the point of an allowance is just to get the kid used to managing money. Chores are a separate thing–you do your chores and you have to do them, but it isn’t tied to your allowance
Thanks. That’s almost exactly my stand on this one. I changed some verb tenses.
Give the kid an allowance in order to get them used to managing money and in order to get them to keep track of cash.
Give the kids chores in order to get them used to the idea that everyone pulls their share of the frieght.
Two different uncoupled ideas.
(btw 10 year olds can do a lot! fold laundry, clear/clean dishes, minor yard work, light cleaning. take out trash, Help you with larger projects…)
My daughter is only 11 months old now, but I plan on giving her a flat allowance every week just so I have an excuse not to buy her stuff every time she asks. “You want that candy? You’ll have to buy it yourself. Already spent all your allowance? Then you can’t have the candy, can you?” I suppose it may teach her something about managing money, too.
Another idea I got from friends of the family is that if we’re out to eat at a sit-down restaurant (as opposed to fast food) and they want something unhealthy to drink (soda, coffee, beer, etc.) they have to buy it themselves with their own money.
Chores are just part of living in our household. I do them, my wife does them, my daughter will do them. Heck, I’d make the cat do them if he had thumbs.
For our family (as it was for both my wife and I growing up), doing “chores” is a given - - it’s part of living in a family. There is no promise or expectation of payment of any type for helping to maintain the house. We will make it an issue if our children don’t do their part or forget to do what we asked them to do, but that “punishment” is something entirely unrelated to the allowance.
We started an allowance for our oldest last year. It’s a flat amount each week ($5), regardless. For us, the point is to teach her how to manage money. Rarely, if she does something way out of line, we will withhold it for a week or 2.
I don’t really have any particular goals in mind. She already has all the money management skills you’d expect of a 10 year old (she knows how to save, and the reasons for it. We made her pay to replace her recorder when she broke hers because she was careless with it, yadda, yadda).
I understand the reasons not to tie allowance to chores, but at that point you’re also basically giving the kid free money, which doesn’t seem like a great introduction to finance.
Side responses to other points:
Her school does everything possible to discourage paying for lunches with cash (every student has an “account” parents fun, and then their ID gets scanned at the lunch line and they never exchange money). So it’s not really possible to give her money and make her pay for lunch.
Ideas for punishments? If chores aren’t tied to allowance, then there needs to be some consequence to not having done the chores.
Allowance is supposed to be free money, AFAIK, just like the money I get from my better employed wife has no strings attached. It is discretionary money (at a low level) and is a good way to learn spending and saving. Even if she knows it intellectually, it’s good to have practice. On the road to adulthood, a lot of the lessons will require some out of pocket expense.
I’m in favor of the free allowance and no reward for chores. Household work is something that people do to pitch in and help the household, not earn money. Penalties should be attached, but I’m not in favor of rewards beyond pats on the back for doing what a good child should do anyway.
I understand the reasons not to tie allowance to chores, but at that point you’re also basically giving the kid free money, which doesn’t seem like a great introduction to finance.
Feh. It’s money based on rank favoritism instead of job performance. Sure, job performance gets lip service, but as long as you kiss up and are viewed favorably by Management, the paychecks keep coming.
That’s an extremely important financial lesson, and will prepare her for real employment later on far better than actually tying allowance to chore-performance ever will.
She’s ten. Do what you think is right, but in my opinion there’s probably enough harsh stuff looming in her future that I wouldn’t worry about making her earn every penny of it. I’m only speaking from my experience on the kid side of things, but if you really want to start teaching her about the linkage between work and reward, I’d give her spot bonuses for extraordinary achievements, like good grades, no caveties at her dentist’s visit, doing extra projects/chores, etc.
When we tried the set allowance (with extra for certain irregular chores), no chores got done. Different kids respond to different things, there is no one perfect way.
Our kids (all boys 8, 7 & 5) have a chart on the wall and every day they are “peaceful” and “clean” they get two check marks. If they blow one they only get one check. At the end of the week each check is worth 50 cents. They still have regular chores to do (trash, take the dog out, put clean laundry away, etc). I didn’t want to word things like “If you don’t screw up you’ll get paid.” So we talked with them about these two character qualites we wanted to see in them. Even at their ages they have a pretty good idea of what constitutes peaceful and clean.
I’m not sure of the whole “allowance as money-management tool” idea. I never had an allowance growing up, but manage money better than friends who did.
