Our daughter needs a bailout from the bank of mum and dad. How can we help while still teaching her the value of money? VICKY REYNAL replies
We've given our 16 year-old daughter a weekly allowance since she was seven years old.
We told her in advance that she would have to spend her own money for her prom but we’d be happy to cover the cost of the dress and the prom ticket. Everything else (transport, hair, make-up), she’d have to budget for.
However, she’s failed to do that and now says that if we don’t give her an extra £100, she will have to be driven by us to the prom (which she really doesn’t want) rather than go in the shared limo with all her friends. What should we do?
C.D.W., by email
First of all, I think it’s brilliant that you have been paying your daughter an allowance from a young age as it’s a great way to teach children valuable money management skills. The difficult balance and trade-offs of saving versus spending, the discipline of resisting satisfying their every whim, saving up for a bigger purchase down the line, or even learning how to spend and enjoy money. These are not innate skills and having money early helps us experiment in a safe way with these choices.
Our daughter wants us to give her £100 so she can ride in a limo with her friends to prom
Your daughter didn’t budget or save adequately to meet an objective she has set for herself. Now, you need to strike the right balance between helping her learn something out of this experience but also empathising with the fact she is only at the start of a journey and that she can’t be expected to get it right from the outset.
So, a firm and flat ��no’ won’t really teach her a lesson. It will just make her angry with you.
A compassionate and unquestioning ‘yes’ might only teach her that no matter what she does with money, the ‘bank of mum and dad’ is a limitless resource and so getting it wrong has no consequences.
We need to find a middle ground. But this isn’t just about giving her half the money and asking her to find ways to source the other half. It’s about creating a space in which you can (hopefully together) reflect on and figure out solutions. There are two key points to focus on.
1. What went wrong?
If she did a budget (which hopefully you would have encouraged her to do when you discussed setting this objective), did she get something wrong there? Maybe she miscalculated or didn’t do research to budget adequately for each item. Did she build any room for unexpected expenses in her budget?
Is it that, despite her budgeting, she failed to save and could not resist other impulses in the past month or two which set her back financially?
Or is it that despite budgeting and saving, her friends have a greater budget and want to go ‘all out’ on the transport, which she didn’t foresee and has been a last-minute change in plans? If that’s the case, you might want to ask her how she has managed this: did she tell her friends she didn’t think she could afford the limo? Did she try to suggest an alternative, cheaper option?
This could be very difficult to do, but as a parent you can have a conversation with her that will help her confront countless future situations in which she might find herself under peer-pressure to overspend. You can acknowledge that it is difficult to be the one that says ‘I can’t afford this’ but that if she doesn’t learn how to do that, she might end up often going over-budget and be stressed about money.
The point is that instead of ‘blaming’ her for her mistakes, you can help her figure out where she went wrong and what she could have done differently to prevent this from happening.
2. How to fix it
You can be open about the fact that if you fix it for her and hand over the £100, then she won’t have learnt anything from the whole affair. You want to help her figure it out and find a solution to her financial problem.
Brainstorm with her: what could she compromise on to make £100. Are there are few items she wants to sell on Vinted/eBay to raise the money? Can she do a small job that could raise this amount? Or maybe there is a recurring cost she wants to cut for the next few months (a membership?) or a reduction in allowance she might want to agree to, in return for an advance of £100?
The solution is less relevant than the process of brainstorming, because you are teaching her to think creatively, to not get stuck in despair and feel like a failure, but to roll up her sleeves and think about solutions. You are also teaching her that she can turn to you and that there are ways to help besides handing over money and rescuing her from financial messes.
3. Facing pushback
It would be totally age-appropriate for a teenager not to want to engage with you on this. ‘Just give me the money please - I don’t need a lecture,’ might be in the repertoire you are faced with in response to your efforts. However, try not to give up on your pursuit to give her tools rather than the easy bailout she is asking for. It may feel like you are hurting the relationship by not giving her what she wants but you are actually doing what’s best for her and in the long-term for your relationship. It will help you raise a daughter that isn’t overly reliant on you but knows she can count on you for help, whatever the problem may be - financial or not.
