My kids are still little – 5, 3, and 1. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not consumers.
Every time we go to the grocery store or into the gift shop of a museum – let alone pass one of those vending machines that dispenses a bouncy ball or a “gold” ring with a plastic “gem” in exchange for a quarter – I am besieged by their requests for stuff.
“Can we get one of these, Mommy?” my boys will ask. And now my baby girl will even chime in with an occasional “I want” or “I take.”
T-riffic.
Until recently, I didn’t have a consistent method for handling their appeals, leading to an unwieldy arrangement in which I’d sometimes give in to a request for a Matchbox car (“It’s on sale for 79 cents,” I’d reason. “Why not?”) and sometimes refuse (“Why do you need another Matchbox car?” I’d ask. “You already have a dozen at home!”). But then we started giving our boys an allowance and the answer has become clear: you can buy it if you can afford it.
Before deciding on a system, I did some research to try to figure out how other parents handle this issue. And even though we’ve been doing allowance for a few months now, I still read with interest two recent posts at Motherlode on this very topic. In the first, KJ Dell’Antonia presents the dilemma of a mother who felt like “a constant ATM machine” for her 14-year-old and asks her readers two questions that commonly come up after you’ve decided to give an allowance and chosen whether or not to tie it to chores: “What’s an allowance for in your house, and at what ages did you give it?” In the second, she shares strategies offered by her readers, most of whom support a “system of allowing for both expenses and fun while helping a child budget for both.”
If you had asked me a few years ago if I thought it was appropriate to give an allowance to a 5-year-old and 3-year-old, I probably would have said no. But most of the advice I’ve read seems to agree that kids are ready for an allowance when they start to show an awareness of what money is worth. (To be honest – and as is the case with so many things for us – our 3-year-old wouldn’t have an allowance yet if it didn’t seem like it was the right time to start for our 5-year-old.)
In our house – and this goes against what some experts recommend – we do tie allowance to chores. Each of our boys does a few daily chores. At the end of the day, each gets a sticker for each chore he completed. At the end of the week, he gets 10 cents for each sticker, earning somewhere between $1-2 each week. Shouldn’t they be expected to do these chores without being compensated? Perhaps. But it made sense to us – largely because it seemed to make sense to them – to instill the idea that they need to earn the money they want to spend.
As for KJ’s question about what an allowance is for: for our boys, an allowance is for buying toys and treats. When we go to the grocery store, they can buy that Matchbox car if they have the money in their wallet. And when we go to the science museum, they can buy that astronaut set – but only if they’ve saved up for a few weeks. If they haven’t, then – I hope – they start to understand the value of saving.
Ideally, this fledgling allowance plan – one that will certainly grow and change as they and their needs do – will be an early lesson in the power of money. As KJ pointed out in her second post, an allowance is a tool for learning: the mistakes my kids and yours will undoubtedly make in managing their allowances are “as much a part of a strong financial education as the saving and spending. So whether an allowance is for movies or not, the one thing it should be for is for your child to make choices, even if they’re not the choices you would make.”
How do you deal with the question of allowances in your house?
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
I never received an allowance, but my husband did. He didn’t learn how to handle money well as a result of the allowance, so we’ve decided to not give allowances in our household. This sounds snarky (and I don’t mean it to be), but I’m not paid to do chores in our household. We do chores because we all live there, and that’s just what we do. On the flip side, no one gets money for free (at least, no one that we know!), so we wouldn’t just give an allowance, either.
That being said, since my children are quite a bit older than yours are now, they will do extra work outside the home for additional money. This was the same for me. I would go to my grandmother’s and take care of several large tasks she was no longer able to do. I was paid for it. It wasn’t required of me to do it (she would have paid someone else), but since I did, I got the money. We do the same now with our boys. Helping out friends, neighbors, or family members with special tasks can result in pay. My boys love shoveling snow on snow days, cleaning out cars, and helping with mowing/trimming/weeding/landscaping– and it results in cash.
I didn’t take it as snarky at all. I’m just really interested in learning what works for different families. And I totally hear you on the chore thing.
Can I ask you what you did when your kids asked for things when they were younger and didn’t have any way of making money on their own? Was there a system that worked well for you?
We had behavior charts at home, and one of the potential rewards was spending a pre-determined amount of money at a store. So, depending on how many checkmarks you had, you could choose the movie, you could pick a special snack, you could have a date with mom or dad, or you could pick out something small at the grocery store. That worked well. Larger items were to be saved for Christmas and birthday lists.
