touch when telling my son if that makes sense

ds, aged 13, gets 10 a month.
i was feeling really really mean when i first started reading this thread.

i like the soundof the child benefit, is that 14 pounts or thereabouts?

slartybarty... you are not mean!! To me it is total insanity to be giving 12/13 year olds not far short of £100 a month.

And how can a mobile phone cost £35 a month? I have a contract that costs me £24.99.. that is free 02 to 02 calls, 200 mins free for other networks and 1000 texts a month!!!

When my DD1 was 14 or 15.. I looked at her 5'8" lolling around on the sofa or on the pc, and thought... 'I am not shellling out more and more money for you to sit around like this... you have two arms and two legs and are perfectly capable of doing some sort of work to earn enough to pay for your luxuries!'

Too many kids nowadays are totally indulged with money and totally dependent on parents topping them up and when they hit the big wide world, they have no idea how to manage. It was a valuable lesson for my DDs and my DD1 is now at Uni, with student loan, paying for her food, clothes, drink etc. and managing brilliantly - no allowance from me. If she wants to blow her student loan on booze - that is fine and will be her decision - but she might go rather hungry if she does....

It seems like only yesterday she was 14 and now she is relatively independent. You have to start teaching them how to manage money now and I can't see how giving them £100 a month is gonna teach them anything!

Sorry.... rant over... I'll go away now

Tight wads

Slarty, I too was feeling mean when I first read this - I'm so glad I'm not alone. My two (12 and 14) average £10 per month each. They seem to manage quite OK with that - buying gifts and sweets etc and topping up their phones (neither of them are big users). They do usually get some cash gifts at xmas and birthdays too admittedly. If they want or need more they can get a paper round or sell their old toys. I buy their clothes - neither of them have any interest in shopping yet.

Noddy... yes, that's meeeee tight wad!!!

I think there's a balance to be found here. I want to encourage ds1 to be individually responsible for his own budgeting: so to give a reasonable amount that he doesn't expect me to also cough up for stuff. But I also strongly want to encourage him to get a part-time job once he's old enough, and he's not likely to want to do this unless he's short of cash to do the things he wants!

Next year he will have £12 per week on bus fares, plus school lunches. So that's already a considerable amount of cash for him to get used to managing, without any spending money at all.

I am also surprised at how much money is given to some of the teens here. Lucky things!

ds1 and I negotiate on a weekly basis - he gets 'x' amount of money for one thing but can keep the change for himself, so if he spends wisely can end up with up to £10.00 change. He gets more money and treats when we're feeling richer as a family and is expected to tighten his belt with the rest of us, if we are going through a lean patch. I pay for his moblile phone on a pay a you go basis - approx £10.00 a month. If he runs out, the phone is dead till next payday. He knows how to make an emergency reverse charge call if he has to.

Like Roisin, I want him to get a job, but he is still a bit on the young side for this at the moment.

DS1 (14) gets $50 (23 pounds at current exchange rates!) a month. He then earns money by babysitting his siblings for $5 an hour. This works really well for us as we pay a fraction of what a "proper" sitter would cost, he understands the notion of earning money, and he now pays for any extras rather than asking us.

hello sunny how is oz?

I haven't really reached this stage yet, as mine are only 7 and 9 yo - but they do already have their £3 per week pocket money paid into their bank account, which has a cash card. In addition they get a £2 per week cash to spend on sweets or magazines.

I'm probably going against the grain though, in that I do not want my children to get part time jobs as teenagers. I want them to have as much free time as possible to enjoy being children while they can.

There are plenty of years of work ahead for them - I've no interest in seeing them join the ranks of the work force any earlier than they need to, especially since there seems to be so much home work given at senior school level these days.

cat64 - amused by the 10p per year of life - that's what I used to get as a kid in the 70's/80's! (partly used to buy my breaktime drink at school for 10p per day unless I wanted to save it!). From aged 13 (mid 1980's) I got £40 per month to cover everything from bus fares (from memory about 65p per day) to all clothes apart from school uniform (and had to save up for Christmas to buy presents for all relatives - I think they mostly got nice bars of soap one year). Taught me how to budget! I had a natwest teenage account with a cashcard (those were the days when you could just take out £5 at a time)

soapbox.... am interested in what you say. I maybe felt like you at one point and yes, agree, they do have a lot of homework. BUT i just know that those hours when they are working (a couple of shifts a week)... if they were at home and not working, they would NOT be doing homework - they would be on MSN or whatever. And the older they get, the lazier they get. You can mostly get younger ones to do things, but it is really hard to get teens to do anything... they have an answer for everything! Just my opinion of course....

For instance, DD2 does a shift on a Saturday lunchtime starting at 12 noon. If she didn't get up to go to her job, I just know she would be lying in bed or messing around on the computer in her pj's!! At least it gets her out of bed!

