How much allowance for teens?

How much allowance do you give your teenagers? What do they have to
spend it on and what do you buy for them?

When i was 15 I got no allowance, but I did babysit and so got ample
spending money that way. Shaina (just turned 15) doesn't work. (Doesn't
have time, and it seems that teenage babysitting has gone the way of
the dodo-bird anyway.)

I currently give her $10/week allowance, but I also buy her everything
she needs (clothes, school lunches, swim-team expenses, etc.) and many
things that she wants, as far as the budget allows and I think the
request is reasonable (books, DVDs CD's, computer games, cell phone
top-ups, etc.). Her allowance tends to either get saved up for big
things (she just bought herself half a PS2 [with the other half being
her birthday present],) or spent on little things (library fines,
snacks after school, etc.)

She's been asking for an increase, and I realized that I AM in fact,
rather inconsistant about what I buy for her and what I expect her to
pay for herself. (I made her spend her own money on a Japanese Club
tee shirt, but I do buy her most of her clothes.) . So I got to
thinking --- I can give her a pretty substantial increase (say,
$25-$30/week) and expect her to buy all her 'wants' herself (including
non-essential clothing items, books. etc.), or I can keep it as it is,
and consider her allowance to be nothing more than pocket change.

What do y'all do?

askmeltr...

I think we have a pretty good system going on. We do both merit based
allowance and regular allowance. The girls have a "base pay" that
never gets taken away (no matter if they have behaved poorly that week)
and they get a merit allowance. If homework is done every night and
their chores have been done w/o my asking, they get the extra
allotment. It took a while for them to get used to this system ...
there were a few weekends of crying and pouting. However, I felt that
it was important to stick to the plan and have them understand the
rules.
Also, in the month of December, they are not allowed to spend their
allowance on themselves. The money is for Hanukkah and Christmas gifts
or a charity of their choice.
After the New Year I am going to create a ledger, they can write down
what they spend their money on and keep track of the things that they
want to save up for. There will be a time that I will give them a
rather large allowance, but the expectation will be that they pay for
most of their own expenses.
My children are 3 and 7.

Ericka Kammerer...

I think either route is fine. I find that giving
them more money and then expecting them to handle their
expenses is a royal PITA. Now, if I'm out and about and
run across something they need, or maybe want, I just get
it for them. When they have to spend their money for that
stuff, then I have to coordinate shopping with them. Ugh.
I think maybe part of it depends on what they need
in the way of growth opportunities. Is she a kid who could
use some lessons in budgeting and making priorities and
saving and so forth? If so, a larger allowance and more
responsibilities can be a good teaching tool. If, on the
other hand, she's got a good financial head on her shoulders,
then frankly, I think it's more trouble than it's worth and
you just have to decide what's a reasonable allowance for
whatever things it is that you're not willing to buy
yourself (however idiosyncratic that list might be).

Donna Metler...

I think the reason why it worked well for me was that I had a lot of things
where I needed money on a regular basis, and had the responsibility for
getting myself there and back with little or no involvement from my
parents-I'd walk to my saxophone and piano lessons from school, for example,
so I would have needed to have money from them in advance to pay for it
anyway. Same with school lunches. As far as clothing and the like, by high
school I was doing most of my own shopping with my friends anyway, so I just
had the money in larger chunks up front. I suspect one reason it worked was
that I wasn't a trendy, stuff-happy teen, so I didn't spend a lot of money
on a regular basis except for recurring expenses, therefore it was pretty
easy for me to take over budgeting for the less regular stuff too.

Having said this-even in the late 1980s, I'm thinking that my "allowance"
was something around $200/month because by the time you took all those
recurring expenses into account, it added up to quite a bit. There needs to
be enough slack to allow room for savings for the unexpected stuff, unless
you decide up front that you're going to pay for those items too.

I'm also thinking that we did have a supplement for back to school expenses,
too.

Best wishes,
Ericka