Young spenders

Saturday morning may be the day banks traditionally close, but if you are of school-going age, it's the day long associated with pocket money. There is a quaintly old-fashioned resonance to the words "pocket money" these days. The words seem to belong to the past, evoking images of china piggy banks and a simple selection of things to spend small amounts of money on. Do children still get pocket money, and if so, what do they spend it on?

Well, it would appear that a lot of children still do get the luxury of a small amount of money every week. Brother and sister Adam (10) and Monique (7) Kerroun live in Mullingar.

"I get £2 every week," Adam says. "I save a lot of it, and only spend 50p at most. I'd buy a drink, or sweets, or a few chips. Maybe a Beano. I'm saving for a Playstation; everyone else in the class has one and I'm fed up of being left out of what they're talking about. They're around £100 and I've saved £45 at least."

Charlie McCreevy must have taken inspiration from the Kerroun parents for his recent savings plan. "Every £20 I save, Mum or Dad give me £5," Adam explains.

"I don't really like only getting £2," he confides. "My friend gets a fiver every week, and he's only nine. I think £3 would be fairer." His sister, Monique, gets £1. "Sometimes I save it when I'm in a good mood, and when I'm in a bad mood and my brother is annoying me, I go to the shop and spend it all! I buy little balls of chewing gum, lollipops." Monique has a Pocahontas piggy bank. "There's quite a lot in it," she says vaguely. "I'd like a Nintendo. How much are they? I don't know."

Some of her friends get pocket money and some don't. Like customers watching interest rates in banks, children do compare the amounts they get against what their friends get. "My friend Emma gets £10," she reveals, in awed tones. "But she buys good things for her mammy out of it, like flowers."

"We decided about two years ago to give them pocket money, to give them a sense of the value of money," explains their mother, Mandy Kerroun. "In theory, we'd like them to save half of it. One child does and one doesn't. Adam seems to be able to see the deferred gratification at the end, but the draw of sweets is more immediate to Monique! I know we don't give them as much as some other kids get, but we feel it's an adequate amount."

Sisters Aine (17) and Emma (14) Hunt live in Dublin. They each get £5 a week. Does Aine think this is fair, given the difference in their ages? "I do," she says, "because we each do the same work at home for it. We both wash the dishes, and do whatever jobs need doing - hoovering, dusting, keeping our rooms tidy. And I do babysitting, so I have that extra money Emma doesn't have."

Aine worked in Dunnes Stores last summer, and saved a lot of money from that job. "Not all of my friends would get pocket money now, because they work, or they baby-sit, but they would have when they were younger." She spends her extra money on clothes, CDs and "credit for my phone - that's the big expense".

Getting regular pocket money sounds good in theory, as a way of getting youngsters to manage their money, but the reality is really quite different these days. Pocket money is almost always a supplement to those who get it.

So does contributing her own £5 towards clothes make her aware of the value of money; does she ever think about what things cost when she pays something towards them? "No!" is Aine's swift and honest answer.

Like her sister, Emma spends most of her money on clothes and credit for her phone. "Mum or Dad would give us money for the bus to town or for food to eat in there, and they buy all the big things," Emma says. "But it's nice to have a little bit of your own money to spend once you're in there."

She saved about half of her weekly money last year because she was going away on holiday, but this year, she's spent it because there are no big holiday plans. Some of her friends get pocket money, "but if they're going anywhere, like to the cinema, their parents pay for it".

"We decided to give them regular money about two years ago," says mother Kitty Hunt. "They had the choice between a monthly allowance - we were thinking of about £50 - out of which they'd have to pay for their clothes and everything, or we'd pay for their clothes and they'd have a small weekly amount of pocket money. They decided the weekly pocket money was a much better deal.

"The main reason we give them money is that we don't want them working during term time. It's not a lot of money, but at least one arm isn't longer than the other when they're out with friends and want to buy an ice-cream or some little thing."

The Glynn brothers, James (12), Owen (11) and Sean (8), are from Mallow, Co Cork. They get their pocket money on Sundays. "Because Sunday is the end of the week," explains James, who gets £3, as does his brother Owen. Sean gets £2. All the boys do regular jobs for their money. "We do the dishes, feed the dog, and carry the bags out to the car during the week. On Sundays, we do lots of scrubbing and cleaning of the house," says James.

All the brothers save most of their money. "I save about £2. Dad says it's better to save it. I put it into a box in my room, and when I think I should put it in the bank, I do," says the pragmatic James. Owen also saves £2 in a money box he made himself, and doesn't know how much he has at present. Does he think £3 is a fair amount? "I do a lot more jobs than my friends do for their money," he observes, a tad grumpily. "But, yeah, it's fair."

Sean saves half of his £2. "I put it in my locker. Sometimes I get tempted to spend it, but I don't," he confides. "I just want to put it away." Perhaps unusually, none of the three is saving for anything in particular; simply putting away money for the sake of it. Some things never change, though. All three spend what they don't save of their pocket money - on sweets.

So what does psychologist Jane Fry, who specialises in working with teenagers, think of pocket money? Is it just the preserve of the middle class, for instance? "Strangely enough, it doesn't seem to be," she says. "Some kids get quite a lot of money during the week, from day to day. The regular pocket money day is probably for better-off kids.

"We are a consumer society, a money society, so it's of great value for a child to have their own money. From a learning point of view, it's better to be given money in a lump so that you have to make it last, rather than think you can get a bit every day."