Not correct but easier

Vinny and Nutrax will doubtless answer in due course, but to me "pin money" is a comically antiquated term, dating back 60 years or so to the time when the majority of women didn't work outside the home. I'd be very surprised to hear an American woman under retirement age use the term.

I must admit I had never heard of 'pin money' until Nicolapicola mentioned it and I grew up in London.

Perhaps the lady charges a reasonable fee for walking your dog because she doesn't pay tax on that pin money?

I'm older than VinnyD or nutrax, and I probably last heard or read the term "pin money" when I was not yet old enough to vote.

It's possible that I've only seen or heard "pin money" in discussions like this, e.g. in articles about words for money.

I would have said the same thing about "mad money" (sort of like pin money, money that you don't care about spending foolishly because it came easily -- if I understand the term correctly) except for an incident c. 1967. (Which I have told here before, but only in one of my first posts on SiT, when Cornucopia, Evilproofer, DianaHaddad, and LaGrande were still around.)

I was approached by a panhandler in the Bronx who asked me, hesitating a bit to find the mot juste , "Hey bo, got any . . . mad money?" I had no money to give to panhandlers back then, but I was so startled and pleased by the obsolete idiom that I think I gave him fifty cents. WWALOMITD.

Another explanation of "mad money" was, back in the day when men paid for everything on a date, the money a woman carried in case she got mad and wanted to ditch the man, so she could take a taxi home.

Another phrase is "walking-around money," which also originated back in the sexist days when women got allowances from their menfolk. This was used for small personal shopping or going out to lunch with a friend. Today's more casual usage is more like the amount of actual cash one likes to carry for small items that don't go on the credit card.

I've only heard "walking-around money" in the context of cash payments to election day workers (poll watchers or get-out-the-vote door knockers) Which I have never got any of, although I've done a fair amount of election day work.

According ot a post in Phrase Finder:
>The Oxford English Dictionary defines "pin-money" as "an annual sum allotted to a woman for personal expenses in dress, etc.; esp. such an allowance settled upon a wife for her private expenditure."

"Pin money" was often specified in marriage settlements. A 1921 "treatise on the law of domestic relations" has a whole chapter on pin money.
>The wife's pin money constitutes a feature of English marriage settlements in modern times. Pin-money may be defined as a certain provision for the wife's dress and pocket, to which there is annexed the duty of expending it in her "personal apparel decoration or ornament."

I found a mid-19th C. court case where it was stated that the husband (in this case a Duke) could compel his wife to spend the money so her appearance was befitting her station and the husband could withhold the money if she wasn't using it as he wanted.

The earliest known mention dates to a 1542 will. "I give my said doughter Margarett my lease of the parsonadge of Kirkdall Churche.. to by her pynnes withal." The first mention of "pin=money" itself is 1674 "On difference between him and his lady about settlement of 200£. per annum,
pin-mony in case of separation."

Pins were scarce & expensive--in 1543, PArliament passed a law setting a celling on the price.

There is also "butter and egg money." This was money that a farmwife would get from selling butter, eggs, chickens etc. at a market. It might be used as household money, an emergency fund, or as the wife's own spending money--for a treat for herself or her children, for instance.

Teaching "How much is your pocket money" is particularly poor pedagogy, because "how much is" is generally used for asking prices, not incomes. It tends to confirm my view that English is often taught poorly in Spain. I have come across plenty of Spaniards whose English has idiosyncrasies that fail to go away despite them living here for an extended period, and thus obtaining no confirmation of their way of saying it, and repeated confirmation of something different. They must have been very thoroughly taught that idiosyncrasy at school.

When I was learning Latin, in a fairly early part of the textbook were translation exercises using the story of the Trojan Wars. Yes I know those are Greek rather than Latin, but that is what the textbook had; these were texts written by the textbook author, not taken from some classical work. However to compound the curious choice of subject matter, the textbook hadn't got to 3rd gp nouns yet, and thus felt they couldn't put Paris in, or anyone else whose name was 3rd gp. So they called Paris Alexander instead, which was his second name or something. A few others were likewise given alternative names. I thought this was Very Silly. Surely they could have done better than that.

Teaching "How much is your pocket money" is particularly poor pedagogy, because "how much is" is generally used for asking prices, not incomes

What about "How much is your present salary?" Same thing, surely. Not an uncommon question.

What about "How much is your present salary?" Same thing, surely. Not an uncommon question.

Nonsense.

In the first place, asking about salaries is not at all common in the English-speaking world. There's a very strong social taboo on the question.

In the second place, the idiomatic way someone would ask the question (in the unlikely event it needed to be asked...say by someone filling out a form in an HR department) is " What is your present salary?" "How much is your present salary" sounds like someone mentally translating from another language.