What did you do with your allowance money when you were a kid?

Mine went almost exclusively on football sticker cards. I had albums full of them for years.
The best part was when you swapped much needed cards with your friends that meant your collection was complete.

Spent it on the snack bar at the local public pool in the summers, and, the local pet shop.

When I was about 10 I bought an exotic finch at the pet store. I lied to my mother about ‘finding’ this little bird. Took it out of it’s container on the walk home and carried it in my hand.

I thought she would let me keep it.

Well…that backfired like a thousand canons, she took it and tossed it out the door, saying it was a ‘wild’ bird, and we had to let it go. I was devastated, but, couldn’t admit I lied. :-(

@Coloma And you’re still into brownies and birds!

@thorninmud

Right you are! But, they don’t sell my kind if brownies at the snack bar. haha ;-)

I bought caps for cap guns and pebble grenades. Some things never change.

I bought candy, baseball cards, pogs, and other useless toys.

Oh, also: crack. ~

I bought candy.

Guitars and spare electronics parts.

@noelleptc AWWWWwwwww!!

I never got an allowance as a kid. If I needed/wanted something or some cash, I’d ask, and my parents would either say yes or no.

I’d either use it for candy (we all liked candy cigarettes, but we had to eat them on the walk home from the drug store or our parents would flip out), ice cream, books, or records. We lived only a few blocks from a shopping center and by upper grade school I was allowed to walk there alone. Before that, I was allowed to go in a group of other kids. We loved getting ice cream from the walk-up window at the ice cream shop or buying loads of candy at the drug store. For a few months in a row, I spent my allowance on Phil Collins records. I might have been the only 5th grader with a huge crush on him. I also went through a Sweet Valley High phase that had me buying one or two books a day for a long time.

When I got to high school, most of my allowance went to the mall or the movies.

And yes, I was spoiled. I think my allowance was more dependent on what I asked for than what I did to earn it.

I bought vinyl records, candy and lipsticks

When I got a lot of allowance I tend to spend it so lavishly. I used my money to treat my friends,shopping,and more importantly I spent a lot for cosmetic products. Most of my friends think that I’m attractive and I must do what I could do at that age.

I know it was a waste, but I was a dumb teen: I bought weed, alcohol, and candy.

@Blackberry Weed is never a waste!

@Facade I guess you’re right lol.

Mine went towards buying comic books. Then when I got older and got a job, I spent my money on cd’s. Then when I got older I moved away from collectibles and more towards booze and smokes. Nowadays the wife controls the wallet for the most part, though I do spend mostly on food and coffee. I could use another hobby though.

I probably bought a lot of candy when I was really little, but when I got older, it was movie tickets. I LOVED going to the movies. I would save up for a special pair of jeans with baby sitting money and my allowance or some other bit of clothes or make up I had to have. Down hill ski trips made a dent in my babysitting/allowance stash too. Parachute pants in black and dances and the Catholic Central School on Friday nights.

Candy, stickers, Empire Strikes Back trading cards, safety pins and beads, BOP and Tiger Beat magazines.

Real young all I bought was candy, once I got a turntable then it was albums, then saved up for a Schwinn 10 speed so I could really ride far away from home, then I saved my allowance to buy pot!

I mostly saved my allowance and would deposit it in my bank account once it added up to a significant amount. I would spend some of the money on ice cream or other snacks that my school sold. My friends and I would pool our money together and buy that sort of stuff every Friday, as a mini celebration type thing.
I also have this vivid memory of saving up my money until I had enough to buy this cd. I was so excited to buy it and I was really proud of saving up the money to buy it. I think I was maybe 7, so don’t judge too harshly about the music itself….

I’d collect it aside until my parents would take me to our bank and I could deposit it into a savings account I had under my name. Spending my money wasn’t in my thoughts really until I became a teen and then I had a $50.00 mo. allowance which basically covered the weekly fees of stuff my parents had been paying for, they just let me budget it instead.

