How much allowance for teens?

wrote:
-L. wrote:
I don't have a teen now but had my niece as a teen. I gave her a
dollar for every year of age per week...

Wow, I knew my parents were cheap, but this confirms it. I got *10
cents* per age -- so a grand $1.30 as a 13-year-old, and 10% of that
went to church. On the other hand, they paid for everything... I
did babysit, but I honestly don't remember what I spent that $$ on.
And I was a great money-budgeter once I got to college -- I managed to
fund 3 trips abroad based on work-study. Alas, my money-managing
prowess seems to have disappeared now that I'm married. :P

Em
mama to Micah, 11/14/04

Pull out your kleenex -- in highschool, I received no allowance, and
was expected to fund anything outside of school lunches. (Including the
$1/week minimum church donation.)

It wasn't all bad, though -- I worked, I saved, I squandered my money
on Tab soda, and lived to tell all.

Caledonia

"-L." wrote in message

I don't have a teen now but had my niece as a teen. I gave her a
dollar for every year of age per week,

This sounds like a great idea -L. and am wondering if I could apply that to
my two when they are at pocket money age. Do you think that it works for
kids that are not teens. Does 5 dollars for a 5 year old seem fair or is
that too much? I'm not sure what its the best way to work it.


--
Pip

My girls :
DD1 Jasmine - 5 weeks early - 21 March 02 -
Still as small as a peanut but as smart as a whip!

DD2 Abby - 8 weeks early - 3 Feb 05 -
I am very polite and say "Ank Ooooooo" whenever I'm given something.

"Yes you can drive me insane just by talking to me!"


--

On Sat, 16 Dec 2006 13:55:43 GMT, "Donna Metler"
wrote:

When I was in high school, my parents did something which I feel now was
very intelligent. Instead of giving me an allowance, they gave me a monthly
"salary"-but everything had to come out of that salary. So, while my
"allowance" was much higher than most of my friends, I was paying for school
lunches (or packing my own-and if I was packing my own, I had a choice of
buying my own supplies or taking pot luck in the refrigerator), paying for
my own private music lessons, any school activity fees or supplies,
clothing, etc. In times when expenses were lower, I learned that I had to
save up for the big ones (for example, saving money in the summer so I could
afford school supplies and new clothes for the fall) By the time you
subtracted the regular stuff, I probably had less disposable income than
most of my peers-but since I controlled my budget, I was also better at
managing money. They'd help out in emergencies, but it had to be a real
emergency.

I still had some slip-ups in college (a $150 long distance bill in one
month, for example), but in general that money management experience stayed
with me.

As a former contributor who has not been here in quite awhile due to
family issues, this is almost exactly what we did (and do with our
youngest)

My teens get a monthly "allowance". This has to include clothing,
lunches, anything they might do with their friends, school fees
(although youngest is a senior this year and I am subsidizing that a
bit as it can be overwhelming), gifts for people such as christmas and
the like.

We discuss the appropriate amount each year with our kids and I make a
decision then. When our kids get to college, whatever money they get
from us is in semester form only.

I originally started this system because I do not use cash only a visa
debit card for literally everything, and got tired about ten years or
so ago of being asked for cash regularly.

With this system, the only cloithign he gets from me are gifts.

Lest someone ask, chores are not tied to money. In this house, you do
your share of the cleaning and maintenance and keep up your own room
because you are a member of the family and you live here.

toypup wrote:
"Grahame" wrote in message
...

Very interesting..........how did you feel about it at the time?
Did they teach you how to budget?
My 13 yr old never asks for money but we buy her everything..
Im thinking of following your parents example as it sounds a great
idea...but I dont think I have taught her enough about money yet to start.
Any tips?
Thanks
Fiona


I think the ability to save is an inborn quality. You can only teach it so
much. Some kids get it and some kids never will, but at least we can try.
That said, DS gets money every so often depending on how many stars he has
and if he is willing to trade them in for cash. We never buy him toys
except for birthdays and Christmas, even that is too much, considering what
he gets for gifts from everyone else. Still, he wants more toys. He must
buy them with his own money.

I agree that some children are natural savers, but I think we can still
influence our children's attitude to money and saving.

