Ok..I wanted to ask on another thread but didn't want to hijack it. What does everyone think is acceptable allowance for kids? I have an 11 year old, 9 year old, and a 3 year old. I am assuming there is no reason to give an allowance to a 3 year old, right? I have not given my kids a steady allowance before. So, what is reasonable? They have chores. A few times I added "paid jobs" to my chore chart and that was how they earned money. lol.
I print off chore charts from handipoints.com. Each child has one with a list of their chores on it with a square for each day. Each day they do their chore, they get a sticker. On Saturday, we sit down and add up the stickers. They get 5 cents per sticker. They could get up to somewhere around $3 if they did everything, every day. That's never happened; usually, they get around $2. If I have to do a chore for them, I charge them for doing it. I think you'd probably have to look at the chore and weigh out how much you think it's worth over the course of a week. My kids are 6 & 7, so their chores are mostly designed to teach them to clean up after themselves [e.g. pick up toys, put away shoes, put dirty clothes in the hamper, etc.]. That's why they get 5 cents. Plus, they get excited just buying something from a Dollar Store, so there's not much need for the big bucks. LOL
Jeannie gets .25 for every hour she does her school work without grousing. We work about 5 hours a day. So, she gets 6.25 a week if she makes it all week without grousing over work. I just added a new rule that she loses .25 for each time she prints instead of using cursive.
My dd's are 13 and 11. They get $10-$15 a month , depending on what they do. Cleaning their room, making their bed, empty trash and cleaning up after themselves gets NO PAY, that is part of being a family. Doing stuff without being told, laundry, washing cars, raking leaves, etc gets them money. They also have babysitting jobs and house/pet sit. So they make anywhere from $100 to $200 a month, more in the summer.
Our chores are set up at .50/per year, one chore per year, so basically .50/chore. For every day they miss doing their chore, I dock them .10, so they could actually do a chore two days a week and not get paid anything, but we haven't had a problem yet. So my 7 yo can earn up to $3.50, my 6 yo $3, my 4 yo $2, etc.
We're cheap here but the kids still manage to save alot. .75 per day Their are deductions for bad behavior, messy room, pets not cared for, dishes, etc. They range from .10 to .25. If they can go two whole weeks with no deductions we will renegotiate their rate. They have not been doing well at that but it gives them something to strive for. My ds works in the summer and my dd babysits. They are 14 and 12.
It all really depends on what you want their allowance to cover. If it is just their "blow it" money to keep them from bugging you in the store and at the same time teach them some money skills then keep it low. If you want them to learn to budget, save ect, or to cover the cost of certain items then make it more. My kids get 40.00 a month but only 16.00 of it is actually their spending money. The rest goes into long term, short term, and tithe. I want them to be in the habit of doing those things so that they hopefully continue to do that as adults. 40.00 may seem like alot but when you do the math they only average 4.00 a week to spend as they wish.
The guideline I go by is $1 for each year of age.....So my ds who is 6 gets $6 a week. If he doesn't do all his chores then we subtract accordingly. My dd who just turned 4 has been getting an allowance since she was 3 ($3-now $4), I didn't really think she needed it but if big brother had money to spend, 'lil sis wanted some too. I don't tell them what they have to do with their allowance but they both know that if there is something they really want (not in our budget) then they have to save their allowance to get it........
