Allowances tend to be greater for girls, mostly because they experience more intense peer pressure about clothes and shop more. Guys tend to be the ones more interested in making money— and they have no problem borrowing from girls. “If I need money—like for lunch, a video game, whatever—sometimes I’ll just ask a chick,” says a private-school senior. “They’re usually cool about giving it out.”
Janet Bodnar, who writes a weekly column about kids and money for Kiplinger.com, argues that parents ought to enforce a strict allowance in order to teach money management. But she and others who study familial financial patterns say that fewer and fewer are heeding that advice. “A lot of parents, especially today, are inclined to just hand out $20 whenever kids need it,” Bodnar says. “And the kids don’t learn anything that way.” According to the JumpStart Coalition, a nonprofit that raises financial awareness, only 52 percent of high-school students have a working understanding of money. “For all our sophistication toward money, we enforce less and less real-life education on the topic,” says Laura Levine, the group’s executive director. “We give credit cards at younger ages, but with no explanation of what any of it means.”
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