As a kid, I wasn’t. Though I don’t think I got a traditional allowance, that I can recall. It was more like once in a while if I really wanted something, I could ask my parents. Or something.
Anyway, it would never have occurred to me that food was “extra.” My family pretty much kept snacks on supply–candy bars or cookies or whatever I was into. I don’t think my parents would ever have said, “No, you can’t have that–it’s too expensive. Buy it yourself.” Food was just…food. (Also, I was an insanely skinny kid with a high metabolism so I think they were worried about me losing weight and were always trying to make sure I ate something high in caloric content.)
The idea of me not being able to eat something like that, I think, would have horrified my mom. (The time I came back from college one weekend and had lost a few pounds, my whole family went a little insane. And my mom thought that the snacky cakes I’d asked her to buy for when I was home were low fat and she basically got all, “You CAN’T eat low fat food–you have to eat stuff so you can keep on weight.”)
We didn’t get an allowance, so we had no way to acquire anything our parents (or other relatives) didn’t buy for us, be it food, clothes, toys, or whatever. We could ask for things we wanted, but outside of birthdays, christmas, and other gift-giving situations, if they didn’t already intend to get it for us, they wouldn’t. And yes, any food besides the meals they provided would have been considered “extra”.
There were five of us kids and typically we got one box of potato chips, an 8 pack of bottled pop, a bag of suckers, and a 99 cent pizza for the week. The pop and pizza were the Friday night treat. The rest was regular meals you had to cook. We had no allowance, but you did your tasks. You used your birthday money or money earned working to buy extras. Ma was often out of macaroni, because we would eat it between meals. Some times there were more treats, but not often. That’s why I learned to bake early on and often. Cakes, breads and roles were a treat.
We usually had stuff in the house, but yes, we were expected to pay for extras ourselves.
At one point our allowance was upped to $5/week, and we were expected to buy our own clothes. (I almost never did.) That rate of allowance continued when I was in college. That really sucked.
My brother and I got an allowance (or jobs), but were forbidden from buying candy and “crap food” with it. We were permitted to buy a school lunch with our allowance, instead of packing our own.
We spent a lot of money on candy and snacks anyway. I suspect if my mother really knew how much, she’d have taken away any money we had and forbidden us from earning more.
Mom always had healthy snacks in the house – although it was the 70s, so “healthy” was somewhat different then. Whole milk was healthy, you know? Maybe “wholesome” is a better word. Always fruit, peanut butter and crackers, cheese and crackers, popcorn, pretzels, usually homemade baked goods like cookies or muffins or brownies.
If we wanted candy bars or brand-name products like Cheetos or Chips Ahoy!, we were generally on our own. We had a modest allowance for that and there was a 7-11 within walking distance. (Edited to add: The Devil’s Grandmother reminded me of this – there were rules about how much junk food we could buy, but I know us kids were pretty crafty and got more than we were supposed to.) Exceptions were made for special occasions, and a reasonable amount of junk food was provided for things like holidays, birthdays, sleep-overs, the last day of school, things like that.
The sick thing was how often we bought ourselves Chips Ahoy even when my mom supplied us with chocolate chip cookies from scratch! I remember whining that all the other kids had Ho-Hos in their lunch, and I had to bring stupid double fudge chocolate chip cupcakes that mom made. Gawd, kids are so dumb.
Same here. My parents were very against “empty calories” meaning we did not have sweets in the house for the most part. Maybe a Fig Newton here and there if mom & dad were feeling wild. There was plenty to eat for snacks, of course… just no no sugar cereals, no candy, no soda , no potato chips, except as rare treats. We could spend out pocket money on that sort of thing if we wanted.
Yes we were. All the “good” food, chocolate, cakes, sour apple gum, candy cigarettes and especially Slurpees had to be bought by us out of the money we earned shoveling snow or cutting grass.
Fortuantely I had tons of neighbors who gave me lots of odd jobs, so I never had candy issues.
But there was no “good” food in our house, like cake and pop. Just boring veggies from our garden.
From the moment I started getting an allowance, yes. And movie tickets, and pretty much anything that was classified as “un capricho,” something that you’re getting cos you want it and not cos you need it.
One of the most nerve-wracking moments of my teen years was when I asked Dad to raise it from “5 pta per year or age” to “150 pta” on grounds of movie tickets being 150 pta… (I was 14)
I’m starting to feel kind of spoiled. In my defense, I really do lose weight easily if I’m not stuffing my face constantly. And even then I’m still thin. I remember my pediatrician accusing me of being anors and not quite believing me when my mother and I told him that I wasn’t (but there being very little he could do anyway).
That’s one of the things allowance was for; we very rarely had candy/snacks in the house. Of course, we picked up enough on Halloween to last most of the year.
I never got allowance. My mama bought me most everything I wanted if she could afford it. I understood we were poor so I tried not to ask for much but small stuff like candy bars I got any time I wanted.
We ate nothing but junk in our house. Dinners were often sandwiches with Doritos and sodas or we went out to Taco Bell as a special treat on pay day.
Of course I am considered morbidly obese 39 years later.
Ah, so that’s why kids always were excited about getting Halloween candy. For me, it was nice but most of the stuff that wasn’t chocolate I didn’t like, and anyway, if I really wanted something, my parents would just get it for me anyway.
Yes and no. If we were at the shops on our own e.g. on the way to and from school - even though it was strictly forbidden to enter shops while in uniform - then clearly we had to pay ourselves. If Mum or Dad were around though, we could usually nag sufficiently for them to cough up the money. Particularly Dad.
This was technically a school rule throughout junior and senior school. The school didn’t like the sight of hordes of boys, in the school’s recognisable uniform, wandering along the streets shovelling lollies, fish and chips, ice creams, whatever into their mouths. Of course it was a rule more honoured in the breach than the observance. Nobody cared very much if you went into a newsagency to buy more stationery. It was only ever junk food that seemed to rankle. But every now and again, after school, one of the prefects or teachers would be on duty outside the shops that lay between the school and the station, ready to pounce on any boy entering.
Of course there were always the shops at the station in our own suburb where we got off the train. And several of the stations on the journey home also had kiosks. If you travelled in the correct carriage, you could time it so that you could leap off the train, get to the kiosk, buy your lollies and get back onto the train again before it left the station.
At my high school the rule was stated with admirable succintness “Girls in school uniform must not eat in the street”. A rule we found quite absurd and took great delight in chanting whilst in the very act of breaking it.
With Depression-Era babies for parents, what do you think? Stupidly, I took a paper route and my allowance was rescinded. But I had to pay for the papers up front, and try to at least break even making collections (I resorted to knocking on deadbeats’ doors after ten PM.) I never had enough for a soda on the way home, forget the bonanza of candy I’d expected.
By the time I had a decent after-school job, my buddies and I were past candy and were getting the town’s least-creepy gay guy to obtain six-packs for us.