I will say this– we were lucky in that my firstborn never asked for much while we were out. My second son did, but I fixed that by allowing him to choose other things. So, the grocery store became about choosing the cereal, choosing the fruit, choosing the juice, choosing the pasta shape, etc. That helped immensely–becasue what he really wante3d was to model the act of shopping– but you have to be vigilant when it comes to the available ‘choices’!
Great insight, Sarah, about giving kids the chance to make choices from a limited set of things you need to buy anyway. I could definitely see that working with my younger son.
Thanks for the tip!
Our girls are largely indifferent to the idea of money right now, so we haven’t tackled the allowance issue.
I wasn’t sure on the allowance-for-chores idea or not (we do give stickers for completed chore charts), but my husband was pretty opposed to the idea, so I think when we DO give out allowances, it will simply be that – an allotment of money given to them to have for their own, just because. Once they are old enough to have jobs, even just baby-sitting or lawn-mowing, the allowance will stop, and they’ll be on their own with the money they are earning.
The system you’re thinking of was exactly the way it worked in my house growing up. We had a small allowance when we were little (older than my kids are now, I think) and then the allowance stopped when we were old enough to babysit, have a paper route, etc. I strongly believe that every family needs to figure out what works for them, but that system worked well for us back in the day.
We probably should, but we don’t.
My nine-year-old knows that money is tight in our household, so she does not ask for much when we are somewhere, and when she does, I typically respond that she should add it to her Christmas or birthday list. Recently she saw something she had been wanting at a store where she had credit from birthday gifts. I let her get it and told her she had to make up the difference with money from her piggy bank when we got home. I kind of regret doing that now, however.
I do think an allowance can be a good idea, and we will probably revisit it when our kid is a little older. If she did not get money for various things from her relatives (birthdays, some holidays, good grades, etc.), I probably would do it now as I think it is good for kids to learn how to manage money at a basic level and to try to figure out how important some “wants” are.
We are still on the fence. My husband feels that the kids should get compensation for chores done, and I don’t. Mainly, because then I have to remind them of said chores and be the Nazi Mommy, because if I don’t remind them they don’t do them, and then they cry when they don’t get compensation. You’d think this would be a learning experience, right? But no. We tried for a year and it was always the same drill.
I think the kids should just do what they’re asked because they are a member of this family, and we cook, clean and (fairly sufficiently) take care of them. Pull your weight, you know?
Having said that, ANY method that gets Mommy help around the house is awesome, paid or not.
My kids receive an allowance and it is tied into chores. It has worked out pretty well so far. It is not unusual for them to be asked to do things outside of their normal “chore schedule” and if they complain I remind them that we all live here together.
It has been effective for us.
I see nothing wrong with an allowance tied to chores (with two caveats), as it associates “work” with reward, and in our culture, that’s not a bad thing.
But here are my caveats:
- First, there cannot be inequitable assignment of chores for the money. (And that can get trickier than you think – especially for same sex kids close in age.) Notice I said equitable, not equal.
- The other caveat is a hypothetical for some and a reality for others. What happens if the allowance must stop, because of a change in circumstance in the household income? This was the case in our household; allowance simply disappeared for a number of years, and we went to an “as needed” (critically) basis which, I admit, is not great for teaching kids about money!
That brings me back to chores, and also allowance.
Kids do need to learn to manage money. Perhaps not at 3, but certainly (usually) by 5 or 6 or 7 and on up. There will be issues of “my friend gets $5 a week – why do I only get $1?” – and sooner than you think. But the lesson of “if you earn it, you can have it” – which is somewhat the lesson you’re instilling by tying chores to $$ – is invaluable.
As for the chores themselves, I do think it’s important to position them as part of being a responsible member of the family.
I don’t believe that there is only one right way to handle allowance and chores. My kids (15, 13, 9) get an allowance, but not much, and they are required to put some of it in their “funds” which is money they will donate to a cause of their choosing. They also do a sufficient amount of chores. The chores are not tied to the allowance. Mine are old enough to understand that they have to do their part. Yours may not be. The only reason I give them an allownace is because it helps them learn to make choices. (If you go to the movies tonight, then you won’t have money for that jacket you wanted).
It’s funny, but all three of my kids have been raised in the same manner in regards to money and they all three handle it differently. I have one who won’t spend any money at all, one who will only spend it in small doses, and one who has no trouble at all emptying his pockets. If there is a magic formula, I sure don’t know it.
