The Teen Budget Test: A One-Month Review (And I’m Honestly Surprised)

We are now in month 2 of our financial experiment where I give my 13 year old girls $100/month and are responsible for ALL of their clothes and makeup, as well as any “luxury” toiletries (I will continue to buy all their basic needs).

I appreciate the comments and feedback I received on my last post when I shared our experiment. I revised the contract I shared with the girls to clarify that I would cover ALL the basics (eg, face wash was not originally listed; and the contract says floss OR mouthwash when I really mean brushing and mouthwash, etc.).

The day I gave the first 100 dollars to the girls, we sat down and planned how to spend the money. I told them that we usually spend on school clothes ($300) and what they would budget for summer clothes (including swimsuits, flip flops, etc. is about $200).

We had a tight timeline

We need $200 in May/June for the summer clothing haul, and another $300 in July/August for back to school.

From there we worked our way back.

We have 7 months from Feb-Aug, which is $700; but we need to set aside $500 of it for these fixed expenses. That leaves $200 for makeup/skin care and luxury toiletries or other clothing events between February and August. That’s about $30/month!

I think this shocked them and helped them adjust their thinking a bit.

For example, they both wanted to buy new clothes for our DC and NYC trip. However, we have a lot of clothes that fit us and will work well with the cold DC/NYC weather (it’s already summer weather in Tucson!). I encouraged both girls to try to make clothes out of their wardrobe for the DC trip and maybe buy a new item or two instead of a new wardrobe for the trip.

This worked very well! Daughter 1 spent $15 on a shirt and called it cute. Daughter 2 didn’t spend anything in the month of February, but she has a $50 budget for DC/NYC (to be clear – this is money set aside for clothes in preparation for the trip. She won’t have to spend anything on the trip, per se).

My reaction

In fact, I was shocked at how the girls grew up in this situation. My past experience with them is that when they get money or gift cards for birthdays, it’s like the money burns a hole in their pocket and they “need” to go shopping STAT! I expected this to be a similar experience. But, if anything, they did the opposite! They save their dollars to have well-funded accounts for their summer move and back to school.

And – we had so much fun together “making art” – the girls made a savings thermometer! Remember when I used to make debt thermometers to track my debt payments!?

Side Note: We realized after creating it that maybe we should have created two separate thermostats – one for summer and one for back to school because it will save and spend so it doesn’t make sense to have two thermostats on the same thermostat. Oh well. It was a fun project and learning experience.

I had my 1st daughter tell me last week that she needed a new concealer and when I encouraged her to spend her money on it, she decided she could go a long way with her current concealer. I love that they are starting to save (using every last drop!), but I will definitely encourage her to continue using her budget to buy things she needs as the needs arise – that’s what money is for!

This also brings up the comments of a leaver, who said they were worried that young people would prioritize the wrong things and not buy themselves new socks or underwear, for example. I plan to stay involved and help guide the girls to make these kinds of decisions and not push the needs aside in favor of buying more of “what they want.”

So far, so good

It’s been one month, so far, I’m so happy with how well the girls have done! It went better than I expected!

They got their budget for March and things are going well this month too! I will continue to monitor the situation and we plan to have periodic checks to make sure everything is going well and make decisions about whether any budget changes are needed, etc. This is intended to help teach girls to budget – non-punitive in nature. So if it really doesn’t work, I’m happy to step in and fix it or help out as needed. But so far I’m really proud of the maturity they’ve shown and how well things are going!

I’ll give an update in a few months (eg, maybe after a summer shopping trip) to report how they’ve done on their savings goals and how things are going with this financial test, in general.

How much financial responsibility do you think teenagers should manage on their own?

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