When my daughter Hannah turned four years old I decided to start giving her an allowance. I started with $2.00 each week, thinking it would be enough that she could save up a little and buy something she liked, but not enough to flood my home with cheap plastic crap. In retrospect, I don’t know what I was thinking. She discovered the toy section at Value Village in pretty short order, with its multitude of cheap toys, and within a couple of months my home was quickly filling up with her purchases. And while she very quickly cottoned on to the fact that she could buy stuff, she was still far too young to really understood how money worked.
The allowance ended up going on hiatus for a couple of years. When Hannah was six years old or so, we started up again. I’m thinking I’ll start giving Jacob an allowance once he’s around six years old, as well. The second time around, I decided to go with a monthly allowance, mostly because it’s easier for me. I don’t have to come up with exact change every week, and I can pay her in paper money, which also happens to be a lot lighter. Right now, she gets $15 each month. Sometimes I think that may even be a little bit more than is necessary, but since it’s established at this point I can’t very well go back.
As a seven-year-old, Hannah is actually starting to understand how money works. She’s also getting pretty good at understanding how much money is worth. She can figure out how much she has, and whether or not that’s enough to pay for something she wants. When it isn’t, she will save up her allowance until she can afford to buy the object of her desire. For example, she recently saved up for three months in order to buy herself a bear at Build-a-Bear. It was her first, because that is something that I am not willing to buy.
One recommendation that a lot of financial experts make around allowances is to set up a system of saving and spending for kids. The “three piggy bank” approach is especially popular. The idea is that your kids allowance is divided into three categories, usually spending, saving and sharing. The “spending” money is theirs to do with as they wish. The “saving” category is to save up for something special. The “sharing” is for charitable giving. In the process, you’re trying to instill good financial habits and generosity in your kids.
Personally, I have rejected the three piggy bank approach. For one thing, it’s more work for me, because it would mean that I need to make sure that I give the money in the exact amount for dividing. But for another, I think that the lesson around spending and saving is automatically built into an allowance. If Hannah spends all her money, it’s gone and she can’t afford something really big. To get that Build-a-Bear she needed to plan ahead. I kind of like the idea of teaching my kids to be generous, but there are other ways to do that, such as modeling it for them, or volunteering together.
In October I’ve gotten serious about getting my kids involved in keeping our house clean. They don’t have assigned chores yet per se, but I think I am headed in that direction. For now, I give them jobs that vary with the situation and my mood. Getting my kids to help makes my life easier. It also helps to teach them responsibility, and teaches them how to do basic household tasks. The idea is that by the time they leave my house, they’ll already know how to use the washing machine, how to vacuum and how to cook, for example.
I don’t tie my kids’ allowance and chores together. There’s a debate on this, and I come down on the side of separating money from housework. I believe family chores are something that we all need to do, because we all live together as a family. I don’t get paid for housework, and I’m not paying my kids for it. Plus, it’s not optional. They can’t opt out of helping set the table and just take a cut in pay. Mostly, though, I don’t want to have to police how much work they’ve done, and haven’t done, and how much money they’re owed as a result.
It’s important to me that my children develop good financial habits, and a healthy work ethic. I’m doing my best to teach them. Truthfully, though, I don’t know how well it’s going. Maybe one day I’ll regret not setting up the three piggy banks, or not requiring them to work for their money. Maybe one day I’ll wish I had been more stringent with chores and set up a jobs chart when they were still toddlers. I don’t know. For now, I’m just doing what makes sense to me, and doesn’t make my life too hard, and hoping that my kids are learning something. Honestly, I think that’s all that we can really do as parents most of the time.
Do you give your kids an allowance? Do your kids have regular chores? And do you tie allowance to chores? I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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Twitter: sadderbutwiser
says:
I am really bad at the whole thing, chore charts, allowance, etc. I’m ADD, as is my seven year old son. We are just terrible at the whole thing! He is pretty good at doing his assigned chores anymore, which are pretty simple and routine-make his bed, clean the litterbox, put the folded laundry away. His four year old sister on the other hand does things when she’s in the mood.
