What should the allowance cover?

That depends on the age and maturity of your children, the tasks you want to entrust to them, and the financial values you want to encourage. Young children can manage "budgeting" for toys or discretionary items, but children may need to be about 10 to 12 before they are ready to budget for a week of school lunches. Middle teens (15 or 16 and older) may be prepared to budget for their own clothes. If you want to instill the values of charitable giving and long-term saving for major items such as a car or a college education, your allowance structure and amount will need to take this into account. Make a list of your child's expected monthly expenses (including investments and donations), as well as sources of income (allowance, gifts, work for pay) to see if they're in sync.

Should allowance be tied to completion of chores?

It is important for children to learn to earn money. After all, in the real world, work produces earnings. However, many parents feel that chores are the children's contribution to the maintenance of the family and home, and there should be no pay for these tasks. It seems less complicated and cleaner to keep allowance and chores separate. Differentiate between which jobs are not paid but rather are expected to be done to help the family, and which jobs may be done to earn extra money in addition to allowance. If your child's chores are frequently not completed and you're tempted to withhold allowance, or if you do tie allowance to chore completion, see the next page.

back - next

Parenting Start