What we do is give them coins, which are just some cheap plastic coins painted gold we got at a dollar store somewhere. They have a list of chores, each worth so many coins. At the end of the week they can trade in the coins for either a) $.25 a coin, or b) stuff out of the prize box. As your kids are a bit older you might just want to go the money route. It is pretty easy to figure out how much a job is "worth" and how many coins to attach to it with practice. After they do the job (washing dishes, cleaning up the bathroom, etc) they have to have it checked, and if it good I give them the coins. They keep themselves to redeem earlier. If they get lazy to do have as many coins as their siblings. If they want to do extra work it is pretty easy to come up with more stuff. If they want something special often the ask for more chores so they can get more coins.

We give an allowance that isn’t correlated with chores around the house. It is simply our gift to them so that they learn to manage money. My thought is that every member of the family needs to do their part of the workload--non-negotiable. We give our 5-year-old $1 in dimes each week so that he can easily split his money up into giving, savings, and spending.

On the other hand I can see the benefits of an effort-based allowance. As I was growing up, my dad gave my sister and I an “allowance” of sorts based on the family electric bill. Anytime the monthly bill was under $100, we would split the difference. It really encouraged us to turn the lights off when we left the room and to think about what we wanted to snack on before we even opened the refrigerator door.

I think both of the ideas stated above are great! For our family, we do not want our children to grow up with the mind set that they are owed something for everything they do. Then they can become "self "focused instead of "others" focused. We teach them about serving others and that everyone is a team member. We have given allowance in the past, but it seemed when asked to do something extra, they kind of developed the attitude of "are you gonna pay me?"

So what we do is set daily chores for each child appropriate for each age. They do these with no pay. However, as a surprise, they receive a blessing from time to time for being obedient and having a happy attitude about serving others. We may give them cash, take them to a movie or bowling. We give them something they will enjoy. If we give them money, we try and guide them in how that money should be spent wisely or if it should be saved. They seem to appreciate things more and are more careful in their spending this way.

A good way to start is small....Teaching them to handle a little while teach them how to handle a lot!

For example, if you were to start them out at $20 a week, they could easily fulfill some instant gratification impulses with that much money. But if you start them out with $5 a week, it will teach them that they have to be patient and save for their desires. If they have things that they want....teach them how to save towards them.

Give them their allowance in one dollar bills and help them to create a simple budgeting system. Ask them how they want to use their money, decide on maybe three uses....also a good time to encourage the practice of helping others. When they have decided maybe three good uses help them label three containers (jar's, boxes, envelopes) An example might be: "WiI Game", "Pocket Money", "Church/Charity".
Then each week they can distribute the $ amongst their causes and watch it grow.

Allowance is tricky. Do you hand out money to your kids or make them work for it?

If they have to work for it, then what does that say about our responsibilities as family members? It seems like a slippery slope to this conversation:

Mom: Please set the table Billy.
Billy: How much will you pay me?

One of the benefits of allowance is to teach kids the value of money and how to budget and save.

Not that I've seen my 3 boys, ages 5-11 demonstrate any saving or budgeting, and now that I mention it, I'm not sure they are learning the value of money either, since they seem to blow their allowance on the nearest piece of junk the minute it falls into their hands.

One nice thing about allowance is it gives me an easy answer when begging starts up. If my kids want something, they can buy it themselves by using their allowance or saving.

With that said, here's what we do in our home:

Kids are given a small allowance based on their age. I did a little survey among my friends and have found that my kids allowance is indeed SMALL. My 11 year old gets $3 a week.

However, we provide opportunities to earn more money by doing extra jobs. These jobs are only offered when the child has completed their regular chores.

I've also offered to pay $1 interest to any kid that can save at least $10. I have yet to pay out.

With our brood of nine we have done a few different things with "allowance" but these are 2 things that proved consistently effective:

1. Pocket money-- They get a certain amount of pocket money a week and ANY extras they want must come out of their pocket money (ie a pack of gum while standing in line at the grocery to that new game they have their eye on). The benefits have been 3 fold-- in the long run, it saves us a lot of money because they do not nickel and dime us with requests, they learn to fight impulse buying, they learn about saving and the real value of money.

2. At different developmental stages this has worked great with discipline-- having a chart on the fridge and for misbehaviors they get a mark or a strike. When it comes pay day, they have to pay a certain amount back for any accumulated strikes out of their pocket money.

Good Luck!
Becky

www.beckoningbalance.blogspot.com
www.momsthatrock.com (go to this website and listen to Anna's song that is playing when you enter anytime you need a Calgon-take-me-away moment)

Our son was given a small allowance starting of a couple dollars weekly starting at about age 10. We taught him that there are things within the household that we all participate in such as eating, which generates dirty dishes, garbage, and clean dishes that have to be put away. Living in the mountains, firewood is an important necessity to keep everybody in the house warm through the winter. These were everybody's shared responsibilities that keep the flow of life going within the household. And then there are things like pine needles and leaves that fall off trees and need raking, grass that grows and needs mowing (when he was at a safe age to do so) and there is always little things that dad or mom could use a hand with either inside or out. These things would generate an allowance for the help contributed.

This taught him responsibility, some discipline and time management skills, and enabled him to appreciate the value of the dollar and the importance to save. My wife and I have been self employed throughout his raising, so when we needed his help with the business, then the pay would go from a simple allowance amount, to more of an hourly rate. We were lucky to have this at our disposal as it taught him further the values and commitment needed to do a good job and be mindful of his tasks when you are working for someone else.

At 16 years old he had saved $5000.00 dollars from not only allowance and working with us, but also from the various part time jobs and paid help he did in his off time from school through the years. He bought his own truck with his own savings at 17 years old! And now just days after graduating high school has gone full time in his job which was part time while in school, making a generously healthy wage. He also went through extracurricular classes and training while in high school and is now certified with the Alaska Division of Forestry as a line crew firefighter. Starting out with a simple allowance and moving forward with responsibilities from there played a huge roll in his success!

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