What’s the official age where you can start using the phrase “kids these days”?

Also, are you officially considered ‘old’ if you find 95% of the songs you hear on 5FM to be an offence against music?

The point I’m making here is that I’ve definitely ticked over into that weird time between being considered young and suffering from a midlife crisis, so I’ll start judging ‘youths’ as I see fit.

When it comes to how they spend their pocket money, a study of more than 25 000 UK parents and children, undertaken by kids’ allowance and chores app RoosterMoney (there’s an app for everything), found some interesting patterns emerging.

To start, let’s look at the average weekly pocket money dished out in the UK:

14-year-olds cracking £8 a week? That’s £32 a week, or around R600. Not too shabby.

The Financial Times then unpacks what that is spent on:

At this point, we should introduce the giant caveat that this study carries. These stats aren’t based on cash transactions, but is rather gleaned from “parents who use Rooster Money’s app and preloaded contactless card to teach children as young as four how to navigate our increasingly cashless society”.

This means they can still head to the local shop and buy some sweets and a magazine, but may differ from how they would spend actual cash, rather than money loaded onto a card.

For those trying to work out how much to pay their kids per chore, here’s the UK breakdown:

As a non-parent, I would say all of these should go without payment, in lieu of putting a bloody roof over your head, little Johnny, but the plus side of paying for these chores is teaching a sense of financial responsibility from an early age.

The same study found that nine-year-olds are the most entrepreneurial, often generating extra cash by flogging old games, books and toys.

I’m really not sure how much of this translates to a South African context, but perhaps it gives you a little glimpse into “kids these days”.

[source:fintimes]