Allowance - how much and for what?

[Anonymous]

My kid is 7 and I’m beginning to think of giving an allowance?

How much do your kids get, and what jobs do they have for that money? Do you have any restrictions on how often they spend it, or on what?

[Anonymous]

my daughter gets $5 a week. Her chores including cleaning her room each weekend, alternating weekends to clean her bathroom/playroom, do her laundry, and (ad hoc) empty dishwasher. She is 8. Her allowance gets broken up to $3 spend, $1 to savingsand $1 to giving. Once it reaches a certain amount, she chooses a charity to donate to. She also gets $5 a week at her dad's for the chores she does there.

[Anonymous]

DC8 gets $20 monthly ($12 saving, $6 spending and $2 donate, sort into 3 separate jars), not tied to any chores since we saw his cousin was like asking for money for everything from adults even just for playing a song for grandparents. DC11 gets double. DC8 is the type of kids that always wants to spend everything on toys so we deduct his allowance ( was supposed to get $8 weekly by age).

[Anonymous]

DC got $5 a week for existing when he was 7-10. It eliminated the "will you buy this for me?" At 10 it became $5 per week plus opportunities for bonuses based on doing chores or keeping up with homework.

[Anonymous]

6 year old gets his agex2 at the beginning of the month. Also split into three categories, spend, save give. We had started doing his age each week but it felt like too much and we weren't good at keeping up with it weekly which caused issues so we recently switched to beginning of the month and just do $12. We'll see how it goes. So far ours isn't tied to chores, lots of finance/parenting people don't really recommend that(chores are a part of being part of the family) but my spouse really wants to connect it so we may at some point.

[Anonymous]

Age in years weekly. She splits it among (save, share, spend). When the save gets to a certain amount DH takes her to the bank to deposit and usually adds some more as reward for saving. No chores tied to money. Chores are part of being in our family. She spends mostly on toys or souvenirs when we go to museums and trips. She also gets her sister a birthday present snd holiday gift. Share has been for school fundraisers or any other charitable giving she wants to do. My kid is not money motivated so half the time we forget the allowance nd moved it to a monthly amount after a year.

[Anonymous]

Mine are older now and I can't recall the exact amounts but we did not tie allowance to chores. They have to do chores because they are part of the family. They get spending money to manage because they are part of the family and it eliminated the "will you buy this for me!" nagging. If you tie chores to allowance you have to also be OK with them one day saying I don't need my allowance this week so I'm not going to take out the trash/make my bed/etc.

Instead of dictating a required savings amount, DH managed a "bank of dad" where if they "deposited" money to save then he'd give a very high rate of interest. We were very influenced by this "Bank of Dad" book https://www.amazon.com/First-National-Bank-Dad-Foolproof/dp/1416534253

The author had the same set up we did, encouraging saving by making the return on it meaningful so it's a child's choice. Kids aren't stupid. If the "allowance" includes a required savings amount (that doesn't have a real date when you can have it) then they know that's not really their allowance.

FWIW both kids are now in college and very frugal with their money and smart shoppers when they do need to spend. DD was into savings from the start and has always hated to spend. DS blew his allowance every week on pokemon cards or other random stuff or later saving over short periods to buy video games. Eventually, seeing how his sister had so much money vs. him helped wake him up to the impact of spending everything so quickly.

[Anonymous]

my 11 year old gets $5/week. Chores include setting and clearing dinner table, making bed every day, folding and putting clothes away. She has a bank that has three slots for save, donate and spend. Admittedly, we are not good at enforcing the chores part. We took her to the bank to open her first bank account too. For every $25 she saves to put in bank account we add $5.00. We also talk a lot as a family about where we want to donate money, how spending and donating reflects our values etc. My husband loves investing so we helped her buy $100 of mattel stock (american girl dolls!).

[Anonymous]

9 yo gets $4 a week. Chores include folding and putting away laundry, taking trash and recycling out, cooking easy meals, emptying dishwasher and just generally cleaning up and helping. In the beginning I got a lot of pushback and there were weeks when she did not get an allowance, but she's come around and is enjoying getting money and saving up for something special. I don't restrict what she does with her money. But now that she has spending money, she's changed her tune a lot about what is worth/not worth spending her own money on.