Does giving children expensive things spoil them?

Research on affluent families suggests the spend itself isn't the main risk. Studies by psychologist Suniya Luthar found that the factors linked to problems in well-off children were excessive achievement pressure, emotional distance from parents, and lax limit-setting - not the price of what they were given. How a gift is framed matters more than what it costs.

Should I pay for an expensive school trip?

Ask three questions: can you afford it without strain, is it a genuine experience rather than a status purchase, and can your child contribute something towards it - money, effort or both? If the answer to all three is yes, the trip is more likely to build perspective than entitlement.

How do I stop my child taking expensive things for granted?

Make the cost visible, require a contribution where possible, and build gratitude into the routine. A study of over 900 adolescents found that a simple two-week gratitude journal measurably reduced materialism - teenagers who kept one donated 60% more of money they were given than those who didn't.

The £3,000 school trip: when does generosity become spoiling? (part 1)

11 June 2026 Darren Savery

The letter arrived from my son’s school last month. An opportunity to join a trip to China next year. Properly exciting stuff - the kind of trip I’d never have been offered at his age. Then the price: over £3,000.

My first reaction wasn’t “can we afford it?” It was a different, more uncomfortable question: what does it teach him if we just say yes?

Because here’s the context. My son already takes multiple holidays a year, split between his mum’s house and mine. Some of those flights have been in business class. If I sign the form without a second thought, I’m not just paying for a trip. I’m quietly confirming that £3,000 experiences are a normal feature of life - something that arrives by letter and gets approved, like a permission slip for the cinema.

The fear every comfortable parent has

If you’re in a position to say yes to things like this, you’ve probably felt the same tension. You worked for this. You want to give your kids opportunities you never had - that’s half the point of the working. But somewhere in the back of your mind is the spectre of the entitled adult: the one whose baseline expectations were set so high in childhood that ordinary adult life feels like a downgrade, and whose drive to earn things for themselves never developed because everything simply appeared.

So which is it? Is the trip a gift or a trap?

What the research actually says (it’s not what I expected)

I went looking for evidence that expensive treats produce entitled kids. That’s not quite what I found.

Psychologist Suniya Luthar has spent decades studying children in affluent families, and the findings are genuinely sobering: her studies found elevated rates of depression, anxiety and substance use among well-off adolescents - in some samples worse than children growing up in poverty. But the cause wasn’t the money being spent on them. Two factors kept showing up: excessive pressure to achieve and isolation from parents. In a later study across three separate samples, one of the biggest vulnerability factors was lax parental limit-setting - parents who discovered problems and imposed no real consequences.

Read that again, because it reframes the whole question. The risk to comfortable kids isn’t the £3,000 trip. It’s a £3,000 trip that arrives with no visible cost, no limits around it, and no parent close enough to talk about what it means.

The habits piece matters too. Research from Cambridge University for the UK’s Money Advice Service (now the Money and Pensions Service) found that core money behaviours - planning ahead, delaying gratification, understanding that choices close off other choices - begin taking shape by around age seven, then keep developing right through adolescence. My son is 14. The foundations were poured years ago, but the building is very much still going up - and at this age, every spending decision I make in front of him is the lesson, whether I intended one or not.

Why an experience beats the equivalent in stuff

There’s one more finding that tipped my thinking. A long-running body of research by Thomas Gilovich and colleagues at Cornell shows that experiences deliver more lasting satisfaction than material purchases - partly because experiences become part of who we are, and partly because they invite fewer corrosive comparisons. Nobody stands in the playground comparing whose cultural exchange was better; they do compare trainers.

So if I’m going to deploy £3,000 on my son, a trip that stretches him - different country, different language, away from both parents - is close to the best-value category of spend available. The same money on things would be far more likely to feed the comparison machine.

The bit I have to be honest about

Here’s where I have to mark my own homework. I was worried one school trip would make £3,000 feel “normal” to him. But the truth is, the business-class flights and multiple holidays have already done far more to set his baseline than this trip ever could. One decision doesn’t normalise a lifestyle - the lifestyle does. If I want him to understand that this stuff isn’t ordinary, the trip isn’t the place where that battle is won or lost. It’s everything around it.

Which means the useful question isn’t “should I pay?” It’s “how do I pay?”

How we’re doing it

He sees the number. Not a vague “it’s expensive” - the actual figure, and what else £3,000 represents. Several months of groceries. A meaningful slice of a first car. The point isn’t guilt. It’s that money he can’t see is money he can’t learn from.

He makes the case. This is the heart of it. We haven’t said yes - we’ve told him that if he wants to go, he needs to come back to us with a proposal in real terms. What will he contribute from his own money? What work is he prepared to do between now and departure? Why this trip, specifically, and not just “because it’s a trip”? He has no other leverage here, and that’s deliberate. A 14-year-old who can build and argue a case for £3,000 is doing something far more valuable than anything he’ll do at the destination.

Gratitude gets built in, deliberately. This sounds soft until you see the data. A study of over 900 adolescents published in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that teenagers with a grateful disposition were measurably less materialistic - and that a simple intervention, keeping a gratitude journal for two weeks, reduced materialism enough that those teens donated 60% more of money they’d been given than a control group. Two weeks. A notebook. That’s the cheapest entitlement insurance on the market.

And the limits stay real. This is the Luthar finding I can’t shake: the protective factors for comfortable kids are closeness to parents and limits that actually hold. A yes that has to be earned - and a no to the next three asks that actually sticks - does more than agonising over any single purchase ever will.

So where did we land?

We haven’t, yet - and that’s the point. The form isn’t signed. Right now we’re waiting on him to come back with a proposal in real terms, to show us how much he actually wants to go. Maybe he builds a proper case and earns himself a trip to China. Maybe the effort of making the case turns out to be more than the wanting, and that tells us something too.

Either way, the line between generosity and spoiling isn’t drawn at a price point. It’s drawn at visibility, contribution and limits. Get those three right and you can say yes to extraordinary things without raising a child who expects them.

Darren Savery is the founder of Morechard, a family finance app that connects children’s effort to their rewards. More at morechard.com/about.