You may wish to teach your child about saving and impose a compulsory saving scheme on a certain amount of the pocket money, which will be matched by you if they decide to save more than the minimum. Some parents decide on a set amount, to be increased year on year until a child becomes a teenager at which point, the process will be re-evaluated.

That said, you should consider the long term implications of giving pocket money and whether or not you want to attach any conditions to it so that there are multiple lessons to be learned and associated with the rewards (and sometimes hardships) related to managing money. You can then safely say that your children are ready to understand the concept of pocket money.

Once your children can count confidently and understand the idea of having a certain quantity of something and by either adding to it or taking away from it, they are left with the result. Responsible pocket money schemes can teach more than simply adding and subtracting, getting and having. For this very reason, parents have an extremely valuable tool at their disposal at a very key time in their children’s lives. Teaching your child to save a little each week to buy something bigger later on, can be a difficult concept for many children to accept these days, particularly as we live in a culture of ‘everything now’. Saving is a key part of the pocket money experience. The very idea of pocket money comes out of a desire to teach your children about the value of money and that despite popular belief, it really doesn’t grow on trees. When do you start giving it, how much do you give, should it be earned and how often should it be paid? Are there any conditions attached and what about saving? The list goes on. It gets even more complicated when you start considering the terms. This very much depends on your family, the motivation behind it and how ready and able your children are to learn about and understand the value of money. There is no right or wrong time to introduce pocket money. A Parent's Guide to Pocket Money When to introduce pocket money

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