money money money

[nickyfixit]

hi there, whats your opinion on money and part-time jobs for teenagers? how much do you give them and how much do they earn? also, does anyones teen save for driving lessons/car/uni out of the money they get? thanks in advance.

[PuzzleRocks]

Bumping for you.

[devilisunaccomplishedinprada]

DSD gets £20 a week of us for her dance lessons. She's also started working part time in the school holidays and weekends. Atm she's going through a phase of blowing her money on clothes shoes and nights out. but we have said she's allowed to go abroad with her friends when she finishs her GCSE's in June as long as she pays for herself. (No way we could). So she's going to start saving when her next pay packet comes in.

[mummyflood]

DS1 (15) gets £12.50 p/w from paper round plus £7.50 p/w from us. He buys most of his own stuff apart from clothes, food & extras for school, i.e. cooking ingredients, clothes he recently needed for a week away he is going on with school. He has bought himself recently a PS3 game & a second hand phone with his Christmas tips money from his paper round.If he goes out with his mates he pays his own bus fares & takes any money he wants to spend. We do however treat him & his bro to the pictures or similar family trip out maybe once every four to six weeks.

We were very pleased when he got his paper round at 14 - it is certainly teaching him the value of earning his own money and the commitment aspect too! DS2 (13) is also keen to get a round when one becomes available. We have been discussing part-time jobs actually yesterday/this morning. He wants to join the RAF at 17/18 and has said he would like to get a job, probably part time in conjunction with 6th form, for a year or so first, to, in his words, 'familiarise myself with the workplace structure before I commit to the RAF'.

[mummyflood]

p.s. he also has the chance to go to New York towards the end of Yr11 with school - circa £450, we have said we expect him to contribute at least half, so plenty of time to save!

[QueenEagle]

dd 17, has a p/t Sat job earning between £20 - £35 depending on the weather.

We pay her a £50 per month allowance which she uses to buy ALL her own toiletries, pays her phone contract, buys make up and uses for going out, and for bus fare, and clothes over and above the basics (I use the CB for basics like underwear and basic wardrobe and shoes).

We paid for 10 hours driving lessons for her 17th, she has saved up over the years and has just paid for the next 10 hours herself.

Once she leaves school and is properly earning then we will re-evaluate. Does that help?

[QueenEagle]

ds1 is 15, he has £35 per month allowance which he also pays his phone contract, bus fare, toiletries from.

He has had a paper round for 18 months which he earns £15 per week from, he saves it all and he just bought himslef a £200 quid flat screen tv for his bedroom. I buy his basic clothes from CB too.

[hazlac]

We are a co joined family and between us have 3 16yr olds and 1 12 year old, 2 of the 16yr olds and the 12 yr old get a pension from their mothers life insurance of £28 a month as a "death benifit" my ex matches that as pocket money for my DD, we then add to that £20 for each of the 16yr olds as pocket money, which can be removed as fines and then another £40 a month clothing allowance, we pay for school clothes, shoes and any thing they need such as sports gear etc but apart from that they budget for their own needs with £90 a month. It seems to work well and also makes them aware of how much stuff costs. We have put a spanner in the works though as we have said that once they get to the end of this school year (yr 11)the allowance will stop and they'll have to find jobs, I get the impression they thought the money would go on for ever?

[mrsmaidamess]

I give my dd (13) nothing...but then she does nothing to earn it! If she needs money for something I will give her some but not without some kind of help from her first of all around the house.

[atowncalledalice]

DS1 (17) gets £50 a week from us. It sounds like a lot, but in return he has to babysit DS2 one night a week, which is about what we'd end up paying a babysitter anyway! From that he pays for clothes (not school uniform) and all social activities plus his mobile phone.

He has worked for the last two summer holidays but doesn't have a Saturday job owing to school work/extra curricular commitments.

[Milliways]

DD (17) gets £40 per MONTH pocket money from us, which she uses as her cash spending. She does some occassional babysitting but earns around £250pm from her part time job which is mainly saved.

We bought her 12 hours of driving lessons and she paid for the rest (another 20+) until she passed. She has saved over £3500 towards Uni as we are skint so will not be able to help too much.

DS (13) gets £20pm (+ swimming, diving & music lessons), and spends almost nothing!

[Milliways]

Forgot - she buys non essential clothes (lots of them!) make up etc. We buy essentials and pay £5pm towards her phone contract (which was £5pm until she wanted more texts).

[mumeeee]

DD3 17 gets £30 a month from us.From that she has to pay fof most of her mobile phone,clothes,going out with friends, pays towards youth club trips,make up and extra toiletries.
We pay for her Drama club,all her college expenses, basic toiletries,some basic clothes,part of her youth club trips and the occansional £5 on her mobile.
She gets quite a lot of Birthday and Christmas money from Grandparents and the occansional extra £20 from MIL.
She is looking for her job at the moment.
When she does get a job we will do the same as we have done with my other daughters. The allowence will be stopped and she will be expected to pay for everything except her Drama club and college expenses.

[Pimmpom]

Mummyflood - that is very reasonable for the New York trip. DS's school wanted £400 for trip to France, Mon - Thurs

[LaineyW]

My DD1 (16) has a Saturday job working in the clothes department of a Grace Bros. type store in the next town. She gets about £35 every Saturday. We also give her £50 a month pocket money and out of that she buys all her own toiletries, clothes, bus fares etc.

She's desperate for a car when she turns 17 and now has a 'car jar' in her bedroom which she's using for cash savings.

I think it's really good for teens to have a job (as long as it doesn't impact on their revision/homework time too much) and definitely takes the pressure off us to be constantly forking out for stuff for her.

We used to give her all her child benefit allowance but she just blew the whole lot on her mobile phone and rubbish clothes from Primark so we stopped that pretty quick!

DD1 is seriously reconsidering going to university as she's terrified of getting into thousands of pounds worth of debt so, despite being a bright spark, she may well finish school after sixth form and get a job instead. I feel sad about it as I'd love her to have the opportunity to experience life as a student and get her degree, but can fully understand where she's coming from.

Who'd be a 16-year-old in 2009... sorry for long post - verbal diarrhoea.

[nickyfixit]

thanks for all your replies - i particularly like the idea of a monthly allowance to teach them how to budget responsibly. thanks again, nicky

[mysterymoniker]

teen 1 (18) works part-time and gives me £100 a month, about a quarter of her earnings. she pays for her own driving lessons and insurance but the car was a birthday present from me. I bail her out quite a lot, but it's not unheard of for her to bail ME out.

teen 2 (16) also gives me £100 a month out of her DLA (about £360? something like that) which covers about 2/3 of our fuel bills each month