Working Teens

[wingingiteveryday]

My son (17) has started an apprenticeship and will be getting £1.800pm(ish) take home pay. Nobody taught me any money skills as a child/teen and I wish they had. We have agreed that he will be handing over a percentage of his wage for savings/housekeeping while he still lives at home. I hope to secretly save the house keeping percentage and hand this back when he moves out. I really want him to be in the habit of saving and ‘paying bills’ before he’s fully in the real world.

What do you do and/or what do you deem fair?

The figures £250 into a ISA and £150 for ‘housekeeping’ are in my mind. Which would leave him with £1400 disposable income. How does this sound. Any tips on the best ISA to choose would also be welcomed as he won’t be eligible for the help to buy one until he turns 18 next year.

For context, we live a 20 minute cycle ride from his job. He’s learning to drive but his lessons and test are paid for already and he has a cheap sim only mobile contract. I currently pay his gym £20pm and he can take that over. He takes sandwiches into work so there are no extra expenses there. He will need to take a train journey once per month for college. Up until now he’s survived perfectly well on £20 a week pocket money with the odd top up here and there so this is going to feel like a huge amount for him and I want him to be responsible and not waste it all without interfering too much.

He’s not particularly into fashion and he’s had the same gaming computer for 5 years so I am not even sure what he plans to spend his money on 🤔 I guess at some point he will need to buy a car but I’m hoping his child trust fund thing will cover that.

Any tips would be welcomed :)

I guess some things to start learning about are budgeting, saving and investing, and pensions.

I would think, as a minimum, he needs to learn to budget. It doesn't have to be complicated - a simple spreadsheet (or paper notebook) with a 'money in' and 'money out' column. Regular expenses (gym, travel, housekeeping money etc) get pre-populated, so he knows how much he has to spend/save. Keep track of little purchases and add them to his outgoings at the end of every day. Getting into this habit when you're young, makes it much easier to continue this throughout life.

Consider signing up to the Money Saving Expert's Money Tips email - it provides information about current deals on investments and savings accounts, as well as other money tips.

Start talking about pension savings now, even if he chooses not to start contributing yet. (At 17, he can have something like a junior SIPP, although you'd have to open the account for him, and he obviously needs to understand that he won't have access to the money until he retires.)

In terms of regular money management habits, I was taught to add up what I expected supermarket shopping to be, as I went along, so I knew roughly what it would be when I got to the till and that I had enough money to cover the full cost. (I know most people pay by card now, but I think it's still a good skill, rather than just approaching it from a 'well, I need this, so it goes in the basket/trolley' attitude. It so easy with cards not to really understand what you're spending or where your money is going.)

I have read that some people teach their kids to split money into thirds - one pot for saving (which is never touched, as it's the rainy day safety net), one pot for spending and one pot for investing. I would have valued learning about the latter, as I was taught nothing about investing and struggle to understand options now.