About 70% of households provide their children with an allowance – and it is one of those things that a lot of people have an opinion on. Allowances are powerful things – it is your child’s first exposure to finances and it is for that very reason that a lot of people fear the idea of an allowance. To some, it is the way to teach your children about financial literacy and character traits like patience, thriftiness and generosity. To others, allowances lead to dangerous things like stripping parental power, authority and teach nothing but greed.
I think it is important to expose children to money at a young age. I like the idea of linking work and money together and therefore I pay my children for certain odd jobs around the house that they complete. There are certain chores that are required that I do not pay them for, but others I will such as helping me weed the garden, dusting, sweeping the porch etc. The chores that I do not pay them for are ones like cleaning their rooms, feeding the cat, cleaning off the dinner table – all of these things are expected contributions around the house. For the odd jobs, every week I give my kids a couple of different options of jobs around the house and they pick what they want to do to earn their money. This week, my 5 year old Mackenzie pulled out the weeds in the my garden and Kylie, who is 3, wiped down and cleaned all of the doors and door handles in our house. I pay them according to their age, so $5 and $3 each week respectively. They put their money into their piggy banks and when it reaches a certain amount, we deposit it into their bank accounts. When we go to the store, I will ask them if they want to bring some of their money with them to buy something that they want. For example, I was at Walmart yesterday and they each brought with them $3. They chose to spend money on play doh, each of them buying a new container of play doh for .50 cents each, and taking the rest of the money home with them to redeposit in their piggy banks.
For the other chores that I have my children do around the house, I implement chore charts. Each of my daughters have a chore chart with their responsibilities of what they need to do each day during the week. Every Saturday night I go over with them what is on their chart – at the moment it hasn’t changed because I want them to remember what they need to do. The charts are solely for the purposes of reminding them whether or not they did their night’s chores, without me having to tell them. Once they are done, I sign the box. Again, no monetary rewards are given for these tasks. Here is a look at the charts we are using for this week:
The printable I have I got from www.freeprintablebehavioralcharts.com and I have them posted on my fridge for easy access.
So there is a look into how I handle allowances in my home. I’d love to know – how do you handle them in yours?
