Chores, allowance, spending money?

Discussion in 'Childhood and Beyond (4+)' started by Nancy C, Jan 8, 2011.

  1. Nancy C

    Nancy C Well-Known Member

    I am trying to figure out the best way to deal with $ for our kids.

    * I want them to have certain chores they do as part of the family (not paid)
    * I want them to learn about saving, making choices about what to buy and valuing $
    * I think I want them to have a method of earing more money (extra chores?)

    So how does it work in your house?
    If you don't give an allowance, do they get any toys during the year (no birthday, holiday time)? My almost 6 year old wants another Leapster game, trying to figure out how to have him earn it.

    Thanks for any advice.
     
  2. r-twins

    r-twins Well-Known Member

    Our twins just turned 6 and this is what we've started. It sounds a little complicated, but it's not bad and it doesn't break my wallet! (Of course, you can adjust the amounts to whatever you want.)

    They earn $1 a week. I break it down into nickles. They can earn 3 nickels a day for doing extra chores. I thought giving them a nickel each time they do one would be fun for them instead of just giving them a $1 bill at the end of the week. After 6 days of chores if they have earned all their nickles (90 cents) then they get a 10 cent bonus to make it an even dollar. We have them save it in a piggy bank. We are teaching them to pay tithing to our church, too so they do that every month. It's a work in progress so I haven't figured out what we'll do for saving and spending yet.

    Sometimes the chores are just little jobs that pop up that I need them to do. Sometimes they don't earn every nickel one day so I will let them do an extra chore the next day to catch up. I know it would take a long time to save for a Leapster game this way, but you can do higher amounts or special bonuses for big jobs, or just let him spend some and you make up the rest.

    We talk about money a lot and how we need to earn money to pay for everything we have. They know that Daddy works for money so we have food, shelter, clothes, toys, etc. They ask for "stuff" at the store all the time and I tell them "no, we don't have the money for that". So I think they understand the concept, although I'm not sure they understand the value yet.

    Hope this gives you some ideas for your kids!
     
  3. MarchI

    MarchI Well-Known Member

    We've had the same system for the last year. The oldest gets $1 for being part of the family and helping out with his brothers/dinner/other things, basic things we expect him to do or he volunteers to do like feed the dog, take out the garbage, set the table. He then has a list of things we'd like him to do (and he does) like clean his room and do his laundry/put it away. He gets $2 extra for those things. We also offer him opportunities to earn extra money (clean the basement, clean the family room) but each opportunity is optional and we don't punish him if he says no. He gets paid one time a week, not per cleaning. We've had no issue with him asking for money to do things (he doesn't have the attitude he should be paid for everything). What we do is when we go to target and he sees something he wants, we tell him he has to save his money for it. Most of the lego sets he owns, he has saved for and bought. In the beginning to encourage him, we offered that if he saved 1/2 the money we would pay the rest. Now, he has to save for the whole thing. We still buy him special items every now and then but the bulk of items are bought for his birthday or Christmas.
     
  4. Mellizos

    Mellizos Well-Known Member

    We pay alot more because they need real money to be able to buy what they want. If they want a $25 Wii game, I don't want them to get discouraged trying to save the money. We tried $1/week but it wasn't enough money for them to see that work = money = buying and saving.

    So we are teaching them that money comes from work. Period. There is no free money in life. Work hard and you can buy things. Lazy and you get nothing. We want them to learn to earn, save and spend.

    So we do $1/week/year of age. Right now, they earn $7/week. They must give away $1. They tithe to church but it could be any charity. As they get older, they'll get more choice in which charity they support. They must save $2 in the bank for long-term savings, like for a car at 16 or college. Then they have $4/week to spend or save towards a larger item. They can get OT for doing additional chores. Here is their chore list:
    Daily: homework, make bed, pick up dirty clothes, clean up toys, put dirty dished in the sink after eating, feed & give water to cats
    Weekly: their bathroom, deeper clean of their room, help us to change bedding (they have bunkbeds so they can't do it themselves), put away any clean clothes (as needed throughout the week)
    We expect that the list will expand and/or get more complicated as they get older.