My kids can earn 10 cents per chore per day. The little one can earn up to $3 a week, the older one up to $4. We are very relaxed about things like making beds so that is on the chart and they get 10 cents if they do it, but they don't get in trouble if they don't. They have to tithe 10%, but other than that they can spend the money any way they like. 4 year old likes to spend his often for cars and dinos. 7 year old saves until he has enough for a new Nintendo DS game, LOL. Right now we are thinking about, possibly, going to Disneyland and Legoland in a few months. Even though it isn't for sure we explained that if they saved their allowance to help pay for that we would be more likely to be able to afford the very expensive trip. They both decided that was a good plan
First of all We dont believe in giving money for chores around the house because I dont want them to say, "if I take out the garbage how much do I get? Doing chores is just part of being a family and working together is our thoughts I am not blasting anyone else its just the way we do it. We give allowance out after my husband gets paid biweekly, its part of our budget, it goes to bills, retirement, savings, donation and then we get our allowances even I get some ======== We try to get our kids to follow the Dave Ramsey budgeting. We have been debt free for 1 year now it took us 2 yrs to get out of debt and we hope to teach the kids not even to get into debt someday and be smart with money. Son has just now started getting allowance he is 8yrs he never really cared about money till now. He gets biweekly $3 he has to save some for later and think about donating some too. Daughter 16yr she uses it for extra stuff like magazines, fun books, extra money when she goes to her Anime conventions etc.. She gets $6 bi weekly plus $2.50 automatically into her savings account. She gets extra money from jobs that are not really considered chores like cleaning out the car, dusting the car etc..Any money I might borrow from her I always give her interest. She loves when I borrow lol. Sam
Same here We gave them allowances NOT for doing chores or behaving well. DD1 - being in Grade 7 receives 7 dirham per week, dd2 - Grade 5, 5 dirhams n ds3 Grade 3 , 3 dirham. We will allow them to spend on whatever they can afford. They do their chores as family members and as their responsibilities. They'll have to behave (no calling names, hitting, taunting etc) as expected of them. We reward them with attention or gifts for something they have done out of ordinary for eg showing kindness, being generous (basically the fruit of the Spirit). That will encourage them to do good.
Thanks everyone! I think I like the idea of giving money for attitude. I have done "paid jobs" before and it does cause them to ask who much they get for everything I ask them to do. I figure they live here free they can do some work..LOL.
We are cheap too, but figure that as parents we provide what they need. Their allowance is for learning to budget and save, and for spending money. We do NOT give for chores--that's part of being a family. We do not give for attitude or doing schoolwork--that's something that needs to be worked on because it's the right thing to do, not because they get paid for it. We give $1 per year of age. They first tithe 10% and give whatever offering they want to. They put 50% of what they get into savings, and the rest is theirs. Our middle child used to just give all his money (other than the savings) for Tithe and Missions. He's say, "They need it more than I do!" I don't see how someone with so many kids can give $40 a month apiece! We don't have that much to give to 3 kids! I'm glad it works, but we couldn't squeeze that much out---unless they bought their own food and clothes with that, then we could! Anyway, with us providing their needs, they have learned the importance of tithing and saving--and even with the little bit they get, they still have decent-sized savings accounts!
I dont know how to respond to this. we are not well off by any means. Everyone just has different priorities on how their money is spent and for our family this is a priority. It is same as when a non tithing person asks you how you manage to tithe because they could never afford to. I will admit it seems like alot.... until you break it down. (which I did in one of these post about allowance) also, only my kids over 10 get that not all 5. Savings is a huge factor in the amount of allowance we give. Basically though it comes down to this: we give them that much because we wanted them involved in a savings that they can really use to start out their life with. If I only gave them 4.00 a month or so and made them save from that it wouldnt add up to much when they were 18. It is worth whatever we have to sacrifice to do it. It is one of those things were my values are not yours and vis versa...neither being better than the other. I do think that alot of parents struggle with getting their kids to save because they give them too little. If you give them 6.00 a month in allowance and they really want a 5.00 toy savings to them will be out of the question UNLESS you make them. Tithing would probably not be a problem because it doesnt interfer with what they want. Most adults dont fight that temptation (look at the amount of credit people have) and yet that is what we force our kids to do!?!? Instead I believe we need to set a good example and practice what we preach. In order to do that I need to enable my kids to do all the things we believe are important: tithe, save for when you are old, save for something that is important to you, and spend some on yourself. In the end when you pick what allowance to give for your child you have to pick out what you want them to learn from it, what your budget is, and what your values are to how they spend it. No one can tell you that. It is something every family must decide for themselves. :love:
I'll add: first, my kids started receiving allowance (.50/week per year of age) when they were 3. Some of my 3 yos chores included making his bed (although we've since shelved that and made it a 'required' chore), setting the lunch table (which mostly is putting out placemats and getting milk cups from the fridge), putting away the silverware from the dishwasher, and moving the chairs out of the kitchen so someone can sweep. My two older kids (6 & 7) have been doing their own laundry for the last year, too. Drop it in the washer, sometimes I'll transfer it, and then put theirs away. This is how we solved the "how much if I" problem. We never actually had it, but my SIL is 17 and she went through it, so I was keen to take preventative measures. My kids each have their chore list hanging on the fridge. If they do their chore by a certain time, they get paid. If they don't do their chore, they don't get paid and they STILL HAVE TO DO THE CHORE. No free passes. For instance, my son is supposed to unload the dishwasher first thing in the morning, before breakfast. If it's not unloaded by then, he still has to do it after breakfast (with the bonus of putting everyone's breakfast dishes in), AND he doesn't get paid. The work has to be done; they get to choose whether or not to get paid for it. Per Dave Ramsey, we also have the "part of the family" chores: putting dirty dishes in the dishwasher, making your bed, keeping your room clean, etc.
