How Much Allowance Should You Give Your Child?

... what’s the correct amount of money to give your kid for allowance? is the amount dependant on the child's age? should you give all your children the same amount?

... i seem to recall i received ten dollars a week as a child. how much did/do you get? how much do you award your own children? are there some people who don't give their children allowance? should allowance be dependant on the completion of chores?

... comments?

 

No i dont do pocket money and iam not sure there is a set amount that a child should get from there parents weekly .

 

Never got an allowance. I remember other kids getting an allowance which made me a bit envious though. Not sure if I would give any, maybe in exchange for doing chores? Do you have kids @the mechanic?

 

... no, i don't have children, milquetoast. i take it from your post you don't either. if i did i'd probably give them an allowance though ...

 

Hubby and I give our little one $5 a week if he doe all his homework and helps out around the house. No allowance if he does something bad that week!

 

I never grew up with allowance. Started working when I was in my mid-teens (15). I had an aunt that suggested an allowance of $1/ day for me to learn how to save and handle money, but I enjoy working for my own money.

 

... thanks to the above for your replies ...

... in response to Henry's comment, yes, part of receiving allowance for me was the saving component. my dad opened a bank account for me at a young age and introduced me to the importance of saving money, something that has stayed with me for my entire life ...

 

My parents were cruel in this aspect. We were given money but only with extremely disproportionate level of chores. It was never worth doing, so eventually the parents decided that we were to do the chores anyway, pay or not. (If a professional charges 500$, and you want your kids to do it for free, don't expect a good job.)

This is a very casual suggestion but:
Allowance should be based on the amount of self-effort the child puts into doing whatever they are interested in. If they excel at school, offer something like 5$ per assignment that is graded B or better. A C+ may as well be an F for most subjects. If they are into Soccer or Piano or something that you can quantify the effort put into it, you may as well reward it. Doing "nothing", eg staying home and playing with a game console or watching cat videos shouldn't be rewarded at all.

As for how much, I'd suggest however much it would cost to buy their preferred meal at Subway/Arbys/McDonalds/etc once every two weeks. This would be somewhere between 8 and 12$. If they want to spend it on something else, let them. Just make sure they show you what they bought.

If you don't give your children an opportunity for an allowance, it actually encourages them to shoplift trivial things because they will feel entitled to a reward, or will feel you are ignoring their positive efforts, so they feel that you'll ignore negative efforts as well.

Anyway, it is better for children to learn how to be responsible with their money early, because you won't get the chance to once "student loans" become a thing for them.

 

... hi Kisai. thank you for taking the time to think about this subject and compose your most excellent comments! great post!

 

What is relevant is not how much to give them, but training them to understand the value of money and to use it wisely and with restraint.

 

None at all. If I ever have children, I don't plan to give them an allowance. A roof over the head is allowance enough and clothes on their body is allowance enough.

But something I would implement with them is if they want that new toy/game whatever. I will only get it for them if they can find a deal on it. Hopefully this will teach them the value of money and to be wise with money.