The allowance thing we have tried to tie into both chores and behavior. Now that I’m out of work it’s probably just as well to not have allowance at the moment! For now I’m satisfied with the fact that he does his chores every day with few reminders.
It’s always interesting in our house-I may never be a model mom, but I sure try to make things work!
The Sadder But Wiser Girl’s last post … Moronic Mommy and the Memories She Tries To Make
Twitter: AmberStrocel
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Truthfully, I’m not sure there’s any such thing as a model mom.
I still haven’t figured this out. I don’t have a problem paying my kids for chores, but I definitely see how it could be beneficial to separate the two. I haven’t actually given my daughter an allowance in some time, because we both just forget. I think she’s a little young, and also we buy her things too often. I don’t have the time or energy to try to enforce a chore chart. I think the best way to get kids involved in house cleaning is something I learned in a Waldorf group I was once in, and that’s the modeling of joyful housekeeping from a very young age. Easier said than done, though! I get soooo tired of dishes and laundry sometimes, and it’s frequently much easier if I just do the work quickly by myself. Also, the thought of three piggy banks per kid gives me a headache. Both of my girls have a little money pouch for spending, and then Suzi has a jar on her desk for any money she wants to save–but it goes mostly unused.
Jenny’s last post … A most untimely upset stomach
Twitter: AlyMcF
says:
My 7 year old gets $5 a week every Friday. We started when she was 5 ( I think) with $3 a week. That money is not tied to chores.
She also gets a $1 for folding a basket of towel laundry and putting it away. She does a better job of it than me! We started this last year when I had tendonitis in my foot. She started doing it for free to help me out, but when I was better, I was willing to give her an incentive to continue helping me out in that area. I’ve also paid her for leaf raking.
I agree with your reasons for rejecting the 3 category system. I mentioned the idea to her once but it didn’t hold appeal for her, and I knew that forcing her to do it would do nothing but create resistance. She picks food from our garden and comes with me to donate it to the food bank, which helps her understand the idea of generosity, at least somewhat.
Twitter: AmberStrocel
says:
I have heard of some people who have a certain base level of chore expectations, and then extra work that their kids can choose to do and be paid for. I kind of like the idea of being able to offload certain jobs, but the truth is that I’d have to have cash on hand, which I usually don’t.
Twitter: thejaninefowler
says:
$15 sounds like so much! But I guess I need to remember inflation.
One of the biggest revelations growing up was how much things really cost (to an adult) versus how much they cost from my child perspective. So many things that were “too expensive” were actually just not necessary or not worth their (low) price. I respect my parents for not spoiling me with stuff. I got everything I REALLY wanted, either for holidays or by saving. I got an American Girl doll because my grandma matched me on the price – At 9-10 years old I still had to save $40, and I wasn’t getting $15/month. 
I like not having the money directly tied to chores, and I like the idea of just doing what needs to be done. There was definitely too much “What’s in it for me” attitude happening in my house growing up. I do like the idea of earning extra money by taking on *extra*, like cleaning out the fridge or mowing the lawn. But cleaning your room and doing your dishes are just part of life!
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Twitter: AmberStrocel
says:
Like I said, if I could I might make it more like $10 per month, but dropping it down doesn’t feel totally fair to Hannah. That said, the going rate is often quoted as $1 / week / year of age, which would put her at closer to $30 / month. That would definitely be too much, in my book.
Mckenzi is now almost 18! When she was 6 we washed out three jam jars and labled each of them – saving, spending and charity. We then gave her an allowance every 2 weeks (like our pay days) and it was in change. It didn’t matter to us how she divided up her money into the three jars, the only rule being, some money had to go into each jar. It ended up balancing out in the end. What worked for us was that Mckenzi could watch her savings grow in her savings jar while she still had some spending money to carry around. When it came to the charity jar we used it many ways – Buying groceries and donating it in the stores food bank box was popular as was taking her change to church with her for the collection plate.
We are doing the same thing with the little girls too. In fact, we just washed out the three jars for them to decorate this week. How they choose to divide up their money will be up to them. And like yourself, we don’t pay our children to do chorse around the house. We live there as a family and we take care of it as a family. And it’s so nice to have some helping hands now that the girls are a little older.
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