    We pay them when the family is on vacation because it's not their fault that they couldn't do their chores. Plus, I can get paid vacation. But they don't get paid if they don't complete chores. We've threatened to deduct pay for chores not completed, but it hasn't been necessary yet. Now they remind us about chores because they like getting paid. :ibiggrin:

    We separate gifts from chores and allowance. But if they want toys above and beyond the gifts they receive, they must buy them from their own money. We don't subsidize their toy habit.
     
  5. momofangels

    momofangels Well-Known Member

    Our kids have regular chores they need to do, and we emphasize that those are their responsibility as part of the family. We ALL have chores, just mine and DH take longer(LOL)!
    If they need to earn money, and they are too impatient to save their allowance, we make a list of extra chores they can do to earn toward their DS, or toward a new Wii game, or whatever.
    We also have a ticket system -- it's sort of like, if they do something nice VOLUNTARILY (since at this age, they don't often consider doing anything they can't directly benefit from immediately). That also ties neatly in with teaching them empathy and sympathy and good character traits and our belief system.
    For instance, if one of the kids helps me put away laundry WITHOUT ME ASKING FIRST, they'd get a ticket. And we made a list of things they can buy with the tickets, like a night of staying up an extra hour, or extra video game time.
    I just read an article that said parents should teach kids to allocate their allowances like this:
    -a bit for spending
    -a bit for saving
    -a bit set aside, that the parents save FOR THEM. This is sort of like having taxes withheld, the article said.

    I tried to set up a system of money/chores and DH and I decided that we didn't want to give our kids the idea that they could buy their way out of all work, and we didn't want them to only be good if promised money. But we DO treat them to breakfast out if they get good grades (they always ask for that)!
     
  6. momofangels

    momofangels Well-Known Member

    :rotflmbo:
    I LOVE that! Wish their grandparents did that!
     
  7. Minette

    Minette Well-Known Member

    Mine are only 5, but for now, we just started giving them 25 cents a week as their allowance. I know they'll never really be able to save for anything with that, but at the moment it's mostly the novelty value of dropping the coins into the piggy bank. (We also use the opportunity to teach math -- I let them make up 25 cents from a pile of different coins.) When they're 6, maybe we'll up it to a dollar.

    We assigned them a few (very small) chores, but I don't want to draw a direct line of "You have to do this to get your allowance," mostly because I can't imagine trying to keep track of who has earned her allowance (or partial allowance) and who hasn't.

    Instead, we frame it as "Everyone in the family does some things to help out -- these are your things right now." Those chores WILL be done. If the kids do them willingly and quickly, life is good -- if not, things can get ugly, but eventually the chores get done (by the kids). My hope is that one day, they will internalize this lesson and not need to have it continually reinforced, but we're certainly not there yet.

    I've thought about something like the "ticket" system, where they get some kind of spontaneous reward (maybe money, maybe not) for voluntarily doing something helpful. But, again, I'm not sure how I would handle the record-keeping. Also, I've been burned by rewards before, and don't want to get into any situation where someone can have a fit because she doesn't get a reward she thinks she deserves. I had enough of that with the sticker chart we used when they were 3.

    ETA: As far as how we teach them about the value of money, right now it's mostly just by explaining that things cost money and that Daddy and I make choices about how to spend our money. For instance, this spring, if they asked to go out to dinner, we would say "We are only going out to dinner once in a while, because we're saving money so we can do more fun things on our vacation." Then, when we were actually on vacation, we would remind them, "We're paying for this ice cream with some of the money we saved by not going out to dinner as often." They do get conceptually that it's a trade-off, but I don't think they have any idea of scale yet. For all they know, it costs a dollar (or $1000) to take the family out to dinner.
     
  8. Christel

    Christel Well-Known Member

    Our kids have allowance and have chores, but they are not tied to each other. We also give them extra work if they want to earn extra money. We tried tying allowance to their daily chores, but money is just not a motivator for my kids and so they were content to skip the chores and not get their allowance.
     
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