Kids and Allowance

I got a small allowance as a little kid, but as a teen I was paid for major chores that they would have paid others do do such as yard work and helping my Dad in his shop. I was also lucky to score a couple more yards in my neighborhood that added to the bucks.

I never really had any pocket money til i was about 13. I’d occasionally be given a fiver or something for a special occasion, and had money at christmas and birthday, and my parents would give me money to buy things for them so i got used to making purchases – but always had to hand back the change!

Then my parents set up a bank account and deposited about £20 a month straight into it. I also got a weekend job at about 14 so that brought in money too. Unlike some of my friends, my parents kept my pocket money going even when I had a job, so I usually had more money than my friends through school.

By the time I was 16, I think I was getting £50 a month off my parents and about £30 a week from work, which isn’t bad! Funded trips to the pub – uh.. I mean.. Youth Club..

I never had my money stopped, but then, I was pretty well behaved so never really did anything that deserved such a punishment. I also did a LOT of the household chores, because my mother was in a train accident when I was 13, so I pretty much did all the cooking, cleaning, laundry etc for the family from about then.

It actually shocked me when I found out some of my friends refused to help out round the house unless they were ‘paid’ for it. In my house the only question was who did WHICH chores – it became a bargaining point: “I’ll do the laundry AND cook dinner tonight and tomorrow if you do the vacuuming and dusting.” stuff like that.

All my children work for gruel!!

My wife and I never really fully explored the reasoning behind an allowance. Some vague notion of teaching money management. My daughter (9) gets $5 a week. Allowance isn’t attached to chores. We all have a duty to the household, none of us are paid to do it.

My brother and I were never given an allowance. Mainly b/c we were poor. We did get $$ for a good report card though and birthdays and such. And every once in a while (about once a month), my dad would collect aluminum cans from his work. We would seperate them all (along with whatever we saved from home.. we kept it in an outside storage closet), bag them up and take them to the recycling place. That would usually get us about $20 each

i give myself 50 dollars every week and thak god for not having kids

Well there is no one right way to do things, but my parents never gave me any allowance. Instead, you were simply expected to do certain chores and activities as part of your family obligation.

While it may not teach a child the value of a dollar, it does teach them that you shouldn’t place a pricetag behind every deed you do.

well we had kinda of the same set up you have Miss C,

by the time I was in 5th grade I was receiving 3 dollars a week. it would work out to be just enough to buy SOME of the things we wanted, but not all, so we had to constantly make trade offs.

though we were immediately cut off once we started working. then we had to pay INTO the house, so that we didn’t have too much money in our hands to be wasteful with.

Worked out pretty well for me. Not so much for the siblings once they started managing their own money they went a little wild.

I got a small allowance growing up & it was attached to my doing chores – simple stuff like keeping my room tidy & helping clear dished after dinner.
Until I was 15, half of my allowance went straight into the bank, which was great because then I had savings to buy myself a stereo etc.
I think I got 50c per week (total) when I was 5 and it went up in $1 increments per year.

My parents did not believe in allowances, because they were absolute control freaks, and didn’t want us to be able to buy anything they didn’t approve of.

When I got my first job, I was expected to start paying “rent” which was always the total amount of my paycheck (of course I learned to lie about what I was making and hide money.) I resorted to credit cards as an escape, and now I am $45,000 in debt. Thanks a lot, Mom and Dad!