Allowance in high school.....or job...or both

[Anonymous]

I'm struggling to figure out what to do re: allowance for our two kids, both in high school.

I grew up working in HS for spending money and have insisted that my kids also get jobs to earn money for discretionary items. My philosophy was that we buy the kids what the need (food, clothing, personal care items etc etc), which includes a lot of wants too, to be honest, but they always want to go out with friends, have Chipotle after sports practices, but a drink at Wawa etc. My feeling is this is what job $ is for, but they seem to think it's unfair and it's not what others are doing these days.

FWIW, they each are capable of making money - and more of it - if they wanted but choose not to (babysitting and other ways - go shovel snow!). They don't have to have a 'real' job to earn money. We live in the NW DC and they go to public school. DH didn't really work in HS - I think his parents paid for more stuff than mine did, even through college. We can definitely afford it, but I also want them to budget and learn to work for what they want - it's not always a message that's all that well received.

What do you do for your kid, and what do you see? Trying not to be snarky - it seems so different than when us Gen Xers grew up - but I did not get an allowance so am struggling with this one. We want to teach responsibility. If you give an allowance, how much do you give, what age is your kid, and what do you pay for vs insist they pay for?

[Anonymous]

We can also afford to fund whatever and don't. We give $30/month allowance and they are required to spend gift money or earnings on the rest. Oldest got a PT job at 16 and I assume the younger one will too. She is very jealous of her sister's spending money situation. I want them to see how all the ChickFilA/Starbucks/Trips to Target can add up quickly and they only learn if they earned the money.

[Anonymous]

I've never given my kids an allowance. I buy what they need, and some of what they want for birthdays, Christmas, etc. They each had small, odd jobs as teens and... hardly ever spent their money, because none of us are spenders in the family!

I agree that if your kids have the urge to spend more than you think is reasonable, you can't keep funding that, they need to get jobs.

We live in Bethesda, and I see everything: a few low-income families whose kids work for their money, some high-income families whose kids have jobs, and a surprising number of kids who show up at our public school in the morning with their daily Starbucks and get their daily food order delivered with Mom and Dad's credit card, and ... and then they get a brand new Jeep for their 16th birthday. That sort of thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We can also afford to fund whatever and don't. We give $30/month allowance and they are required to spend gift money or earnings on the rest. Oldest got a PT job at 16 and I assume the younger one will too. She is very jealous of her sister's spending money situation. I want them to see how all the ChickFilA/Starbucks/Trips to Target can add up quickly and they only learn if they earned the money.

+1 similar allowance. Both kids have opted to work during the summers but not the school year, other than occasional babysitting/housesitting for neighbors. Older kid finally got a school year job in his 2nd year of college when he'd spent down all his savings during his first year.

[Anonymous]

Absolutely no allowance, that needs to stop at or before age 13. Then they will be motivated to work.my kids volunteered at 12, 13 and later hired at 14. The older they got, the more they paid for. It’s part of growing up.

[Anonymous]

I only have a part-time job right now (one of the DCUM "poor", most likely), but my kid gets $30/month from as allowance. Half goes into savings, but he can pull it into his 'spend' account whenever he wants.

He also earns money - walking dogs, housesitting by taking care of cats and plants, and I help him get one-off jobs like graphic design so social media or QA-ing software at my company. This summer he will be doing MBSYEP again, which is not much money but it is better than nothing and is good toward getting work experience. Ideally he'll get something that pays better, but those jobs seem very hard to get around here for teens. He's applied at cafes to bus tables and at a few stores, but hasn't gotten any interviews.

He goes to concerts with friends and occasionally they'll go out for food, but really they just hang out and don't spend much money. He thrifts for clothes and he's learned how to scrimp and save for things he wants (e.g., just bought himself a gaming computer with earned money), which makes me very happy. I didn't learn those skills until I was out of college!

[Anonymous]

I think my parents were smart about this.

