Apr 28 2008
When Do You Start Giving Your Child An Allowance?
Read a great article this weekend in “The Orlando Sentinel” about allowances for children. Here’s some of the advice the author gives about how much to give your kids:
Beginning around the ages of 5 to 7, give 50 cents for each year old the child is.
At age 10, give $1 per years old.
Ouch, that second one could get costly for parents. A 14-year-old will get $56 a month. With the rising cost of gas and food, $56 would be a substantial chunk out of the family budget. I remember when I was in about the eighth grade, I got $5 a week. And, I was happy for it. A classmate of mine got $10! Her parents were rich. I remember dreaming of what I would do with $10 a week.
Since my son is only two, I don’t have to deal with this issue for a few more years. Gives me time to decide how much, and for what, I’ll give him.
The article goes on to talk about giving your kids money as a tool, to learn from and to teach proper work ethic. Read the full article here.
Just stopping by and thought I would share my thoughts
Allowance seems to be a touchy issue with many parents and most people think my husband and I are crazy but since our daughter was 5 she has been expected to do certain chores and at the end of the week she receives her allowance by age.
So, at 5 she got $5 a week and at 6 - $6 and now that she is 8 she gets $8 a week. I know it seems like allot but we make her buy anything and everything she wants (excluding necessities, of course) so it actually saves us money monthly and our daughter knows the importance of a dollar. She has also gotten very good at saving her money.
We have some friends who don’t believe in allowance but I promise you they spend at least $100, probably more a month on things (toys, candy, etc.) that their two children want. If they gave allowance and made them earn the money then the children would understand money better, respect it more as well as the things they have and the parents would save some money.
Anyway, that’s my thoughts on it. Have a great day!
Our biggest problem was not only negotiating an amount, but sticking to it and making sure we paid our daughters timely. We just started using Zefty (http://www.zefty.com) for tracking/managing our daughters’ allowances and it has a nice calculator for estimating what you should pay — it’s based on household income, child’s age and the level of difficulty of their chores.
Thanks for the posts … great tips! I especially like the idea of having the child have to use her allowance to buy non-necessities. Certainly would help teach the value of a dollar.
And, I’ll have to try out zefty. Thanks for the link.