Quiddo
How Much Pocket Money by Age: An Australian Guide (2026)
Every few months one of our four kids asks why their pocket money is different from a friend’s, and we end up back at the same question every Australian parent hits eventually: how much is the right amount?
There is no single correct number. What you pay depends on your budget, your child’s age, and what you expect the money to cover. But “it depends” is a frustrating answer on its own, so here is what the data says, what the guidance recommends, and how we handle it in our own house.
The quick answer: $1 per year of age
The most common starting point in Australia is a simple rule: pay roughly $1 for each year of your child’s age, per week. Raising Children Network, the parenting service funded by the Australian Government, is one of many that points to age-based amounts as a sensible guide.
Applied straight, that rule looks like this:
| Age | Weekly pocket money (rule of thumb) |
|---|---|
| 5 | $5 |
| 6 | $6 |
| 7 | $7 |
| 8 | $8 |
| 10 | $10 |
| 12 | $12 |
| 14 | $14 |
Treat this as a floor to adjust from, not a law. A 14-year-old expected to buy their own phone credit and outings needs more than a 14-year-old whose parents still cover all of that.
What Australian families actually pay
The rule of thumb is close to reality, but slightly generous at the older end. Spriggy’s 2025 Economy Report, which analysed data from around 790,000 Australian kids, found:
- The average child received about $50 per month, up 11% on the year before.
- A 7-year-old earned roughly $6.50 a week.
- A 12-year-old earned close to $10 a week.
- Kids in NSW earned the most, averaging $8.80 a week, about 90 cents more than kids in South Australia and Tasmania.
So actual amounts track age closely, but flatten out a little instead of climbing a clean dollar per year. If your numbers land somewhere in this range, you are in good company.
Pocket money by age band
The right amount depends less on the exact year and more on what the money is being asked to do. Here is how it tends to shift across five bands. The dollar figures are a common starting point, not survey data, except where a Spriggy average is named.
Ages 5 to 6: starting out
A few dollars a week, around $5 to $6. At this age the amount barely matters. The point is the routine: money arrives, and it either gets spent on something small or saved for something slightly bigger. Pay it on the same day each week so the pattern is easy to follow, and keep the choices small enough that spending or saving is a real decision, not an abstract one.
Ages 7 to 9: getting the idea
Around $6.50 to $9 a week. Spriggy’s data puts the average 7-year-old at about $6.50. This is the band where saving toward a specific toy over two or three weeks starts to work, because the wait is short enough to hold in their head. A named savings goal, with the thing they are saving for attached to it, does most of the teaching here.
Ages 10 to 12: tweens
Close to $10 a week, matching the Spriggy average for 12-year-olds. Money can start covering a few things you used to pay for outright, like a snack at the shops or a small app. Splitting each payment into spending and savings, so some is set aside before it can be spent, helps the saving survive contact with a tuckshop.
Ages 13 to 15: early teens
Often $14 to $20 a week, though the range widens fast because it depends on what the money now covers. Phone credit, outings with friends, and gifts are common at this age. If you hand those costs over, raise the amount to match, and consider paying monthly so budgeting across a longer stretch becomes the lesson.
Ages 16 and up: older teens
By now pocket money often blends with a part-time wage, and its job shifts to filling the gaps rather than being the whole income. Bigger savings goals, a car, a trip, a first laptop, are where the habit pays off. The amount matters less than whether they have somewhere to see it all add up.
Match the amount to what it has to cover
Before settling on a figure, decide what the money is for. ASIC’s Moneysmart, the Australian Government’s financial literacy service, frames pocket money as a tool for teaching kids to weigh needs against wants and to save toward goals. The amount only makes sense once you know the job it is doing.
A useful way to split it:
- Small and simple (younger kids): a few dollars a week for lollies, small toys, and the experience of choosing to spend or save.
- Broader (tweens and teens): enough to cover some costs you hand over, like outings, apps, or gifts for friends, so they feel the trade-offs.
If you expand what pocket money covers, raise the amount to match. Handing a teenager the same $10 you gave them at ten, then expecting it to stretch across a social life, teaches resentment rather than budgeting.
Should it be tied to chores?
This is where families genuinely disagree, and both camps have a point. Moneysmart notes that some parents pay for extra jobs while keeping everyday chores unpaid, so kids absorb two lessons at once: money is earned, and helping out at home is simply part of being in a family.
In our house we lean that way. Basic tidying, making beds, and clearing plates are just what you do as one of six people under one roof. Bigger or optional jobs can earn a bit extra. With four kids, we have found that keeping the everyday expectations separate from money avoids turning every request into a negotiation.
There is no wrong answer here, only the one that fits how your family already runs. If you do want to attach some jobs to the money, our guide to age-appropriate chores breaks down what is reasonable to expect at each age.
How we think about the number
For what it is worth, here is our own rough approach:
- Start with the age rule as a baseline, then sanity-check it against the Spriggy averages so we are not wildly out of step.
- Adjust for what it covers. More responsibility, more money.
- Keep it consistent. A smaller amount paid reliably every week teaches more than a larger amount that shows up whenever we remember.
- Revisit it once a year, usually on birthdays, so it grows with them.
The exact figure matters less than paying it predictably and being clear about what it is for. That is the part kids actually learn from.
From pocket money to money skills
Handing over the right amount is the easy half. The point of it, especially as kids move into their teens, is the habits it builds. ASIC’s Moneysmart sums up what to aim for with an older child in one line: help them set a savings goal, create a simple budget and track their spending.
Those three are exactly what we ended up building Quiddo around, less by design than by having four kids and no patience for spreadsheets:
- Set a savings goal. Each child sets a goal with a target amount and a picture of what they are after, and can switch on auto-fund so a slice of every payment goes toward it on its own.
- A simple budget. You set the weekly amount once and it splits across spending and savings automatically, so a child can see what is theirs to spend now and what is put aside for later.
- Track their spending. You pay on your own card and log it, and the balance moves, so they (and you) can see where the money actually went.
We did not set out to tick ASIC’s boxes. Building for our own kids just landed us on the same three. The difference is that Quiddo does all of it without handing a young kid a debit card to lose or tying them to a bank. If you are still weighing that up, we wrote a fuller case for going card-free versus giving your kid a debit card. And if the “how much” is sorted but the “keeping track” is the mess, that is the gap Quiddo fills.