My older brother and I both had an allowance when we were young. We were both also very smart. When my brother got to high school, he started "coasting" at school and getting Bs. My parents said, basically, look we know you can do better than this, but we also know we can't force you to. However, if you choose to continue to coast, then you will no longer get an allowance, and you'll be expected to get a job for spending money. Getting an allowance in high school is predicated on you taking your primary job, school, seriously, and if you're not going to do that, you can get a paying job.

So, he got Bs and a job in the produce section of the grocery store.

I worked my butt off in high school and studied a ton, and made great grades, and my parents continued my allowance and even gave me a bump to $20 a week (this was around the year 2000) once I was a senior in exchange for me also doing the family grocery shopping on Sundays. Additionally, they were very quick to buy me anything related to school (prom tickets, a school ring, the yearbook, money for class trips) as a reward for my hard work, while my brother had to pay for such things himself.

We were both required to get jobs in the summer basically as soon as we were old enough, and I think that's important. Half that money was saved for college, the other half we did what we wanted with.

And as far as things like Chipotle and special drinks and movie tickets, etc, etc, my parents rule was if it was with them, it was on them (and so were our friends if we brought a friend), but if it was just with friends, we had to pay ourselves. And yes, I found that annoying sometimes as I had tons of friends who could just say "oh, we're going to the movies, can I have $20?" and their parents would just give it to them. But it gave me a motivation to do things with my parents, and taught me a valuable lesson in budgeting. I'd stick to your guns on that.

[Anonymous]

We stopped allowance at age 10 and offered earning opportunities at home and encouraged and supported well paying summer jobs (did not want them working during school year) as they got older. Babysitting and pet sitting/walking became very lucrative. One did some online tutoring and “tech catering.” One had an Etsy store. One had a parent bail out service- Halloween costumes, valentines boxes, stuff like that. We were generous at Christmas and birthdays and the occasional surprise, but they knew not to come to us for wants.

Our goals were around encouraging them to take responsibility, manage money, and get into the habit of earning money without being stuck in a boring W-2

[Anonymous]

I'm not giving an allowance, but fund their eating and clothing. My boys are student-athletes, do very well at school (college level classes), and have busy schedules. I don't mind if they have Chipotle or Panda after practices. They're growing young men and need to eat. Tbh, I was more irritated about having to cook for them and then they'd not eat this or that. They're quite frugal and don't spend money on who-knows-what, no Starbucks or such. They also do soccer refereeing on weekends for extra money, but don't even spend it.

[Anonymous]

No allowance. He has chores because he lives here. He is a freshman in college so all of his spending money comes from his summer job. I pay for his cell phone. He pays for his car insurance.

[Anonymous]

Give a small enough allowance that there's incentive to get a job that gives them more money.

[Anonymous]

We do not do allowance. Similar to PPs, we cover the basics, but they need to earn spending money beyond that by babysitting, dog walking, shoveling snow. They play soccer and became referees at 14.

[Anonymous]

My teens get an allowance, about $30 a week. It’s not much and they are very motivated to get jobs.

[Anonymous]

If my kids are getting dinner on the go after a busy sports day, and that means I didn’t cook anything at home, I would usually send them $$ for a meal (chipotle prices anyway) but that’s not all the time. I recommend making them ask each time for things like that, rather than a generous allowance.

But yes my kids work. You want them to realize that two hours of work pays for some wasteful meal. They start to view it differently. My 15 yo only gets $30 a week from a regular 1x a week 2 hour babysitting usually and she’s learned to make it last and even save. If she gets a longer weekend babysitting job or she hustles and sells thrift finds on Depop she has money to buy bigger things she wants, so she does.

Not to be rude about it, but I wasn’t going to raise my kids to have poor people’s habits, like spending every penny as soon as they have it.

[Anonymous]

Adding - my senior has like 3 part time jobs. She found her jobs (bc they aren’t just retail or food - not that there is anything wrong with that either) were as impressive as an EC so she dropped EC to do work that did the same thing but made her $