PING:FOFC'ers with kids who receive allowance

[oliegirl]

Radii and I have decided to try and implement an allowance system for our 8 year old, Anthony. We have tried once or twice in the past and have never been successful. Anthony has about every toy he could ever want, and as a result, has no interest in earning or saving money to try to buy something for himself...everything he wants, he has. I know this is a separate issue, so please, no lectures :)

The last time we tried allowance, we tied daily chores to a specific amount of money...most things were worth about 10 cents each, he could earn about 60 or 70 cents a day. We thought this would work because if he forgot to do something, he could see how it affected his "income". However, after a week or so he just would say "I don't care if I don't get that 10 cents, I don't feel like (insert chore here)." So we stopped the entire program and haven't done anything since then.

We have come up with a couple ideas to help teach him the value of a dollar, something he really needs to learn as the last time radii went to the ATM with Anthony in the car, Anthony commented that it was nice we didn't have to use our "own money" for whatever errand they were running, and that the bank was nice to give us money when we needed it. He has no idea how much groceries cost, how much rent costs, etc...he has no grasp of how hard you have to work and how important it is to spend money on the things that are important to you or that you really want/need, he prefers to blow his money away on the machines at the grocery store, the dollar store, etc...

Here is what we have come up with:

1. He can earn a certain amount each week, probably $6. Of this $6, half of it goes in a "bank" that WE keep up with and half goes in his wallet for him to take with him to the store in case there is something he wants.

2. There will be a max amt that he can keep in his wallet so that if he loses it, he has only lost enough to teach him a lesson and not send him back to zero dollars. We both feel if this happened we would feel bad and end up giving him the money he lost back and then he wouldn't learn anything.

3. We will pay for 2 school lunches a week. If he chooses not to make his lunch then he will pay the extra days - lunch is $1.50 a day, so there is a max of $4.50 here...he can't pay cash for lunch, it has to go on a lunch card, so at the end of the week we would look online (yes, lunch cards here on online now) and see how much he spent and have him pay us the balance he owes. I think this would be good because it would be like paying a bill, he would have to remember he can't spend everything because he already spent part of it. Not sure if this money would have to come out of his wallet or if it could come from the money we would be keeping up with. I am leaning toward having it come from his wallet so he can have a reminder of how much he has and how much he has spent.

4. Anthony loves to rent movies and games for his xbox...we are thinking that making him pay for half or all of a movie rental would help him learn that stuff costs money and he can't do everything.

5. Anthony got a camera for Christmas...I plan of having the film developed through snapfish or shutterfly's mail in program, so it will be fairly cheap, but we are thinking of having him pay for half or all of the developing. I think half, b/c I don't want him to think "I don't want to take this picture because I'll have to pay for it", but I do want him to realize that money doesn't grow on trees. If he starts taking dumb pictures of walls or something, basically taking a picture just to use the camera, then he'll have to pay for all of it.

We'd love some feedback on this, comments on what we've come up with and any ideas or suggestions that might help accomplish what we are trying to accomplish.

[Barkeep49]

As a teacher I would say that this all sounds good. A couple of other suggestions:

1. What is the bank money going towards? Is it college? Some other savings? If it is for him to save up for, I would recommend having him set a goal for something and then using some sort of visual to show how close he is to his goal (like the thermometers the United Way uses)

2. Have some sort of year/bi-yearly amount that needs to go towards a chairty of his choice. In this way he gets used to chartiable giving.

Otherwise your plan sounds like it should have be an effective system for your child. The real key is to stick to it. It might take a couple of "tough" lessons for him before he gets the money doesn't grown on trees aspect of it all, but my parents had me on a similar sort of allowance system and I have excellent money managing skills now so I think they did a good job with it.

[RPI-Fan]

I wouldn't be too worried about it. I had on-and-off allowances all through growing up (and never really had a situation where everything I wanted I got), and by the time I was 15 or 16 pretty well had figured out how to manage money.

I think, just like learning to talk, learning money management is something that for the most part happens naturally, and trying to "coach" it is going to have effects of a limited and debatable nature.

[Airhog]

My personal opinion is that it would be better to not tie specific chores to a dollar amount. He would get paid for each day that he does all of his chores. That way, if there is a chore he doesnt wan't to do, he can't just opt out of doing it. Personally, I wouldnt tie school lunches into it. Let him spend his money on fun stuff right now, but as he gets older you could introduce that.

Keep in mind that I do not have kids, so my opinion means nothing :D

[RPI-Fan]

My personal opinion is that it would be better to not tie specific chores to a dollar amount. He would get paid for each day that he does all of his chores. That way, if there is a chore he doesnt wan't to do, he can't just opt out of doing it. Personally, I wouldnt tie school lunches into it. Let him spend his money on fun stuff right now, but as he gets older you could introduce that.

Keep in mind that I do not have kids, so my opinion means nothing :D
No kids here either, but I totally agree with those ideas.

[GoldenEagle]

In my opinion, you are really worrying about nothing. I do not think an eight year old needs to learn the value of a dollar. Maybe when he gets a little bit older. When, I was young, my parents paid for everything within reason. The trick was we had to do chores. If we wanted a toy of some sort, then we had better done our chores for that week, month whatever. I also do not think that making him pay for his own lunches is a very good idea. He is not going to equate money with work but he can equate work with toys.

