Weekly Allowance

[Anonymous]

8 year old DS has been asking for one.

Many questions:

1) What's the going rate these days?

2) Any strings attached (i.e., tied to chores, piano practice, good week at school, etc.?)

3) Any conditions on what the money can be used for?

[Anonymous]

I give my 9 year old $4 per week. He is required to give some money to charity, save some money for a long term goal (college seems appropriate to me, but he is saving for a car - all in all, he gets the concept, which is all that matters), use his money for gifts (family birthdays, mother's day, and Christmas) and the rest is his. I help him budget by specifying how much each week must go to each of the four line items. Here is our breakdown. $.25 to charity, $.50 to gifts, $1 to long terms savings, the rest to spending.

I do not tie allowance to chores. Everyone who is a part of our family has to fulfill his or her responsibilities to make the family work and it is not a job for pay. I also don't require that he pay for his own activities. Others feel different on these points.

I have used money to encourage/reward good performance at school in math and spelling. But, that only really worked in first and second grade where I knew from week to week what the test grades were. In third grade, I don't get the results of weekly tests. This was in addition to allowance.

I also give my 5 year old an allowance - $2 per week with a similar percentage breakdown as to how it can be used.

[Anonymous]

I give my 8 year old $1.50. No chores attached, and he may not spend it without my permission (it isn't really an allowance). $.50 goes to charity at sunday school.

Not tied to chores. He has to do those as a member of the household.

I like to take the emphasis off of spending and buying. We don't look at catalogues, and we don't "nickel and dime" over behavior.

There are lots of right answers.

[Anonymous]

My daughter is almost 6 and earns $1.50 per week for 25 stars. We have a "chore chart" with reasonable chores like help set the table, help feed the dogs, retrieve her things from the living room, etc. We talk alot about how she is going to spend it and whether she wants to save it to buy something she wants, but I leave the decision making up to her. As her understanding grows, I will ask her to do more meaningful things with her money. She does decide on her own that she wants to buy things for someone else or save it for a something special.