Your kids and Allowances

[carj]

We don't do an allowance here either. My children are 7 and almost 5. They have to pick up their own rooms for free, but they can earn money for cleaning any other room of the house. Generally, we pay $1 for each "job". (I determine what constitutes a job!)

The problem that we have is that the 7 year old is a saver and the nearly 5 year old is a spender. The 7 year old will work and save to buy a new game for the Wii and the almost 5 year old will work and spend hers the moment she can!

 

[Jenna45]

We don't do allowance here I have one DS who is 12, he does what is expected of him, and when and if he wants something I normally will buy it for him. With that said he rarely asks for anything usually it is a video game, and he does get his WOW subscription paid for. We did try the allowance thing but it just did not work for us...

DS also has never even kept his birthday money, in Febuary he received a gift card for Disney 300.00 plus disney dollars and when we got there he told me to apply it to the room for us both to use... Whenever he gets any money he does the same thing, he has a very good nature about him... Good Karma, I say he is the kid who always win's the raffles at school and Bingo on vacation!!
The whole allowance thing just caused problems for me

After reading this, I feel guilty I could not make it work..

 

[Aristomommy]

DD9 gets $8 per week. She puts $3 in long term savings and $5 is spending money or she can save it also. The biggest perk I see is that she is no longer asking for things, but budgets and saves her own money.

I also pay her interest on her long term savings, but she has to calculate it herself. It's a great math lesson on compound interest!!!

She has chores that must be completed to get her allowance. I also offer her extra for "above and beyond" kind of duties.

 

[PollyannaMom]

We started an allowance when DS was in kindergarten, at the odd amount of $1.41 - a dollar, a quarter, a dime, a nickel, and a penny - so he could learn the various coins. (We rounded it up after he had everything down.)

Currently (at 7) his allowance and regular chores are seperate, but he can earn extra money by doing larger chores that aren't usually his.

 

[badblackpug]

We do a dollar for each year in age. There are certain chores that must be done as we feel that it is your responsibility as part of the family. (keeping rooms clean, taking out trash, loading and unloading dishwasher, feeding dogs, sorting laundry and making sure your personal laundry gets to the laundry room, putting your laundry away and certain yard work) we do not attach allowance to these chores,but we do attach privileges. If a childs chores aren't complete they lose privileges such as TV, computer, video games, telephone, going out, etc.) 1/2 of allowance must be put into a saving acct.

Extra money can be earned by doing extra or bigger chores. That money can be spent on anything the child wishes. The amount earned depends on the difficulty of the chore. The chore depends on the age/ability of the child.

 

[DevilDuckie]

We don't do allowance here I have one DS who is 12, he does what is expected of him, and when and if he wants something I normally will buy it for him. With that said he rarely asks for anything usually it is a video game, and he does get his WOW subscription paid for. We did try the allowance thing but it just did not work for us...

Us too. My son (10) is a HUGE help around the house but these are not jobs he can choose not to do, so there's no point in assigning payment to them. We tend to cater to his few requests (not a gimme kind of kid) as they are generally reasonable. We're about to move to a house with a big yard and I may make yard work an optional item for which he can earn cash.

 

[Tink-aholic]

My kids are older (13 and 15) and we give them $15 and $20 per week, respectively. They are not tied to chores, because we wouldn't want one of them to just "decide" not to do their chores simply because they could afford an allowance vacation. We all live in this house, so everybody has to pitch in.

That said, each has their allowance divided. $10 from each kid goes into their own personal ING account each week. After each account reaches $200, we buy a CD for them. They get their own statements and can really see how compound interest adds up. They don't have instant access to that money and have to go through us for a withdrawal.

That leaves $5 for one kid and $10 for the other per week spending money. The younger one also petsits and has MUCH more money and just approached us about putting ALL of his allowance in his account because the older one keeps borrowing from him.

 

[livie1205]

I just started to give my boys money each week...5.00 a week each, they are saving it for our vacation in dec, when they save at least 20.00 I am going to put it on a pre paid visa for them and add it to the card each week or each month.They think it is cool that they will have a visa on vacation and I am going to try to use it as a learning thing....oh and I gave my dd2 a 1.00 for her princess bank...(she was tooo cute)