According to the Halifax’s annual survey of pocket money, parents are now giving their kids an average of £6.20 a week. Whether you regard that figure as generous, stingy or about fair, it does seem to be out of step with larger economic forces. Since 1987, pocket money has risen twice as fast as wages; however, it’s gone down for the last three years running, even as wages have started rising. In fact, it has still not recovered to its pre-recessionary peak – a whopping £8.37. From this you may infer that parents make arbitrary and capricious decisions about how much spending money is sufficient, or that an annual survey about pocket money is not an entirely reliable reflection of reality, or both.
I only know that, as a parent of three, I wouldn’t be able to offer anything like an accurate figure. To me, the whole notion of pocket money seems outdated. My sons simply have expenses – travel, phone, meals, incidentals, etc – for which they are rarely required to provide receipts. This is obviously a terrible oversight: when a child shakes me awake at dawn to tell me his Oyster card needs topping up, I have no way of knowing if this is true, or how much of the tenner I give him gets invested in future transport. By the time the card needs topping up again – much sooner than expected – I am obliged to regard the suspicious shortfall as a sunk cost.
Everything else they receive in the way of discretionary spending money, they get by lying to me about the price of things when I send them on errands, or stealing change from my pockets while I’m asleep. It’s not an ideal system, but, overall, I don’t think I’m losing much more than £6.20 a week per child. If I were, I would certainly lie to the Halifax about it.
The big advantage of the pocket-money scheme is that a parent may exact labour in the form of chores in return for a wage, although the Halifax survey indicates that the proportion of parents who enforce this quid pro quo has fallen year on year. The great advantage of my system is that I can choke off the money supply in summer, when expenses are few. For me, it’s a sweet time of year, even if I have to sleep with my wallet under my pillow.