Yes, I think my early saving/spending habits have shaped me as an adult spender. I still scrimp for the things I can get away with without sacrificing quality and I will still splurge for the occasional goodie that can’t be discounted or matched by a lesser priced item. I’m a better saver than as a kid but that’s because I control how much money comes to me in the first place.

I saved it to buy the oh, so important trendy clothes that my parents thought were stupid.

[mod says] This is our Question of the Day!

I’m the same as @Facade I never got an allowance (and we don’t give our daughter one). If she wants or needs something we discuss it and if it’s a reasonable request and we can afford it we get it.

I never got an allowance. So I started walking dogs at 10, and babysitting at 11. I got paid mainly in quarters (and the dog walking, I got paid mainly in scrunchies. it was the 90s and I was a kid..don’t judge me!)
I saved it all up. My mother still to this day thinks I’m stingy….as long as it’s my money, otherwise I don’t mind spending it lol.
I was I believe 13 when I rode my bike to the bank and started my own account. Don’t ask me how, since Commerce wouldn’t let me do it at 18.

@casheroo: I think banks would let a kid deposit to their own account but not debit?

I never got an allowance. I had chores, and I got money for special occasions like birthdays or holidays.. but no allowance.

One year, I was saving mine for a darling stuffed dog I saw in the store, but when I was in the hospital dying from a botched appendix operation, Santa Claus Himself brought it to me.

As you can see, I survived, but I don’t remember what happened to the money I was saving.

I didn’t get an allowance either… there wasn’t any money to spare for one, as we were pretty damn poor. I started babysitting at 11 (which is so weird, looking back – I’d never hire an 11 year old babysitter!), had a paper route, and started working in a real job at 14. I spent all of that money to do things with my friends, buy clothes, etc. At 15, I started paying my mom rent, and took over all of my own expenses.

I started getting a $1/week allowance when I was 5 (it never got any bigger, but I did later also get a 50% share of the family’s pop bottle refund money). For some reason, I had a fascination with Slinkies in those days. They just looked like they had such potential in the commercials; unfulfilled potential in my case, since we had no stairs in our house (I tried building a couple of fake steps, but the effect was anti-climactic). But you could get a Slinky for $1, so I’d buy one the day I got my $. It would soon get a kink in it, which ruined even the potential fun of it. I must have bought about 5 Slinkies in a row before I became completely disenchanted with the whole enterprise.

Later, I’d spend all my money at the local hardware store, which was better than any toy shop in my eyes. I’d roam the aisles, looking for that same elusive commodity—potential. I had every item on those shelves burned into my memory. I could sit at home, dreaming up projects, and visualize exactly which items I’d need to put it together.

This is exactly the way my mind still works, and it serves me very well in my current job. And years of working on a $1–2 budget definitely kept me grounded economically. $10 bucks still kind of feels like a lot of money.

As a kid my pocket money went on comics, sweets & pop. It stopped when I got my paper round at age thirteen, the money from that I saved to buy records & tapes. at fifteen I worked on the milk rounds too & window cleaning at weekends earning enough to put a decent amount away each month……..

American Girl dolls and accessories.

Madame Alexander dolls and Nancy Ann Storybook dolls. By the time I was 10 I had about 40 collectible dolls. My mother and I used to haunt this musty old doll shop on Ventura Blvd. together. I sold most of them after my mom died, but I still have a couple. When I was around 11 I got a paper route, all of that money went to dolls too.

@SuperMouse: Did you ever haunt Macabob Toys that was on Colorado Blvd? They always had the latest Breyer model horses which I was into but also those beautiful ornate dolls on the top shelves near the ceiling, all the way around the store.

@Neizvestnaya no, we never made it much past Sepulveda. ):

Chocolate bars, Video games, food for lunch, and Dragon-Lance novels. Now I pay rent, utilities, food and books

I never received an allowance…I would hunt around the house for pennies to just be able to buy penny candy at school once in a blue moon :-(