Hello, everyone, and welcome to the English like a native Podcast, the podcast that's designed to help you to improve your English. This first series a very British life will dive into the nitty gritty of life in the UK. My name is Anna and today we're going to be talking about pocket money. Pocket money is money given to a child by their parents, often on a regular basis. And it just gives the child that little bit of financial independence. So, with their little bit of money, they can choose to save it, to buy something more expensive, or they can choose to spend it on things like sweets or cards that they're collecting, or magazines, or little toys perhaps. When I was younger at primary school, so between the ages of 6 and 12, I remember receiving approximately 50p every weekend as my pocket money allowance. And I would have to earn that pocket money. It wasn't just given to me. So, if I'd been very naughty, then I wasn't given pocket money but I think I was quite a good girl actually, as a child. And often my mum would say to me that I have to clean my room before my pocket money was given out. So, on Saturday mornings, I would spend the morning cleaning up making my bed, putting my toys away hoovering my bedroom, and then mum would come in and do her inspection of my room and she inspect my brothers and my sister’s room as well. And if it was good enough, she would give us our pocket money. Now I remember with my 50p I remember very clearly, I realised I could make them most of my money if I went all the way to the big budget supermarket. So, we have Aldi and Lidl are known as the budget supermarkets near us, but at Lidl they did a big bar of dairy milk chocolate, but it wasn't dairy milk, the Cadbury's version it was I think dairy fine, I think was the brand. And I could pick up this huge bar of chocolate for 49 pence, which meant that I was still left with one pence, which I could take to the corner shop to buy a sweet, a penny sweet. So, I got my big bar of chocolate which I can enjoy over the entire weekend and perhaps into the week. And I could enjoy my penny sweet on the way home from the shops. I remember it's distinctly because the big budget supermarket was across the main road. I wasn't really allowed to go that far. But Mum allowed me to walk out the main road, I had to cross the road at the pedestrian crossing with the lights. And that was a big deal going that far. And crossing the road all by myself like a grown-up was a really big deal for me. I buy my chocolate, and then on the way back run into the corner shop where I spent a lot of time as a child. And then I decide what I would purchase with my 1 penny. Now corner shops were renowned for their sweets, you could buy sweets for a penny, you could buy sweets for 2 pence or 5 pence or you get little bars of chocolate, chewy sweets for about 10 pence. And I remember you would buy a 10p mix. So, you'd buy a bag of 10 sweets or perhaps there would be 8 sweets and you'd have a two-pence sweet in there. So, you get this paper bag full of sweets for just 10p. I don't think they do them anymore. In fact, the entire corner shop idea is really starting to decline. With the popularity of the big supermarkets like Tesco, Sainsbury's, Marks and Spencer’s, Waitrose, and they're all opening Express stores. An Express store is a smaller store where you go to quickly pick up a few items. And because we know the supermarkets, we know what kind of prices they offer. We know what brands they're going to have. I think people just feel safer and more familiar with those stores. So, people opt to go to these stores rather than going to their local corner shop where the brands might be slightly different and the prices are usually a little higher. So, we've seen a huge decline in corner shops hopes, they do still exist, but they're very different now. And you often don't see the same offering of sweets that I knew as a child. I was in fact, a very keen saver when I was younger. I used to like to save my pennies. If I found a five pence or a one pence on the street, I'd pick it up, and I'd take it home and put it in my little pot. Now, this is often referred to as a piggy bank, usually, because the ceramic pot, where you put the money is shaped like a pig. And you'll still see money pots today shaped like pigs, or they might just be shaped like a pot with a little slit at the top to put your coin. When I was little, I had a child savings account with a bank called NatWest. And if you were a loyal customer, over a certain period of time, they would send you these ceramic piggy banks. So, these little pigs, and you could collect the whole family of pigs. And I think they became collector's items, actually, because they stopped doing them I don't know, 30 years ago now. And anyone who had collected the whole family, obviously, they were now worth quite a lot of money. Unfortunately, I broke a number of my pigs, because I played with them so much. But I do still have the baby pig. I don't think the baby pig’s worth very much money because it was the most common one, it was the first one they sent out to you. So that's a piggy bank, or you might have a money box. Or you might talk about your savings pot. If it's just an ordinary pot, where you can put your coins, keep them safely. These days, I just have a little jar, I have a little jam jar by the front door, which has a few pennies in it. But because we rarely use at all money, these days, I barely put anything in or take anything out of it. Because these days, we're just using credit cards, and some people are now using their phones to pay for things. So really, money is a thing of the past actual physical money anyway. So, to boost my pocket money, I used to go around and try to find jobs to do, I remember knocking on my neighbour's door and offering to do their garden or to clean their house or to do any jobs that a six-year-old could do in order to earn an extra 20p or 50p or whatever they wanted to give to me. And they did take me up on it actually. So, they had a front garden that was paved. But in between all the paving stones, there was moss growing. And so, they asked me to dig out the moss and pull out any weeds that was growing up between the paving slabs. And so that's what I did to earn an extra little bit of money. And then after that I was inspired and went to every other door on the street and knocked on to see if they needed any jobs doing. I was a young entrepreneur. Now what I find interesting when talking about money is why a man has a wallet, but a lady has a purse. I find that really odd because they're not that different. A wallet and a purse both have spaces for cards, and usually have a little pouch for the actual coins. So why is one called a wallet and one called a purse. It's very odd. I don't remember getting my first purse. But I know that as I've become an adult My purse is something I can never find. I think it's a universal thing for ladies. If you put your purse in your handbag, you can never find it when you want it. You're always digging around trying to find it somewhere at the bottom of your bag. These days, I don't go outside with a handbag very often I will just take my phone and my keys in my pocket. And so, I don't really have a need for a purse anymore. Although I do seem to have an extraordinary amount of store cards. So, I have store cards for the supermarkets for the coffee shops for my memberships to things like the National Trust to go and visit these lovely stately homes and gardens and things and then you have the coffee shop cards for those places as well. I have store cards for the chemist and for clothes shops, and it's just insane the amount of cards that I would have to carry if I wanted to always use my loyalty cards. Luckily, I did discover an app recently that allows you to store most of your cards onto and so you can just go into the shop and show them the app and then they can scan your card and you still receive your loyalty points, which is good. But if you want to redeem those points, then you have to have the physical card. And so, it doesn't look like I'm going to be redeeming any points anytime soon. So that was my talk on pocket money. I wonder what it's like in your country do feel free to comment and let me know. If you're interested in improving your English and working on your pronunciation, then why not check out the courses on www.englishlikeanative.co.uk. Until next time, take care and goodbye!