My kids don’t get an allowance yet (I’m still thinking about–they’re a bit young, at 4 & 7), but they’re expected to do chores as part of living in the house, mostly keeping their stuff cleaned up. My rule is simple–I’ll help them clean up (mostly getting them started), but if I have to clean up on my own, what I clean up is mine–it goes to my bedroom, not theirs, and I dictate who plays with it. I’ve only ever had to invoke the rule twice, once for each kid, and it’s really gotten them used to the idea that it’s important to do your part–they volunteer to clean up their plates after dinner, for instance, and they have “helped” me to shovel snow, although I’d just as soon they played in it instead :D .
If I do give them allowance, it’ll be disconnected from chores–chores are just a given, and in any case are too variable–what if they just think that it’s not worth $2 to help me shovel the walkway or whatever? (Plus, one son is so anti-materialistic, he insisted on having a non-presents birthday party–tying chores to allowance would be a guarantee of no chores getting done)
One other advantage to a non-allowance system that I haven’t seen discussed is that you as a parent have more say over what gets bought. Some kids have the attitude that you can’t dictate what they do with their allowance–it’s their money, after all. I’m still on the fence on this one.
That’s how it worked for me. Money was never tied to chores. If dad said “vaccum the floor”, we (my sister and I) grumbled a bit, then vaccumed the floor. If mom said “mop the floor”, we grumbled a bit, then filled up a bucket and mopped the floor. I don’t know what would have happened if we didn’t do them. It never occurred to us not to do what our parents asked us to. I mean, they cooked for us and went to work. Why wouldn’t we do what they asked us to? I dunno. Maybe we were just the freak kids that every parent wishes they had.
I would get $10 at the beginning of the week. My school lunches ($1.50 a day) would come out of that too, and I could do anything I wanted with what was left over.
That’s the only money I ever got. My mom used to always complain how stingy dad was, so I was always hesitant to ever ask him for more money. If I wanted to buy a computer game, I had to skip lunches every now and then to save up. I credit that with the reason why I was 6’1" and wrestled at 125lbs my senior year of highschool. (I’m now 165lb).
He used to always admonish us (my sister and me) not to make the same mistakes he did. “Save early. Put as much money as you can into your retirement fund as soon as you can. Don’t be stupid like me.” Other gems included “The way to get rich is to live beneath your means.” and also “Don’t trust anyone. The only person you can trust is yourself.”
I think what probably helped me form my money management skills early on was this C-64 game called “Billionaire” that put you in charge of a small portfolio of stocks (There were like a dozen or so to choose from). Weekly press releases would influence a the stock price. As you grew your net-worth (i.e.-leveled), you gained the ability to buy on margin, then purchase call options, and then purchase put options.
That game, especially the ability to buy on margin, taught me the risks of buying things on credit. I learned early on NEVER to buy on credit because the risk of default was too high. Call options were where the big money was at. :-)
Just don’t get mad at your kid if he blows his/her entire bank balance the first year away from home.
My dad gave both my sister and I the once-a-lifetime $10,000 gift that you can give your kids in the USA. I turned my $10,000 into $15,000 over a period of 4 years. My sister blew it her first year in college on cellphone calls and credit card charges.
You see, she had the $10,000, but not the financial knowledge and spending habits to keep it. By the time she was highschool age, my mom wasn’t living with us anymore, and my sister was never shy to ask my dad for the money that he, out of guilt, was never shy to give it. She never had to learn the good spending habits that I did.
Yeah, anecdotally, I don’t know anyone who would have refrained from pissing away a post-HS account like that. Although I guess if that’s the intention, great - “have fun with this.” But no way will it be used as an investment account.
Are you sure it’s once-a-lifetime? Because if it is, I think I know someone’s dad who is doing some fancy footwork. Of course, it’s not like I’ve seen the paperwork, so who knows.
When I was growing up, I participated in the family budget. All sorts of purchases would be discussed in my presence. If I wanted something, I’d think about it, and then ask; my requests were never denied.
90% of the time:
Having to do them at the same time I find out they’re not done - regardless of what may be going on otherwise - - dinner, a fun TV show, a game, reading a book, etc. Depending on how late it is, even if they’re sleeping. The point we try to make is that there is no escaping it.
Otherwise:
Demonstrating severe disappointment and generating guilt through expressing righteous indignation for all we do for them (this works for 1 of our children, not so much the other).
We usually save the “No TV” , “No computer”, “House arrest” -type punishments for bad behavior.
“Don’t use credit” is a reallllllly bad lesson to learn. There are lots of times when borrowing is a good idea. As an example, if that C64 game made buying on margin a bad idea, it was a pretty inaccurate simulator.
Learning to manage credit well is a better idea than teaching people never to borrow. People who never borrow get raped when they want to buy a house or car when they are 28 and have no credit history.
Discover(I think, it might be someone else) reports authorized users to the credit bureaus, it’s a good idea to authorize a child early.
