Don’t Bust Your Household Budget Giving An Allowance To Your Teenager

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How much do you give your teenagers for an allowance? This is an important question once you decide if you will or will not give an allowance to your child(ren). We believe in giving our kids an allowance to help teach them financial responsibility.  Do they spend all of their money? Yes, but they slowly realize that if it’s all gone by the 5th of the month, there are no more funds until payday.  It’s been a great way to introduce the real world to our tweens and teen.

Whenever they tell me they don’t have any more money, my favorite words are, “Welcome to the real world girlfriend!”

Once You Decide On Giving An Allowance, Decide The Amount And Try To Remain Consistent With The Rate.

We Want Our Kids To Take Financial Responsibility and Say “NO”

We do not connect our kids’ allowances to their chores.  Chores are part of life, and we do not pay our kids to keep their rooms cleaned or help maintain the cleanliness of our home.  We do, however, give them money to spend on things they want. AKA, a monthly allowance.

Our kids are tweens and teens.  They are not yet old enough to get a part-time job but are old enough to have some freedom to hang out with friends.

Our goal is to teach them when to say no when it comes to spending money, hanging out, and where they hang out when it comes to finances.

We all know the pressure when it comes to being asked to buy things, wear certain brands, go to lunch/dinner or trips.

Your funds don’t look like your friends, but we sometimes get ashamed of being real and just saying, “NO!”  You don’t have to tell you don’t have the money.  And heck, saying you don’t have the money, doesn’t mean you don’t have money.  You don’t have the extra to do those other things, or you prefer to spend your funds elsewhere.

And it’s ok not to have the money either. I wish I could go back and proudly say, “No, I can’t go out to dinner. The funds aren’t there right now.”

Our First Steps In Determining The Amount For Our Teenagers Allowance

Before we started giving an allowance to our kids, we had to take a look at our household budget to determine how much we could afford.  That meant a sit down financial meeting with DadJonz.

We took a look at each of our budget lines to determine where the funds would come from.

Let’s be real.  There are certain expenses that you can’t adjust; house payment, shoe budget.  Hey!  I LOVE SHOES!

As we looked at our household budget, we noticed our spending money line.  That line had lots of notation with outings and random activities (school events, outings with friends, etc.) the kids attended with friends.

After taking time to see where the kids spent money, we decided to set a reasonable amount that we felt would cover things they want to do.  The idea is for them to save most of those funds during their early tween years, so by the time they are actually old enough to hang out at the mall or attending school sporting events they have some funds saved.

In a nutshell, don’t put a strain on the household to give your teenager a monthly allowance.  We took the funds already spent by the kids and came up with an allowance amount to give.

The Amount We Decided To Give For Our Teenagers’ Allowance

When it comes to how much you give your child, it really is a personal decision, and as mentioned above, it should be in keeping with the household finances in general. It is always a good idea to have a conversation with your tween or teen, too. Help them set financial goals for themselves as part of their money-management and money skills; these will be handy as they get older. When it comes to goal setting, it can be a good idea to put items as goals or a set amount of cash; think about their interests – do they love to read and want to buy a series of books? Perhaps there are items of clothing they want (which aren’t in the ‘need’ bracket), or they love things like anime and want to collect all One Piece Funko Pops. Goals can help them have better money management and feelings towards money as they get older – leading to healthier financial relationships. 

After taking a long, hard look, we decided to pay our kids $5 for their age.

Payday is on the first of each month.

Our now 15-year-old preferred payment method is a transfer to her bank account. She enjoys the swipe of her bank card with the actual card or via her phone Our soon to be 13-year-old requests half of her allowance be transferred to her savings account and half in cash. Our soon-to-be 11-year-old wants all of hers in cold, hard cash. We handle her allowance a little differently than the rest.

We decided to start giving an allowance when they hit the tween years, around the age of 10. That also depended on each child. I will share that story for another blog post.

What If Their Birthday Falls After The First

We do not prorate allowances.  So, if a birthday falls after the first, the rate increase takes effect the following month.

Determining How Much Allowance To Give Teenagers

The allowance amount you decide to give to your teenager is YOUR decision.  Don’t fall into the trap of how much their friends receive or how much your friend gives to their child.  I’m reminded on a regular that so and so gets $50 – $100 a week.  And I kindly remind mine that we’re not so, and so’s parents. Don’t make that allowance mistake!

The purpose of giving our kids an allowance is to help teach financial responsibility. Their allowance is enough to grab food at the mall, pay to enter a school sporting event, attend a school dance.  And most importantly, enough to teach them to plan and save And it DOESN’T break our household!

Stay tuned for more about allowances.  Be sure to sign up for new article notifications (on the sidebar), follow my FB page, Instagram and join my private FB group.

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