One of my kids would happily spend all their money, and frequently asks
for an advance on their pocket money. I'm fairly certain that if we
did give them an advance on a regular basis, they would grow up to be
the kind of adult who is constantly borrowing from their "future self"
by having a permament overdraft at the bank.

With the previous poster's child, exactly what I'd do depends on whether
they are used to handling money at all. If they never even give the
cashier money, I would start getting them to pay eg for a drink when
they are out. Then I would have an allowance for small things, perhaps
magazines or CDs. I would gradually include the allowance to pay for
necessaities like school supplies.

--
Penny Gaines
UK mum to three

Me Myself and I wrote:
"-L." wrote in message

I don't have a teen now but had my niece as a teen. I gave her a
dollar for every year of age per week,

This sounds like a great idea -L. and am wondering if I could apply that to
my two when they are at pocket money age. Do you think that it works for
kids that are not teens. Does 5 dollars for a 5 year old seem fair or is
that too much? I'm not sure what its the best way to work it.

That's what we plan to do, with age-appropriate chores. I don't think
we will start to pay until later (8,9?) - things like sticker charts
as rewards are better for the little ones.

-L.

Caledonia wrote:
Pull out your kleenex -- in highschool, I received no allowance, and
was expected to fund anything outside of school lunches. (Including the
$1/week minimum church donation.)

It wasn't all bad, though -- I worked, I saved, I squandered my money
on Tab soda, and lived to tell all.

Caledonia

I never had an allowance either simply because my Mom didn't have the
money. She would occassionally give me transportation money to help me
get to school, but that was about it.

-L.

"Ericka Kammerer" wrote in message
news
wrote:
How much allowance do you give your teenagers? What do they have to
spend it on and what do you buy for them?

When i was 15 I got no allowance, but I did babysit and so got ample
spending money that way. Shaina (just turned 15) doesn't work. (Doesn't
have time, and it seems that teenage babysitting has gone the way of
the dodo-bird anyway.)

I currently give her $10/week allowance, but I also buy her everything
she needs (clothes, school lunches, swim-team expenses, etc.) and many
things that she wants, as far as the budget allows and I think the
request is reasonable (books, DVDs CD's, computer games, cell phone
top-ups, etc.). Her allowance tends to either get saved up for big
things (she just bought herself half a PS2 [with the other half being
her birthday present],) or spent on little things (library fines,
snacks after school, etc.)

She's been asking for an increase, and I realized that I AM in fact,
rather inconsistant about what I buy for her and what I expect her to
pay for herself. (I made her spend her own money on a Japanese Club
tee shirt, but I do buy her most of her clothes.) . So I got to
thinking --- I can give her a pretty substantial increase (say,
$25-$30/week) and expect her to buy all her 'wants' herself (including
non-essential clothing items, books. etc.), or I can keep it as it is,
and consider her allowance to be nothing more than pocket change.

What do y'all do?

I think either route is fine. I find that giving
them more money and then expecting them to handle their
expenses is a royal PITA. Now, if I'm out and about and
run across something they need, or maybe want, I just get
it for them. When they have to spend their money for that
stuff, then I have to coordinate shopping with them. Ugh.
I think maybe part of it depends on what they need
in the way of growth opportunities. Is she a kid who could
use some lessons in budgeting and making priorities and
saving and so forth? If so, a larger allowance and more
responsibilities can be a good teaching tool. If, on the
other hand, she's got a good financial head on her shoulders,
then frankly, I think it's more trouble than it's worth and
you just have to decide what's a reasonable allowance for
whatever things it is that you're not willing to buy
yourself (however idiosyncratic that list might be).

I think the reason why it worked well for me was that I had a lot of things
where I needed money on a regular basis, and had the responsibility for
getting myself there and back with little or no involvement from my
parents-I'd walk to my saxophone and piano lessons from school, for example,
so I would have needed to have money from them in advance to pay for it
anyway. Same with school lunches. As far as clothing and the like, by high
school I was doing most of my own shopping with my friends anyway, so I just
had the money in larger chunks up front. I suspect one reason it worked was
that I wasn't a trendy, stuff-happy teen, so I didn't spend a lot of money
on a regular basis except for recurring expenses, therefore it was pretty
easy for me to take over budgeting for the less regular stuff too.

