Allowances and Chores

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There is a lot of debate surrounding a child’s allowance and one of the biggest points of contention is whether or not your child’s allowance should be tied to chores.  I personally think an allowance is absolutely essential to teaching your children about managing money.  The chore question to me is purely a matter of choice, as long as your child gets an allowance of some kind.  Even a dollar a week is money in hand that they have to make choices with - and every choice they make is a money learning experience.  Of course an allowance without a financial education is useless and we will be posting about ways to help your children learn about money in future posts - but today we are talking about allowances.

Emily’s school has an annual “sleep-over” trip.  Since she is only 10 years old we wouldn’t let her go on this trip last year for a variety of reasons, but one of the main reasons was the cost.  This trip would have been a huge gift for Emily.  SInce we didn’t know about it ahead of time we didn’t have the chance to teach her about the value of earning something.  Well - her school will have a trip again this year and we have told her that she can go… if she earns it.  To that end we made the decision that this year Emily’s chores will be tied to her allowance and her saving goal of paying half of her school trip. 

I was browsing for help and advice on the web when I came across this promising looking website.  Pay Jr allows you to set up a chore calendar for your child, link those chores to her allowance and give your child a way to watch their savings grow.  The only thing I was disappointed in was that you couldn’t enter short and long term goals which would be a very useful added feature.  I haven’t used it yet so I don’t know how friendly it is - but I will try using this and see how Emily likes it.  If anyone else has ideas or suggestions I would love to hear them.