Kid’s pocket money advise tips.
Children Pocket Money
- Whether you give your children pocket money is a decision for your family.
- Advantages of pocket money can be that children:
- develop a sense of how much has to be done to earn money
- learn that ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’
- learn what money can buy – how much they need to buy what they want
- can have their own money to spend – helping them develop self control and understanding the value of money
- learn about saving
- will know there is a set amount of money rather than asking for money all the time.
- Disadvantages can be that:
- children may think they will get paid for everything they do to help
- you have to find the money to pay them regularly
- it is hard to know what the pocket money is supposed to pay for – there always seems to be something more.
- If you decide to give pocket money you need to work out:
- how much is reasonable
- whether the money will be paid for doing chores
- how much must be done to earn it – and how much is simply because ‘you are a member of the family’
- how much each job is worth
- whether all children get the same amount or the older child gets more
- how much control parents will have over the use of pocket money – do they have to save some? What can they buy with it?
- when you will pay – the children won’t learn about the responsibility of money if you don’t honour the agreement.
- An idea might be to give your child a set amount each week, putting half in a savings account.
- At the end of a time agreed on by you both – perhaps three months – the child can spend the saved money exactly as they wish.
- If they choose to ‘waste’ it on lollies they can do so.
- However most children want something special and usually prefer to save for that particular thing and not waste it on a brief pleasure.
- This helps teach them the value of saving.
