Pocket money, and the three systems we tried
A pound a week, paid on a Saturday, not linked to anything. We got there after two more complicated systems, one of which taught our six-year-old that kindness has a price of twenty pence.
A pound a week, on a Saturday, in coins, in a tin. That is where we ended up and it took two other systems to get there.
System one: paid per job
This is the obvious one and it lasted about two months.
Ten pence for the beds. Twenty for the table. It seemed elegant — money for work, effort rewarded, the world in miniature.
What it actually built was a small contractor.
Every request became a negotiation. Not rudely; she was six and completely reasonable about it. “How much is that one?” is a fair question if the answer to every previous request has been a number. And the jobs on the Saturday list, which had been going perfectly well for a year on the basis that we all live here and the house needs doing, quietly became work she was choosing whether to accept.
The end of it was the morning I asked her to help Rowan with his shoes and she asked what it was worth.
I was annoyed for about ninety seconds and then I wasn’t, because she was right. That was exactly what we’d taught her, consistently, for two months, and she had learned it well.
System two: three jars
Spend, save, give.
Five weeks. The arithmetic is the problem — a pound split three ways is 33p, and 33p does not save towards anything a six-year-old can picture, and the give jar was, if I’m honest, a small performance we had asked her to put on for us.
She would put the coin in and look at me. That’s not generosity, that’s an exam.
We may do saving properly when the amounts are bigger and there is something real to save for. At a pound a week it was an accounting system, not a lesson.
What we do now
A pound. Saturday. Coins in a tin she can open on her own.
Not attached to anything. The jobs happen because we live here; the money happens because she is six and learning what money does. Separating them ended all of the arguing about both.
She can spend it on anything. Anything. This is the part I have to actively hold my nerve on, because a great deal of what she wants is, in my adult opinion, rubbish, and saying so out loud would take the whole thing away from her.
The thing that broke
Seven weeks of saving on a plastic thing from a shop in town. It broke on the Monday.
The pull to fix it was enormous. I had my purse out.
I had already made this mistake once, months earlier, in the jar era — topped her up when she was short — and I remember watching her face reorganise itself around the new information, which was that the wall is not really a wall.
So this time we sat on the step and I said it was rubbish luck, and meant it, and we did not go to a shop. She was upset for about twenty minutes and then she was fine.
Six weeks later she asked, before buying something, whether I thought it would last. Which is not a question anyone had taught her to ask.
Things people email to ask
- How much pocket money should you give a six-year-old?
- We give a pound a week, in coins, and the amount matters much less than the regularity. What a six-year-old is learning is not budgeting, it is that money arrives on a schedule, runs out, and does not come back early — and a pound teaches that as well as five pounds would, while making the wait for anything worth having usefully long.
- Should pocket money be linked to chores?
- We tried it and stopped. Paying per job turned every request into a negotiation about rate, and the first time I asked our six-year-old to help her brother she asked what it was worth, which was an entirely rational question given what we had taught her. The jobs happen because we all live here; the money arrives because she is learning to handle money. Keeping them separate ended the arguing.
- Do the spend, save and give jars work?
- They lasted five weeks here. Splitting a pound into three produces amounts too small to do anything with, and the giving jar in particular was theatre — she was performing generosity for us rather than choosing it. We may come back to saving when the sums are bigger and a goal is realistic; at a pound a week, three jars is an accounting system for 33p.
- Should you let a child waste their pocket money?
- Yes, and it is the only part that actually teaches anything. Ours spent seven weeks of savings on something that broke in two days, and the temptation to make it right was enormous. I did top her up once, early on, and it undid several weeks of the lesson in about four minutes. Now we sympathise sincerely and do not open a wallet.
Anna
Mid-thirties, former magazine copy editor, now works part-time from the kitchen table. Started this as a private record and only made it public because friends kept asking for the recipes.
If this was any use
The year we all put in, and how badly I handled it
Pooling for one present is obviously sensible and everybody says so. Nobody mentions that it means three siblings and their partners having an explicit conversation about money, which our family had successfully avoided for about twenty years.
The Saturday list that finally stuck
We tried a laminated star chart, a shared app, and a rota with everyone’s initials on it. The thing that worked is a piece of paper with four jobs on it, and it took us three years and about £40 of failed systems to get there.
Days out that don’t cost forty pounds
Six weeks of summer holiday, two adults working part time, and the discovery that our children were measurably happier at a river than at the place that cost £46 and had a gift shop at the exit.
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