Jacinda Ardern had to buy own food, clothes with pocket money

  • 28/08/2018

She might be in charge of New Zealand's Budget, but Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern learned her budgeting skills the hard way.

Prompted by new survey from The Financial Planning Association of Australia showing children are earning up to AU$40 a week for pocket money, The AM Show host Duncan Garner asked Ms Ardern about her childhood experiences.

Growing up, Ms Ardern says her mother had a "very regimented" attitude towards pocket money, and made her daughter buy her own food and clothing.

"She wanted to teach us how to budget quite early on and so our pocket money had to pay for everything. Birthday presents, school lunches," she told The AM Show on Tuesday.

"I think we got $10 a week from memory. We had to even buy our shampoo and our conditioner and clothes.

"So she would give us them in little $2 coins and we would have little bags and we would have to allocate them and save up to buy birthday presents and things like that."

Ms Ardern says the experience gave her the skills she now uses to run the country.

"Now I run the books, it's probably quite a helpful lesson... our budgets are in great shape," she laughs.

Newshub.