I have two daughters, a few years apart, and for a long stretch the single most contested sentence in our house was some version of: “But why does she get more?” If you’re raising more than one child, you know this negotiation intimately. The moment pocket money enters a household with siblings, you’re no longer just deciding an amount — you’re adjudicating fairness, and the two kids have very different definitions of the word.
Here’s how I’ve come to think about it, after getting it wrong a couple of times with my own girls.
Equal is not the same as fair
The instinct — and it’s a kind one — is to give both children the same amount. Same rupees, no arguments, nobody can claim favouritism. It feels like the just solution.
The trouble is that equal amounts quietly do something unequal. A 15-year-old and a 10-year-old don’t have the same needs. The older one is travelling further on their own, eating out with friends, buying things that simply cost more at that age. Hand both of them ₹800 and you haven’t been fair — you’ve given the younger one a surplus they don’t know what to do with, and left the older one short of what their actual life costs. Equal looks fair on the surface and creates a genuine mismatch underneath.
So the honest answer is usually that pocket money should scale with age and real need, not sit flat across siblings. The older child gets more because their world costs more. That’s not favouritism; it’s accuracy. The hard part isn’t deciding this — it’s explaining it to a ten-year-old who only sees that their sister’s number is bigger.
How to make the difference feel fair, not favoured
The younger child’s objection isn’t really about rupees. It’s about status — “you value her more than me.” So the fix is to make the reasoning transparent and, crucially, time-bound.
What worked in our house was framing the amount as tied to age and responsibilities, not to the child. “When you’re her age and travelling to tuition on your own, you’ll get what she gets now” — said and meant — reframes the gap entirely. It stops being she is worth more and becomes this is what that stage of life costs, and your turn is coming. My younger one didn’t love it instantly, but “your turn is coming, and here’s exactly when” is a very different message from “she just gets more.”
It also helps to point at the actual expenses. Walk the younger child through why the older one’s costs are higher — the longer commute, the outings, the things that genuinely cost more at that age. When the difference is attached to visible, explainable expenses rather than to some ranking of the children, it reads as logic instead of preference.
Get the Junio app. Give each child their own card, set each amount separately, and let both of them see their own money clearly. Try Junio for your family.
One thing that genuinely reduced the friction for us: each child having their own separate card and their own view of their own money. When the amounts live in one shared place, every difference is a side-by-side comparison waiting to happen. When each child has their own card, their own balance, and their own spending to think about, the natural focus shifts from “what does she have?” to “what do I want to do with mine?” You can set a different recurring amount for each child, and each one is managing their own money rather than eyeing their sibling’s.
Build in a few things that ARE equal
Scaling the amount by age doesn’t mean everything has to differ, and it helps to have some deliberately equal elements so the younger one has something concrete that’s the same.
The rules can be identical: the same expectations about saving a portion, the same conversations about spending, the same freedom to make their own choices with their own money. Birthday or festival money can be equal, since that’s about celebration, not weekly needs. And the access is equal — both kids have a real card and the same tools, even if the numbers on them differ. When the structure is visibly the same and only the amount scales, “unfair” gets much harder to argue.
Skip the age-scaling if…
If your children are close in age and have genuinely similar needs, don’t manufacture a difference just to make a point about fairness — equal amounts may simply be correct for them. The scaling logic is for real gaps in what their lives cost, not for enforcing a hierarchy where none is needed.
And if one child consistently handles money well while the other is still learning, resist the urge to reward the “responsible” one with a bigger amount. That turns pocket money into a verdict on character, and it breeds exactly the resentment you’re trying to avoid. Adjust for age and need; teach the money skills separately. Pocket money isn’t a prize for being the good one.
Fair and equal aren’t the same thing, and children figure that out earlier than we expect. The job isn’t to make the numbers match — it’s to make the reasoning clear, the difference temporary, and the structure around it the same for both. Do that, and “why does she get more?” turns from a grievance into a question you can actually answer.
Have two very different kids and a system that works? Email [email protected].