Helliebean - There will be decades ahead of having to get out of bed to get to work - I'd rather they enjoy being lazy teenagers while they are young enough to get away with it

Soapy.... part of me agrees with you - honest!!

But idle teens are berluddy frustrating after a while!

DD1's BF has never had a part time job in his life (they are both at Uni) and now needs to think about getting one (it looks good on a CV and he needs the dosh!) and he doesn't have a clue how to go about it and has no idea whatsoever how to work for anyone. My DD1 is having to organise and help him!!!

Oh well - maybe some voluntary work for them then

Ahh... but that won't pay for the beer....!

DD1 is pointing him in the right direction as she is a bossy moo anyway! And having worked for years thinks she knows it all... !

i also thought the amount in the first few posts was high - but then I remembered I used to earn around £8 a week when I was a teenager (a long time ago ). Out of that I think I bought a lot of my own clothes, school textbooks (they weren't free like here), friends birthday presents, etc and saved for holiday spending money and so on. Didn't really go out much and obviously mobile phones didn't exist then!

But I don't think my parents would have given me that sort of money - in fact I think my pocket money was 50p and that stopped when i got my job!

My DD's didn't get a monthly Allowence until they started year 10 (aged 14). They then had an account with a cash card.
Before that they did get pocket money weekly which worked out at about 15p per year of age.Actually is was a little more than that as I remeber they got £2 a week at 12.
They didn't have phones then.

I do have mixed feelings about my son getting a part time job, so I see where soapbox is coming from. My nearly 14 year old ds has quite a lot of extra curricular stuff that eats into his free time anyway - drama on Saturdays and cricket nets on sundays. I wouldn't want him to drop these activities in favour of a dogsbody type part time job.

On the other hand, ds1 wants expensive trainers and gadgets, tickets to music and sports events, nice meals out - things that dh and I don't always have ourselves. I expect ds's demands to increase as he gets older.

The only realistic way ds will get all these things is by earning the money to pay for them. We can only give him so much for christmas and birthdays. I am only prepared to fund his lifestyle to a similar level to the one dh and I have.

Which brings me to a question - how many people are prepared to let their teenagers have a betterg standard of living than they have?

Should teenagers still get the same allowances, pocket money, wages for chores and babysitting siblings, if family money is tight for a few months? My answer is 'no'. But I can see how others might disagree.

While ds lives under our roof he shares our lifestyle and any financila ups and downs. I do not think he should be immune from this, though obvioiusly he should not be burdened with all the details. That's my 2ps worth anyway

Studies have shown that up to about 9 (I think it was 9) hours a week for a teenage job doesn't impact their schoolwork, but more does. I think temporary employment teaches children loads about the world, how it works, responsibilities, and what they ultimately want from a job. Far more so than much of the homework they have to do. That said, neither of my two seem that keen, and one is definitely too busy.

Thinking back, having part time jobs as a teenager helped motivate me to stay on at school and try for university. I realised that 5 days a week behind the counter at Woolworths was not what I wanted at age 16. I also got a feel for the working world which helped guide me in my study and career choices.

Cat64 I am sorry, I probably didn't make my message clear. I agree that teenagers today have more than I did as a teenager, and I had more than my parents did. That's how life is.

But, what I meant was, if family finances (as of now)couldn't stretch to dh or I to buying designer clothing, expensive tickets for music concerts, the latest mobile phone etc I don't see why we should buy this sort of stuff for ds1. Fine as a birthday treat but I wouldn't let ds1 routinely have or do things that dh and I can't afford for ourselves, unless they have educational value. If ds wants more than we as a familiy have, then he would have to work to pay for it.

I do think it's important that teenagers grow up realising that finances can fluctuate even if life seems generally comfortable and stable. That at times, money may be tighter and everyone in the family has to adapt to this.

Well DH & I have an allowance of 50 a month each so there is no way my children are having more pocket money than us !

I do like the idea of them learning how to handle money so might do something along the lines of giving an amount that has to cover out of school shoes or something. But atm we are on 10p per year of life per week they are 9 & 4).

Also like the idea of them earning whilst they are teenagers but can see that it is more difficult than when I was young. So I think I will give them a job with my little business, they will have to do sticking labels on envelopes or something. Or I might loan them out to my Mum to do something in the garden.

I do realise that I am probably totally unrealistic and will cave spectacularly under pressure when DD hits teenage years !

My 13 year old dd gets £40 per month from us and £1.30 (10p per year) a week from her Gran. I pay for phone,school dinners and dancing but she buys everything else. We have only just started with this but I feel this will be adequate for the time being but will review the amount as time goes on.
I feel it is important for her to learn how to budget so if she spends all her allowance in one go it doesn't magically appear again.
At present I can't see how she could find the time for a job with school, homework and five lots of dancing a week but may charge for petrol soon if she takes anymore classes!