Family Finance And Pocket Money

I remember a time in my teens when I felt very embarrassed at the prospect of using a coupon. I wonder now what on earth was wrong with me but back then if my Mum cut one out of a newspaper or magazine I used to shudder at the thought! Why did I worry what other people thought of me and WHY did I think using a coupon was ridicule worthy anyway? It’s just money saving after all… (You have to remember I am also the girl who was so incredibly worried about people thinking me posh that I made my Mum put on an East London accent every time she answered the phone just in case it was one particular boyfriend I had… I wanted to dumb down our ‘posh’ and for some reason she actually went along with it! I ended up going out with him for a fair while and my Mum had to reveal her non accented voice which was far more humiliating!)

Anyway, the point is that these days I’m definitely not embarrassed at using coupons (I’m also more worried about people thinking me common than posh – how the tide turns). In fact, I very rarely go out for a meal without one and am convinced restaurants hike their prices up knowing that everyone will use a voucher so it doesn’t matter anyway! Voucher using, discounts and any other way of saving money is a must!

My first point of call when dining out or indeed buying anything from anywhere on line is always vouchercodes.co.uk. They have deals for absolutely everything and ALWAYS a high street restaurant that we can take advantage of so why not? With a family, something I have learned, you have to make the savings where you can because it can be the difference between having an experience or not. Frankly I’d rather be in it and doing everything than saving up to pay full price on fewer occasions!

I’m not sure I really understood the value of money growing up and that might have gone some way to explaining my attitude towards money saving. My Mum used to nag me about the phone bill and wasting food but I don’t think it ever really sank in, not until I had to make my own budget and pay for everything myself. I might have been up in arms at my Mum chastising me for leaving the shower on too long when I was under her roof but once you have to pay yourself things become a whole lot more frugal!

I was given pocket money but I wasn’t terribly sensible with that either… I would use it (at age 15) to buy a half ticket on the bus into the City, entry to Peppermint Park (an over 18s nightclub that I wasn’t meant to be in), a pint of snake bite and black when they had the 50p minute and then that would be my money run out. I didn’t wear a coat whatever the season because I didn’t want to pay to hang it up and then we (my friends were just as nutty as I was) used to walk 3 miles home rather than get a cab… Madness!

I guess I simply wasn’t very good at using money for the right things or making savings where I should… Thankfully I think I’m rather good with it now and I want my children to be so from the off (there will also be no underage night clubbing I have to point out)!

Florence has always loved money; pennies and other coins have interested her from about 18 months when she would squirrel them away into her purse whenever she got the chance. When we potty trained her at 2 years and 6 months exactly my Mum came up with the idea of giving her a penny every time she did a wee-wee on the toilet, ‘spend a penny get a penny’ if you will! It worked brilliantly and along with the slightly more substantial incentive of a butterfly wall sticker every time she managed the other on the toilet she was potty trained in one week. Day and night! All it took was some shiny pennies and some wall stickers.

The interest in potty training for Jimmy has come slightly later than for Florence and definitely won’t be as quick. He’s not as interested in REAL money as she was either so I am employing instead, the same principle but with chocolate coins… Florence always saw the benefit in having pennies of her own and being able to spend them so I tapped into that whereas Jimmy just sees the benefit in being given chocolate… Tapping into that instead is just as easy to do but I wonder if his lack of interest in money from now will leave him worse with it than his sister is when he they are older? Only time will tell I guess.

Just before Christmas Vouchercodes.co.uk invited me along to a gorgeously festive dinner at The Arch near Mayfair. We had a delicious meal and drinks in a private room while we talked all things family finance. It’s interesting that some of the other guests were far more into showing their children the value of money than I am and a couple were less so. We all do things so differently but our way works for us.

I was so busy enjoying myself that I became a bad blogger and did not take all the pictures I intended too... This, was my only one from such a fabulous meal and this truffle oil soup was most delicious! — I was so busy enjoying myself that I became a bad blogger and did not take all the pictures I intended too… This, was my only one from such a fabulous meal and this truffle oil soup was most delicious! It’s a little bit blurry but then to be honest, so was I, we’d had a lot of bubbles!

Pocket money was brought up as a topic and I do think Florence is very ready for it now. She got some money for her birthday and knows what sort of things she can buy from the Disney store because I have explained how much she can get for her pounds (which are quite considerable thanks to generous family and friends)! I think having pocket money and being encouraged to save a little for something big at the end of the term and spending a little on sweets at the weekend will be really good for showing her that money doesn’t grow on trees and big pound coins instead of pennies is something new too. Hopefully this will mean that when she is a teenager she won’t use up all our phone bill without a second thought – although my Mum, who used to say just wait until it’s you and your pocket, will hope I get a taste of my own medicine I’m sure!

Fisher Price Piggy Bank — He likes to count pretend money so perhaps not all is lost!

I love that Vouchercodes.co.uk have done so much research into the topic of family finance and they have found some really useful information. They have found:

The majority of kids surveyed (61%) get pocket money on a weekly basis
According to our survey, the average amount of pocket money is £8.47 per week
74% of children surveyed received their pocket money in cash, while 13% received it into a
bank account. A very small percentage (2%) use their parents’ credit card
To get their pocket money, most children (49%) have to do regular chores. 16% of kids who
receive pocket money don’t have to do anything for it
The majority of the youngsters surveyed (37%) spent some of their pocket money, while
saving some. 23% save it all up in a money box, while 22% spend it as soon as they get it.

Vouchercodes.co.uk have found tfrom our discussion that evening and from survey results that decisions around quantity and frequency of awarding pocket money vary depending on personal parenting style.Talking to children about pocket money and engaging in conversations around the decision to award an allowance as a family will open up healthy discussion around household finances. They have also discovered that it’s commonplace to task children with chores to earn their pocket money and as such, resources to track chore completion can be helpful to share with one another.

Their recommendations and advice:

Use pocket money and allowances as a way to open the discussion about finances within the
home. Money is still seen as a massive taboo, which can lead to increasingly negative
emotions in youngsters. Adding it into the conversations of daily life makes it less of a big
deal.
If your children are school age, ask if they are learning about money in the classroom, and if
so talk about what they’re learning. Are these lessons coming from teachers or peers? It’s
easy to then relate what they’re hearing about at school to how things are in the home.
Consider opening a bank account. Allowing your child to have access to a bank account
enables them to see the reality of money and know that the money they have is theirs.
Though not essential, a bank account with online access can mean your child can see money
going in and out of their account. Quantify the money in the bank in terms of what they could
buy with what they have, or what they could buy if they save further to teach further lessons
on delayed gratification. This is a really good way to develop the importance of saving.
Qwiddle is also an excellent online resource for dealing with pocket money.
It’s crucial to keep talking about money. Try to make it a regular conversation between all
members of the family and remind your kids that if they ever have any questions, they can
come to you. Leave it as an open-ended discussion that can be, and is, returned to again and
again.
Use jar labels with “spend” “save” and “give” attached to them and agree rates for setting money aside with your children to teach them the benefits of each.

It’s certainly given me lots of food for thought. I don’t want to do online savings with my children as personally I think they’re too little and need to see the physical pennies in their hand, spend it, get change and understand how that works first. Florence finds it very hard to understand that apps on her iPad are charged directly to my credit card and of course, it IS a very difficult thing to understand so I’m starting with the pennies that she already is really interested in and we’ll work from there… As for Jimmy… Well I’m sure we’ll have to think of a chocolate related incentive to understanding money when the time comes for him!

Vouchercodes.co.uk invited me to a family finance evening with a view to writing this post.