How much monthly allowance do you give your teenager?

[mismomary]

Our eldest DD is 17 and in sixth form. Last year we started her on a monthly allowance but it's not working. She's really down about money, says she hasn't enough to buy Christmas presents for friends or clothes. We give her £80pm and pay for phone, gym, and basic toiletries. (Rule is if Tesco stock it she can have it). Clothes I buy the basics.

She's been trying to get a job but struggling, has applied to local pubs and supermarkets etc.

I'm starting to think we have got this allowance totally wrong and she should be on more like £200pm or more. We can easily afford this but don't want to be over generous as want her to learn to budget and value money etc But perhaps we've gone too far the other way.

I'd be grateful to know what you give. Maybe we are way off!!

Feel torn over this because I don’t want DD when she’s older to be skint when wanting to go out with her mates, but I used to get £10 a week from when I was about 14 (DM said it came out of my family allowance) and she still used to buy essentials but anything “big” like when I needed new school shoes she’d split the cost with me 50/50, when I got a part time job in college I used to earn about £80 a week, she then stopped giving me anything, and I had to pay for everything myself. Clothes, bus, socialising, dinner money, presents. She made it sound like she was being generous because I didn’t have to pay board 😂

Feeling a little hard done to tbh 😂

£30 a month for my 14yr old. We also pay £15 gym membership, £15 ish phone contract, £10 a month investment (his choice), £8.50 for his portion of Spotify, £11ish PlayStation subscription and anytime at the gym range he wants up to 8hrs a month (£80 value), he also gets his bus fare and school dinners paid for. All clothes and toiletries bought, his job is school so he has to do bits round the house (dishwasher, keep his room clean and tidy, strip and make his bed) to earn pocket money.

he isn’t overly social and for now is happy with what we provide, should he go out more and need more money then we can look at increasing what he does round the house to earn more money - cleaning cars, cutting grass etc

I agree, budgeting is a big part of the whole thing.

Id give her money if she earned it

Don't be giving her money for sod all it breeds lazy behaviour

Really interested to know if they did save it?!
I have 3 children, 2 of which are in those age brackets. I think I’d cry if I was handing over £400 a month to my children 🫣

I only give mine £30 a month but it really is fun money - I pay for everything they actually need to spend - phones gym toiletries food haircuts and extra for present buying . Now 17/15 and I’m thinking I probably need to add it all up and give them more so they budget . At the moment they save most of what they are given .

The whole point of an allowance is to learn to budget. If she spends it then she has to wait until next month. She pays for her phone. Toiletries and Gym.
I would if you can round it up to £100. a month.
But I would also switch it around and probably say pay her toiletries, gym and phone. And say this is her clothing allowance. She buys her clothes.
She could shop around for gym memberships and phone contracts but she might learn budgeting faster and more readily by choosing how much to spend on her clothes.

We sat down together a couple of years ago and worked out the annual cost of school uniform and deducted that from the annual total child benefit payments. DC then receives what's left. I cover transport/lunches/school shoes/trainers/contact lenses. If dc wants different toiletries to what I buy that has to come out of their own money. I fund the cost of a basic mobile phone and if they want something flashier again they find the difference.

I do treat dc to items when funds allow (single parent) but it's not something they can rely on. DC will equally treat me to the odd Costa.

£30 a week, covers any lunches.

I think it depends a lot on

1. What does it have to cover and
2. What the norm is in her friends' group.

My DD who is now at university got £50 a month and that had to cover her phone, but it really was just for socialising, buying presents and clothes she wanted (as opposed to needed). Plus she had a part time job.

this was standard amongst her friendship group, and they cut their cloth accordingly. They knew they could spend loads on socialising all the time and lots of meetups would be just round each others' houses or mooching round town. If your DD is trying to keep up with friends who have more money she is going to struggle.

Has she got volunteering on her CV? That was my DCs' route into part time jobs in sixth form. Is she applying for Christmas jobs?

If it helps, for useful comparison, like many others, my DD is living on the basic maintenance loan at university while we pay her rent. This is about £100 a week, but has to cover food, toiletries, transport, study materials, laundry etc. By comparison your suggested £200 a month is a lot.

Maybe give her a separate buying Christmas present budget?

I am mostly curious about 14 and 15 year olds having a gym membership 😳

Or encourage her to save?

I was giving my son £100 a month and he got £60 from my Mum. His girlfriend who is also 16 gets £20 a month, so my son pays for her all the time. I stopped his allowance when I discovered he was buying cannabis.

Unfortunately £18.46 a week does not go far at all in 2025

It’s the norm where I live! Which I agree is a bit crazy. We do pay for my 15 year old but only because

a) it’s relatively cheap at £25pm and we can easily afford it
b) it’s good for their health and wellbeing
c) they socialise there with friends (and there’re no screens involved!)

But at the same time, what does a teenager need more than that for when all their needs are paid for (clothes, phone, toiletries etc). £20 per week purely for fun at age 17 is plenty.

I am realising I am too poor for Mumsnet.
I got zero. At 16 I was expected to work while at college.
I got clothes and shoes etc for birthdays or Christmas unless desperate. They did pay for my bus fare and school lunch till 16.
I went back at 18 after a relationship break up and paid them.
I grew up in a solid middle class family on a decent income.
I only got money when I was 16 and got work.

My daughter got £20 a week from my parents.
I paid her bus fare, lunches, clothes, toiletries and phone, treats or a meal if she was out with me when shopping etc until she finished sixth form.
She is 22 now and works and buys her own stuff.

There are months I do not have £500 for myself for random spending

Mine are now 21 and 23. From the age of 14ish, they each received £170/ month until they went to uni. Now it's around £550/ month each, but only during term time as they both work during the breaks, which they use for holidays and to top up during the year for things or contributions don't cover, eg, concert tickets, tattoos, etc.

From that they were expected to buy all their makeup, toiletries, clothes, shoes, gifts for friends, etc, cinema, days out with friends, etc.
We paid for school shoes and uniforms, 1 pair trainers/boots per year, basic toiletries (eg, shampoo costing ~£1.50), family days out, but not souvenirs, family meals out, and holidays.

I had basically tried to estimate what I spent on them each in an average year, and then simply divided it by 12. Better than giving them £20 every time they needed it.

This way they learnt to budget for themselves.

They did - they both had about £12,000 saved from pocket money by the time they left school, so about half of what we’d given them.

Genuinely curious.
Those that still pay at 18.

When is that till?
Until they finish uni? Work full time? Move out?
If they don't move out are you paying for a 25 year olds allowance alongside all their basic needs?
Can you adopt me?

Neither did the fiver a week I occasionally-sometimes got at 16. When it's basically fun money, pocket money, you can't just keep increasing it because they want to do more things - they need to budget it and decide what they actually want to spent it on, just like we did.

“Nothing to budget” - there is, and it’s plenty. Why do you think a 17yo needs more than £80 for fun money (they have all their actual needs paid for)?

Gym membership for a 15 year old is less than I was paying for a sports club which she stopped. She goes with friends, it's a council one in a leisure centre so cheap and cheerful not floating around in bath robes type set up! Loads of teens go, it's a restricted/ cheaper membership so can only go just after school.

you would be suprised, with new labour laws and the amount of people apply, its not as easy as it once was. My 17 year old DS tried to hand out his CV around town and got turned down by roughly half saying they couldnt take his cv due to GDPR! He obviously applies online and even with some experience, he is really struggling for a job