How much pocket money?

[Greenbanana7]

16 year old DS, just left school, started college. Empties the dishwasher on a rota with his siblings and gets £4 a week. We buy him clothes and other stuff he needs. What would be a reasonable amount to give him per week? We have 3 children below him in age so need to be mindful about how much it will cost when they all turn 16! Thanks

Dd has just started 6th form.

I give her £25pw now. This is to cover school lunches, spends with friends, hair products, bus fares, random drinks teens seem to be obsessed with etc. She loves it &is managing her money well.

Amazingly all of a sudden she is very interested in making her own lunch for school. And I don't get asked to buy Starbucks etc anymore so everyone is happy.

I gave my ds £25 a week. I was getting £5 a week in the 1980's. He did the pots, bins and hoovered every other day to earn it.

Yeah well I put put it into a calculator and it says £5 in the 80’s is equivalent to £25 today don’t know how accurate it is though

I have just upped DDs from £5/week to £10/week. She just turned 17. Just lost child benefit for her.

She has a weekend job paying £45/week. She pays for her riding lesson at £25/week.

That leaves her 20 quid/week.

The 10 quid from me is for her food at college (she only goes 3 days/week)

Obvs she still lives at home and we supply all food and i'd also still buy clothes if she wanted something she couldn't afford.

There have been better-paying jobs going at our local supermarket and she didn't even apply so im guessing she's happy with her income.

16 plus, they need to get a job of some sort really. I think your 4 quid a week is fine, OP. Will incentivise them to work to get more.

@Anisty If your DD is in college, I would think she should still qualify for child benefit. My 17yo does.
There’s info here: www.gov.uk/child-benefit-16-19

When Ds was 15/16 he got £80 per month of which he has to spend min £40 on clothes. I also paid for his phone. When he started college (almost 17) this went up to £100 (so he could get McDs or do something sociable once a week if he wanted). I also pay for his phone and bus fares. His dad has recently started giving him £15 per week on top of this and DS has used some of this to join the gym. The rest goes on cinema/clothes. He mostly takes packed lunch as its ‘free’. It has been a really good way of teaching him how to budget and how much things cost.

My nearly 15 year old gets £50 a month. I pay her phone bill.

She uses it for days out with friends, Starbucks, some clothes (I buy uniform/essentials), makeup etc

She usually takes a packed lunch to school but if she chooses to go to the shop for lunch then she would pay for that as well.

So I wouldn’t be giving him any ad hoc money at all, and give him a much higher sum for him to budget. I’d also consider non uniform clothes in this (if you think he’s responsible enough). I’d probably go for £20 a weekish (the not including clothes option) and expect him to get a part time job.

We did/do an allowance at that age, not pocket money.

At 16 ours got £100 a month but paid their own gym subscription and all social spending and bought their own leisure/ free time clothes (with a couple of pre agreed exceptions like a pair of summer and a pair of winter shoes and a winter coat and a raincoat, plus some sports stuff pre agreed because we actively want to encourage that).

We paid for driving lessons once that was relevant and basic phone and basic data - they pay for top ups. We never gave random extra hand-outs. Kids worked as well, one not til 17.

We actually had a written contract with our kids to prevent remembering differently about what is and isn't to come out of the allowance.

£4 seems really low. I think I would give at least £10 a week for that age. I used to get £20 a week at that age and that was not an unusual amount more than 20 years ago! £4 just isn't going to cover anything

Thanks - she doesn't as she's doing an HNC which counts as higher education - i already checked it out.