Pocket money

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Did you get pocket money as a child? If so, how much and was it on a weekly/monthly basis? What did you spend it on?

― helen fordsdale, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

New answers aka I don't know if pocket money is the correct term. That's what we call it in Belgium (zakgeld).

― helen fordsdale, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

we called it an allowance. I remember getting a dollar as a small child and then around 5 or 7 as a preteen. then I worked. .

― Samantha, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

We do indeed call it pocket money. Although when posh kids get to about 15 it sometimes becomes an allowance (you get more but you have to buy your own clothes and stuff with it). My first pocket money was 5p a week, then it went up to 10p and then 15p and then 25p and then 50p and then 75p and then a pound and then I forget.

― Nick, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yep, on a weekly basis, but not much. Added to my paper round earnings it mostly went on 7" singles and/or newspapers.

― stevo, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I think my first pocket money was about 50p. It got up to around £5. "Why don't you get a job?"...started around 16 (held out til 18)...buy bye pocket money.

― james, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

We never got pocket money from my mum as her reasoning went, "you should be doing the dishes and cleaning up after yourselves anyway."

My grandfather would give my sister and me 50¢ each to go to get chocolate on Sunday mornings and we would occasionally hit him up for other cash. He was also the main giver of birthday cash.

I started babysitting when I was about 10 so got most of my money that way, until I had an after-school job working in a soda fountain.

― suzy, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I got 10p a week, which was spent on sweets, and a copy of Bunty.

― Madchen, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

um.

I still get pocket money.

― richard john gillanders, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Bet you don't get 10p

― Madchen, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

No, I had two paper routes. Before that, I had to use Shirley Temple tactics to get quarters from old men. Sometimes I played cards for money.

― Kerry, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

We used to get pocket money. It was something like $10 a month. Yes, given monthly, which sucked. 10 year olds cannot work budgeting.

And then, when my brother was 13, he mowed every lawn in the neighbourhood (ah, the joys of Fairfield county) and made nearly a thousand dollars. My parents cut off pocket money for both of us, despite the fact that my brother had cornered the market, and I couldn't get a cent for mowing. WAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

(Just as well, I only ever spent it on Breyer Animal Creations.)

― kate, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

No,nevah. I would get sweets or comic books paid by my parents, but not any weekly 'allowance', mum disagreed strongly with the idea,don't know why

― Laetitia, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

between 5 and 20 a week , except when i was away at school.

― anthony, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

yes, I get pocket money monthly for food, movies, and such on the 18th. I've spent it all (mostly on gifts) already for now, but usually I buy a CD with it.

― Maria, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I got pocket money as a child, but I seem to remember having to do stuff like tidy my room and dry dishes to get it. Once I saved up my pocket money for about a million years to buy a barbie doll that came with a horse and riding outfit, but then a collector for some charity came to the door and I gave them all my money. My mum bought me the barbie doll the next day.

My friends and I give each other pocket money now, like a dollar and two dollars and stuff, just for fun.

'Here love, buy yourself some sweeties.'

― rainy, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I used to order two dollars worth of half cents lollies with mine

― Menelaus Darcy, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Allowances -- fun things. Without responsibility up through eleventh grade or so, then I had to mow the lawn. Hrm.

― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 5 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

That's a great question Helen :) At ten years old, I got a quatre a week, to go to the Saturday movie. It started at 9 AM and finished at 1PM :) At 13 I got 52 cents a week which I saved half to buy my Christmas gifts. At 15 I got a dollar a week and that went to go to our town dance. Extras I earned babysitting or working at the children's camp. At 16 I was working in a glove shop as a maker. Don't laugh but my pay was fifty two cents an hour, 45 hrs. a week. 1964. Gale

― Gale Deslongchamps, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Allowance, no. Bar Mitzvah, hell yes. I was hoping to have a sequel performance when I hit 26 so I could rake in the cash money one mo' time.

― bnw, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Mine was never given as cash (I say was, but I think technically I still get £1.90 a week). It was always written down on little strips of paper and whenever I wanted to buy anything I was always like "Mum, I'm sure I have saved up pocket money", in the knowledge that a) My mum didn't have a clue whether I did or not, and wouldn't have time to work it out for weeks, and b) That my pocket money for the next n months had already been accounted for this way (The nice people at NatWest run a similar system currently. mmm...Overdrafts).

Every January it would be recalculated, when my mum would hazily try to remember what my older brother's got, and then we'd desparately haggle the inflation.

― Graham, Thursday, 6 December 2001 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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