Allowance/spending money for 12 year old

[Anonymous]

My 13 year old gets $7 per week. I deposit into his bank account and he withdraws it as he wants money. Withdrawal is essentially done by asking me for cash, which I give him and then transfer from his bank account to mine.

I expect him to pay for gifts for family - minimum is Christmas and Birthdays. He usually also buys me a Valentine's gift and a Mother's day gift. The remainder of his money is to use at his discretion. There are many things he wants that I am not going to buy him but this gives him the opportunity to save money for those things. Also, there are times that he wants something that I would buy things for him, but not until Christmas or his birthday. But, he can decide whether to use his allowance for those things - but he doesn't because he is a saver.

I give $7 because that is a reasonable amount to allow him to buy the expected gifts and have enough money throughout the year to buy some things that he wants. I always figured that when he gets to the point of going to movies with friends and the like, he will have to use his money for that and I will increase his allowance to give him the opportunity to learn to budget for these things. I don't know exactly how I will work this because I think it's dependent on the kid and their particular circumstances. My oldest never went places with friends very often, so I didn't have to increase his allowance. But my younger kids are more social.

Allowance stops when they get jobs. My oldest got his first job when he got his driver's license, which seems like a reasonable age to me. Allowance is not tied to chores - you do chores because you live here and are a member of the family. That being said, my kids do all of the house cleaning and chores (with supervision and some help from parents, of course). I don't give extra money for snow shoveling or anything else. If they want to make money, they can go to neighbors and see if they will offer money for these sorts of things.

[Anonymous]

My 14 year old gets $10/week - I'm getting ready to up to $15. We do an ATM cash card, and she downloaded a checking app so she tracks her spending on her phone. Once a week, I give her the balance so she can make sure it matches her records. She also babysits and I put 80% on the cash card, the other 20 goes to saving. Honestly, she rarely even spends the $15, though she does like to to get hot chocolate at the coffee shop on the weekends when she walks around the neighborhood and she buys two songs a week from google music (her own rule). The card is nice because I never had $10 in cash to give her so always forgot to give her the allowance, so it just goes in as a regular transfer from our checking, and it is so convenient when she goes places - we never have to worry about her having cash. We'll start the same thing when her younger sibling is in 5th grade.

The money is not tied to chores, because those are just things we do to live together - picking up your clothes, helping with the dinner dishes, wiping the kids bathroom sink, etc. I will pay her for stuff that I would pay someone else to do. Like today she is going to dust the living room, move the couches and vacuum under them, and I'm giving her $20.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 14 year old gets $10/week - I'm getting ready to up to $15. We do an ATM cash card, and she downloaded a checking app so she tracks her spending on her phone. Once a week, I give her the balance so she can make sure it matches her records. She also babysits and I put 80% on the cash card, the other 20 goes to saving. Honestly, she rarely even spends the $15, though she does like to to get hot chocolate at the coffee shop on the weekends when she walks around the neighborhood and she buys two songs a week from google music (her own rule). The card is nice because I never had $10 in cash to give her so always forgot to give her the allowance, so it just goes in as a regular transfer from our checking, and it is so convenient when she goes places - we never have to worry about her having cash. We'll start the same thing when her younger sibling is in 5th grade.

The money is not tied to chores, because those are just things we do to live together - picking up your clothes, helping with the dinner dishes, wiping the kids bathroom sink, etc. I will pay her for stuff that I would pay someone else to do. Like today she is going to dust the living room, move the couches and vacuum under them, and I'm giving her $20.

She might want to think about spotify or the paid google service. My son pays for a premium Spotify account around $10/mo so he can stream music and save his playlists. He doesn't have to buy specific songs.

An added bonus is that he plugs his phone into the car speakers and I get to hear what he is into.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I never received an allowance as a kid. My parents gave money as needed and I worked junior and senior year of high school.

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