Awhile ago I received a lovely email from a reader. I feel guilty it’s taken me this long to get around to addressing it, but it arrived in the lead up to our camping trip. I was all a-tizzy with deadlines/laundry/list writing/packing and couldn’t find two seconds in a row to think about anything else.
Anyway, Alison, thank you for your kind words.
Alison also asked me about something I’ve been thinking about for quite awhile.
She wrote: “I was wondering what you do about allowances. Do you have them for your girls? Do you have them pegged to chores? Are you concerned they will buy complete crap and clutter your house :)”
Answer: we haven’t done the allowance thing yet. When do most people start giving their kids an allowance anyway? I have no idea. And it hasn’t really come up. But I guess now is as good a time as any, isn’t it?
First, chores. The girls don’t really have any. Shocking, I know. They are just expected to help out with anything I ask them to. If I’ve vacuuming I ask Sarah to hoover up the crumbs under the dining room table while Emma organizes the pile of shoes in the hallway and vacuums underneath. If Mark is putting away the laundry (we have an agreement, I wash and sort, he puts away) the girls are expected to put away their clothing if they’re asked to.
This goes for anything: setting the table, putting away groceries etc. They do it when they’re asked. Period. I’m rather lax about their bedrooms. I figure it’s their space, but every once in awhile I hit a breaking point and we do a massive cleanup.
All this might change as they get older, but I think we’ll play that by ear.
So it wouldn’t make sense to tie their allowance to chores. Personally, I don’t agree with it anyway. I think kids should be helping out, period. Why should a kid make money if it’s something they should be doing it anyway? No one pays me for making dinner and cleaning the bathrooms! We all have to do our part and tidy up after ourselves.
Mind you, if the chore is way above and beyond the norm I could see parents giving the kid some money for doing it.
I don’t want to screw this allowance thing up. And if you’re a parent, I’m sure you don’t either. The allowance is a critical tool for teaching kids about money. And if you don’t teach them about money, no one will. The ins and outs of credit, saving, and investing doesn’t seem to be part of the public school curriculum. I wonder why.
We’re planning on starting allowances for both Emma and Sarah on the first of August. Mark and I haven’t really talked about it at length, so this is really my own vision of how it’s going to go, but I see it going sort of like this:
$25.00 per month, payable the first of every month. (Why? Because one of my first jobs out of university was a contract job that was paid monthly. Oy did that ever teach me how to budget.)
From that amount, they will be expected to set aside :
$5 towards a long-term investment (Why? Because kids should learn about investing early. The earlier the better! There’s that compound interest thing you know.)
$5 towards a charity of their choosing (Why? Because charity is learned. Emma has already decided to give hers to CHEO.)
$5 to save in a bank account for an item of their choosing (Why? Because we should all be better at saving our pennies instead of plunking down the credit card.)
This will leave them with $10.00/month to spend however they like. They are in control of this money. Outside of birthdays and Christmas we rarely buy the girls toys and gifts so it’ll be interesting to see what they want choose to spend it on. Am I concerned they’ll buy crap? Yes. But I also hope they remember our past experiences with dollar-store toys (not good) and not clog their bedrooms with it. I want them to learn the value of money, but I also want them to make their own spending mistakes. I do, for example, foresee someone forking over her money for something junky and then regretting her purchase. All good lessons to learn I think.
Will they use their money to buy candy and junk food? Probably. But they’ll still have to abide by our rules about eating it. i.e. not right before dinner.
Oh, and I’d like to forgo the debit card for now. I don’t think anyone is ready for that quite yet.
Will they be able to keep track of their purses/wallets? Not if they’ve inherited their mother’s genes.
What do you do about allowance?