Thanks, Shannon, for bringing up the issue of using an allowance to help teach kids about saving and about giving to others. I recently saw a piggy bank that had slots for “spend,” “save,” and “give.” I liked it immediately without giving much thought to it. This is another idea we’ll have to revisit as our kids get older and the amounts we’re dealing with are more substantial.
I often ponder on this issue for my kids. I didn’t get an allowance until I became a teenager, and it was more because my mom didn’t want to bother going with me to buy clothes, school supplies, etc, so she just gave me some money every month for me to spend on the essentials. I made extra money babysitting then doing other jobs. So I don’t know what to do with my kids yet. I do give them money out of the blue when they do something very nice I didn’t ask for, e.g. picking up leaves or pulling weeds in the garden. And they like the surprise. But they don’t really spend their money, they’re more hoarders. I do buy them little toys but they have to come from the $1 bin. My eldest has tried to give me money several times after the fact. I also have bank accounts set up for each of them and I put money in there every birthday and every Christmas, so they’ll have a nice amount of cash at some point. I guess I’m postponing the allowance thing because I don’t want them to think they’re entitled to it for living here, or just for doing chores. The day they ask for it, it might be a different story, but they’ll have to do more than what they do now to earn it. Good luck with your set-up, I hope it works for you!
Allowance in our house has been largely kid-driven: when they had a sense of money and stuff they wanted to buy with money, they began to earn an allowance (they get $1 for each year old they are once a month…which allows for a built-in “raise”). They either save it up for some big thing they want, or spend it haphazardly, or, most often, sit around counting it and changing it up for bigger bills (or down for smaller). There are also options for earning more through chores (one of my seven-year-olds will do the dishes for 75 cents; my eleven-year-old thinks that’s a rip-off; he also hates anything remotely related to cleaning); they also have chores they just have to do when I tell them to do them (no compensation) and I have one seven-year-old right now who’s big into splitting wood, setting up the fire, loading and unloading the car and doing other helpful things for no money and without being asked (keeping my fingers crossed this will last!). Also I (almost) never, ever buy them something at the store when they ask. They only get new stuff at birthdays and Christmas (because our house is already chock-a-block full of toys and clothes and other crap! Plus if they really really want it, they’ll remember and keep asking for it by the time the next holiday rolls around). The main value I’ve found with the allowance, other than keeping the “I want, I want, I want” noise to a minumum is developing math skills–fractions (quarters), decimals (dimes) counting by fives (nickels, $5 bills) and tens (dimes, dollars, $10s), etc. They start teaching pennies in first grade, by which time my kids have already changing money up to $20s and $50s.
I’m already seeing those fraction lessons in action over here. And my older son is also obsessed with changing in his coins for dollar bills. (It sticks in his craw, though, that a penny and a nickel are bigger than a dime and yet are worth less; I have to say, I see what he means.)
:)
You’re way more organized than we are. We give allowance haphazardly and give chores haphazardly. But I do know how excited my son was to buy his own set of Pokeymon cards with the money he earned from chores and pulling teeth out of his head.
Pulling teeth out of his head!? Trying to help the Tooth Fairy along a bit, was he? :)
We’ve struggled with this too, and whether or not we should pay for chores. In the end we decided not to pay for chores for the reasons the other posters cited. But we’re lucky in that we have another built-in system for allowance: my husband and I work from home and have a home office. So whatever our son does for our business, he gets paid for it like any of our other employees. He now does the shredding and cleans the bathroom. The only problem is that we have not been consistent at enforcing his job. He was excited about it at first, then once the novelty wore off he started whining that he didn’t feel like doing it…so what’s turned out as a money issue is now a work ethic issue! Though I suppose the 2 are always tied anyway.
Thanks for writing about this. It’s a wake up call! I really think that if we don’t teach good habits now it’s going to be a nightmare when they become adults…
Two things I remember my mother telling me:
1) There are bugs in those vending machines.
2) You can get it/do it when you’re 16.
My babies are too young for an allowance… but as a youngster (2nd-4th grade maybe??) I got $2/week and I don’t remember having to do anything for it. My older brother (by 6 years) received the enormous sum of $10. And like you, once we were able to babysit/deliver newspapers- allowance stopped. I’m not sure what we’ll do when our kids are old enough to understand the function of money.
I like the idea of having to save some of what we receive. My friend had to save half of birthday/holiday money and I think it ended up going towards college.
My kids do get an allowance…but I’m not really sure they’re learning anything. I struggle with this.