Allowance

[bright sparks]

I too, do not pay my kids to do any kind of chore. That notion of being paid to contribute in anyway to the family and the running of the household drives me crazy. Also rewarding with money for doing their part is not something I want to instill in my children.

My kids get an allowance equivelant to $1 per year per week. My kids are 12 and nearly 14 and this will be changing soon as the cost of things continues to increase faster than they age.

The purpose of allowance in our house is to learn about finances and the value of things. My kids have to paay themselves 10% before anything else for long term savings. then 5% for sharing and at the end of the year they can choose who to donate it to whether that be to our local charities or buying a cow for a village etc. I encourage the children to research charities and explain why they chose that charity over another. Lot's of learning opportunities there to be had. My kids have chosen what other categories to distribute the remainder to keeping in mind that there allowance covers anything they WANT so they can never ask me for candy, computer games etc etc. My son has a video game jar and a computer jar. My daughter had a laptop jar which she would put a portion in and then any babysitting money would first have the 10% deducted and the remainder went in the jar. She bought her own laptop in August. My son was to young to babysit so got a paper route and he does the same thing. Both the kids also have a mad money jar so should they want a spur of the moment timmies or ice cream etc they have that money. If the jar is empty, they don't get.

I buy them things they NEED. School supplies, clothes, shoes and everything else. My daughter is going to soon have her allowance increased to cover a certain amount of clothing and I will come up with a reasonable agreement in terms of ,maybe I'll buy 2 pairs of shoes a year plus snowboots but any other footwear that she WANTS, has to come out of her clothing pot....still got to figure that out.

I'm not a cash machine and the way I teach my kids that is through this method. They learn the value of money if they know there isn't the bank of MOM available lol.