What age should child get pocket money?
Some sooner, some later, but your children will begin the inevitable cycle of financial demands (which, for many, will prove endless...).
And you will have no choice: you will have to give it to them, and not just because it is right, but because the subject of money is fundamental in a child's life.
Immediately two parties emerge: those of weekly pocket money and those of "I give them money when they ask for it."
I belong to the first group.
Because I am a pain in the ass and what I give the boys must always have educational content.
But also because there is no way a kid uses his parents as an ATM, but what the heck? If you had sushi after school yesterday and spent 17 euros, you're not going out tonight.
And then I am a thrifty Piedmontese, and this thing, if you have it in you, it never leaves you.
Pocket money is self-control, it's understanding thrift.
All these things a kid needs to learn as soon as possible.
But I know where you want to go: how much?
I see that many parents go up to 50 euros a week: that seems crazy to me (that's 2500 euros a year!).
I, to each of my boys (19 and 21), drop 25 euros a week, paid usually on Fridays.
The two shaved ones have to gas up and go out. Low? No, just right.
Because in my opinion a boy does not have to "go out to dinner" as an adult. At 19 you eat at home: once in a while a pizza may happen.
Pocket money, then, forces a boy to sharpen his brain: house parties instead of clubs, 3 euro beer instead of negroni, inventing sauces for spaghetti with friends, avoiding the madness of discos with payers dropping down 50 for a night.
And then there is one last huge advantage: a light allowance pushes kids to supplement. Vittorio waits tables two nights a week, and Pietro makes cocktails at eighteenths.
Good? Yes, but in my opinion the credit goes to those few, bastard, risky 25 euros on Friday mornings. Cre