Having said this-even in the late 1980s, I'm thinking that my "allowance"
was something around $200/month because by the time you took all those
recurring expenses into account, it added up to quite a bit. There needs to
be enough slack to allow room for savings for the unexpected stuff, unless
you decide up front that you're going to pay for those items too.

I'm also thinking that we did have a supplement for back to school expenses,
too.

wrote:
How much allowance do you give your teenagers? What do they have to
spend it on and what do you buy for them?

When i was 15 I got no allowance, but I did babysit and so got ample
spending money that way. Shaina (just turned 15) doesn't work. (Doesn't
have time, and it seems that teenage babysitting has gone the way of
the dodo-bird anyway.)

I currently give her $10/week allowance, but I also buy her everything
she needs (clothes, school lunches, swim-team expenses, etc.) and many
things that she wants, as far as the budget allows and I think the
request is reasonable (books, DVDs CD's, computer games, cell phone
top-ups, etc.). Her allowance tends to either get saved up for big
things (she just bought herself half a PS2 [with the other half being
her birthday present],) or spent on little things (library fines,
snacks after school, etc.)

She's been asking for an increase, and I realized that I AM in fact,
rather inconsistant about what I buy for her and what I expect her to
pay for herself. (I made her spend her own money on a Japanese Club
tee shirt, but I do buy her most of her clothes.) . So I got to
thinking --- I can give her a pretty substantial increase (say,
$25-$30/week) and expect her to buy all her 'wants' herself (including
non-essential clothing items, books. etc.), or I can keep it as it is,
and consider her allowance to be nothing more than pocket change.

What do y'all do?

Naomi

I think we have a pretty good system going on. We do both merit based
allowance and regular allowance. The girls have a "base pay" that
never gets taken away (no matter if they have behaved poorly that week)
and they get a merit allowance. If homework is done every night and
their chores have been done w/o my asking, they get the extra
allotment. It took a while for them to get used to this system ...
there were a few weekends of crying and pouting. However, I felt that
it was important to stick to the plan and have them understand the
rules.
Also, in the month of December, they are not allowed to spend their
allowance on themselves. The money is for Hanukkah and Christmas gifts
or a charity of their choice.
After the New Year I am going to create a ledger, they can write down
what they spend their money on and keep track of the things that they
want to save up for. There will be a time that I will give them a
rather large allowance, but the expectation will be that they pay for
most of their own expenses.
My children are 3 and 7.

"-L." wrote in message
ups.com...

Caledonia wrote:
Pull out your kleenex -- in highschool, I received no allowance, and
was expected to fund anything outside of school lunches. (Including the
$1/week minimum church donation.)

It wasn't all bad, though -- I worked, I saved, I squandered my money
on Tab soda, and lived to tell all.

Caledonia

I never had an allowance either simply because my Mom didn't have the
money. She would occassionally give me transportation money to help me
get to school, but that was about it.
I never got pocket money because my dad didn't believe in it. However
anything you could make a good case for he would buy-and often the best too.
However personally I think that's a mixed blessing. For example, if I went
out woth friends and he'd given me money to get lunch and they decided it
would be good to skip lunch and go to the cinema instead I couldn't because
the money wasn't for that. I would have prefered to be able to choose to get
the cheap folder for school, and spend the rest on something I wanted but
wouldn't be deemed "necessary" rather than getting the folder that was the
envy of the rest of the year!
I worked so did have some money, but my brother went to college with no idea
about money.
Debbie

She's definitely approaching an age where I would expect a change to her
having to budget for her own essentials, though I'd probably do it at a
school year change and then plan to do the same for other children, rather
than at a specific age. You have to factor in whether you expect her to
work, or whether work is an option for her if she wishes more money, my
parents specifically factored in that they did not want me to work and made
it pretty clear that it was not even an option. We also put on paper what I
would be expected to pay for and what parents paid for. You've also got to
work around any hobbies, sports etc. I lost out compared to my sister, as I
was dancing seriously when she was doing it casually, all my allowance went
on pointe shoes, so she had a lot more spare for books, magazines etc, so I
think you have to play it carefully to make sure things like that you want
them to take seriously and be committed to are not harmed because they are
also typical teens and want some fun too!

Cheers

Anne