Friday 11 September 2020

Pocket money then and now

When DS was small, we were not sure how much pocket money to give him and whether or not he needed to earn it. 

I spoke to our local vicar who had 3 small children and he said what he was doing might be alright. I used an online financial inflation calculator, although I kept forgetting to change the year, see here.

He recommended giving 10p per year, doubling it at 5 years, 10 years and 15 years but by 10 years, creating a small chore to get children to understand money had to be earnt!

So we started when he was 3. So 3 years x 10p per year was 30p (75p in todays money). When he reached 5, he received firstly the extra 10p for reaching 5, making his pocket money 50p (£1.26p today). It was then doubled to £1 (£2.51p today).

Age six another 10p added etc. When he reached 10 years old, he had £1.50, doubled up to £3 (£5.68p today). A few small chores were added such as helping with shopping (already doing a little so he could see the price of things), drying pots, laundry in basket not on his floor etc. He also had to save 20% of it towards holiday spending money!

When he was 15, he was earning £3.50 so it was doubled up to £7 (today £11.68p). A higher % had to be saved, extra chores were added such as changing his bed each week and hoovering and dusting his room each week, on bed changing days.

Now those today figures may now seem too much, but back then they were just right.

4 comments:

  1. What an excellent system. When our daughter lived at home for her Gap year, and her pay was irregular, I asked an older wiser friend how much rent to charge. He said with their kids, they had used the basic weekly benefit as a starting point. Rent would be 50% of that amount - but for everything earned in the week above the benefit amount, the daughter would pay 25%. He said that he and his wife didnt NEED all the money, but when their girl went to university, they gave some of it back to her. It worked well

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    1. DS paid us food money when he was gardening before and after uni until he got his current work. I think it was 10% or 15% of his pay. This covered all meals including pack up. He even showed us his pay slip to prove he was giving us the correct amount❤️

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  2. I don't remember much about pocket money when they were small. When K started college she got EMA. I said she could keep it all, but that she had to buy her own clothes, make up etc from it ( we had kitted her out with what she needed to start college, so it was for anything extra to that). When KL started college EMA had ended so I gave her a monthly allowance the equivalent of what it had been, with the same guidelines about what it had to cover.

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  3. Very good idea. I didn’t qualify for EMA.

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