We also don't tie allowance to chores or behavior--he has to do those things to contribute to the household. He just turned 11 and gets $2 a week in allowance. That may seem low but I just can't figure out why he needs more, lol. It teaches him to budget ("if you get an icecream from the icecream truck, that's half of your allowance when we have icecream in the freezer...") and he can buy himself something every month or two that he really wants, like a new video game. I do give him extra chores to make more occasionally but it's still pretty low, 50 cents or a dollar for something mom really doesn't want to do but needs to be done He's also had to pay me back from his allowance for breaking something of mine from blatantly bad behavior, like opening my umbrella in the house and it ends up useless.
The way to stop them from asking what they'll get for doing a chore is to take money away as soon as they ask. They ask = they work for free.
We phrase it as allowance is something you get for being a contributing member of the family. We don't really pay "per chore." The amount varies, and we really had to explain why and she totally understands. Right now we are living paycheck to paycheck. Sometimes we don't have the $ to give her an allowance. $5 could mean we can't buy dinner. We showed her how daddy and I go to work and get money. From that money we pay the bills (and we showed her what bills need to be paid). Any money left over could be divided up for allowance for each of us. Sometimes we choose to spend the money on something else, like we took our extra money and are going to see a gymnastics competition. This was several weeks worth of "extra money" saved so she did not get an individual allowance, but we made an choice as a family to go. Our extra money goes to sign her up for activities too, like she wanted to do soccer. So we signed her up. If she doesn't do her chores we focus on that she is not contributing to the family and doing her job in the family. When we split what is left over (if there is any) then she would not get any spending money. If she does extra chores she gets extra money for contributing more. Sometimes she helps daddy with his business, and we try to focus on how she is helping daddy earn money for all of us. This certainly wasn't how we planned it (it started out as $5 a week until we got in financial trouble) but it has worked way better than we had hoped. It kind of put us all on the same team as a family working together and everyone contributing instead of us paying her for working. BUT she is getting rewarded with money for doing extra stuff. The House Fairy still comes for her clean room, and I've noticed we hardly ever have to nag her to do any chores and she does them willingly and happily, telling us proudly she is "contributing to the family" YAY!
Tanner gets $2 a week. Aside from feeding the dog and helping pick up the dog poo, his chores are staggared. We pretty much just expect him to pitch in whenever we ask. Sometimes it's cleaning, dishes, or helping with cooking. Other times it's setting the table, etc. He gets his allowance taken away if his behavior is not acceptable...whether it be not pitching in when asked, fighting with his brother, or just being disrespectful. I wanted to start giving him an allowance because I wanted him to learn that you need to work for what you want. He has to work around the house, like a grown up would at a job, in order to get paid. Since it's a small amount, it takes him awhile to gain enough to buy something he really wants, which instills in him the ambition to work continuously for what he really wants.
