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Monday, August 2, 2010

Allowances

Did you get an allowance when you were younger? How much did you get? Do you have kids? Do your kids get an allowance? How old were your Kids when you started giving them an allowance? How much do you pay? Are you tired of my questions yet?

I never got an allowance when I was a kid. If I worked, I got paid. My Dad believed that I wouldn't learn the value of money if it was just handed to me and I didn't have to work for it. You know what? I'm okay with that.

I plan to use the same basic idea for the Kiddo. He'll have a list of chores. If they get done, then he'll get paid.

The point of my post is this: How young is too young to start paying my Kiddo?

The Kiddo already helps me out around the house. He always helps me empty and load the washer and dryer. He helps fold towels all the time and he helps change the trash bag. I'm considering starting to pay him a bit.

Obviously I don't plan on paying him like ten bucks a week or anything but something. It would be a good way for him to start saving a bit and he would be all excited to get money for his bank.

So, remember all those questions from the beginning? They belong here too. Thoughts?

2 comments:

Kendra said...

I had an allowance starting when I was probably 7 or 8. And it wasn't very much. And I always had to do all my chores or I wouldn't get any of the allowance. So always the incentive. And then once high school came allowances got bigger but once I got a job the allowance went away. Hope that helps!

Bill Dwight of FamZoo said...

I can't really recall whether I got a formal allowance or not. We have 5 kids (maybe that's why I can't recall my own childhood very well :-)
All of our kids get an allowance as a way to learn personal finance basics before they hit the real world. We started our youngest around 7. Before that, he collected random change around the house/car and would occasionally get paid spare change for helping out with little odd jobs (like the ones you mentioned for Kiddo). The 8 year old gets 2/3rds his age split 60/20/20 between spending/saving/giving. The older ones get a couple different allowances based on budgets for certain kinds of spending like clothing & entertainment. The point is to put them in charge of spending decisions so they learn to make trade-offs and manage their spending intelligently. They're all expected to do chores, and when they don't, we debit money from their accounts. That way, we only have to do something when they don't perform and we minimize the parental hassle of tracking chores. The 3 older teens all have summer jobs (luckily!). We use our online "virtual banking" system to simplify managing it all before we turn them loose on real bank accounts which we do the summer before they go off two college (we have one in college and another on the way this month).