[oliegirl]

The main reason we are thinking of tying it to school lunches is because he is especially irresponsible (if that is the right word) with food. Example: this morning he asks me if he can have a "second breakfast"...I ask why he is still hungry if he has already had a first breakfast and he says that his loose tooth was hurting so he only ate half a poptart (he usually has 2), so I told him he could have the rest of the poptarts he didn't eat. He informs me that he threw them away...the half of the one he didn't eat (which is fine) and the entire untouched one also...we have run into this before, he pours a whole bowl of cereal and after a bite says he isn't hungry and dumps it down the drain, or pours a huge glass of milk and after a couple sips says he isn't thirsty anymore and pours it out into the sink. This has happened with lots of different things lots of times and we both feel that given everything else, he just has NO idea how much it costs to keep food in the pantry/refrigerator, or for that matter, how much it costs just to "live" (basic food, bills, rent, etc...)

[lynchjm24]

, how much it costs just to "live" (basic food, bills, rent, etc...)


Well like you said... he's 8.

[vtbub]

I'm not a parent, but I'm uncomfortable about charging for his lunches at this point.

Have you thought about "fining" him for wasting food?

[Joe]

you should get a kitchen scale to weigh the food wasted at each meal, and decide a punishment or extra chores based on that. maybe at the end of each week total it up.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Whew, great subject, but a tough one because I'm not sure there's much in the way of a one size fits all answer ... or if there is one, I don't seem to have it. That said, I'll throw some observations/comments/etc in here so you can take whatever you will from them & discard the rest.

I'm lucky, or feel like I am, in that I honestly believe my 7 y/o has a better grasp of the relationship between work & money right now than I had at 17 (or maybe even at 27).
But it came through an sort of odd set of circumstances & doesn't come without a sometimes worrisome amount of savvy considering his age; i.e. we often worry that he maybe understands more than is emotionally healthy for a 7 y/o.

See, for about 90% of his life we've owned our own business. And probably 90% of that time, the business has been conducted from home/home office, meaning he saw/heard a great deal of very grown up stuff, most especially in the first couple of years when business wasn't always so great. We're pretty open with him about "real-life", perhaps to a fault at times, and it's pretty unusual for him to be sent out of the room if there's something negative going on. I mean, we don't summon him for a "family war council" or anything, but if he happens to be in the room when my wife & I need to discuss business -- from new orders to losing a piece of business (and 40% of annual revenue) to personnell decisions involving people he knows -- if he's around, he's heard a lot of stuff.

Well, as I'm sure you've seen, kids learn a lot through osmosis, not always exactly correctly but they do put a lot of pieces together & do so in ways that they can comprehend.

Basically, all that exposure has given him a great sense of the connection between work & pay ... and we've done a lot to intentionally connect work ---> pay ---> play.
He understands that "you work to get paid, you get paid to pay for stuff you have to pay for,from food to bills to taxes, and what's left you save some & play some". IMO, that's a better understanding of how things go than a lot of teenagers have, he truly realizes that it doesn't grow on trees. Yeah, there've been any number of parental conversations with him about all that but it really all stems from him being exposed to real life stuff that sets up the conversation -- he knows when we write tax checks, he knows when we write paychecks (to both employees & ourselves), he's seen us get paid by our clients, he's seen us pay bills both company & personal, and along the way who is getting what & why gets explained, hopefully explained to a level that he can absorb at that time.

We don't do allowance right now, in large part because some of the main things that teaches are things he not only knows but can even quote back to us in appropriate context. (i.e. he's not just regurgitating what he's been told, he gets the application of it too & has demonstrated that). Right now, our approach is that "school is your job" and he's "paid" with an eye toward his "job performance". It's not a rigid "X number of A's is X amount of goodies", but more of a flexible "We're much more receptive to your recreational spending/wants as long as you're holding up your end of the bargain on the job".

That's not for everybody, but that's a broad overview of how we've dealt with money, work, et al.

As for specific things you mentioned:
1) I would recommend, to whatever degree his discretion outside the household permits, letting him see some real life application of money, both incoming & outgoing.
You work, you get paid, it goes to the bank, you pay bills/write checks, the bank balance goes down & so the cycle goes. Understanding where it comes from & where it goes, in the big picture, is a lot of the lesson IMO. I don't recall whether you guys are hourly or salary or what your situations are, but as an example of a good practical lesson: Let's say you're an hourly worker & one week you happen to have fewer hours worked. If your paycheck includes a stub with hours, use that to illustrate that "less work = less pay" or "more work = more pay". And if you don't direct deposit, maybe make sure he goes to the bank when you put the check in, following up with seeing how you deduct money from the checking account in your register when you write a check. I remember the ATM story and while it was really classic cute kid stuff, it also showed a complete disconnect from what that money is/where it came from. IMO that seems like something that can be taught to most kids at a pretty young age even if it's something simplified as "Banks are like piggy-banks for grown-ups." combined with using their piggybank & withdrawals from it to emphasize that what they take out & spend isn't in the piggybank anymore. And to further use the piggybank scenario, make a regular ritual of counting what's in it every week ... even if you know there haven't been any deposits, especially if there haven't been any deposits. It helps bring home the point that the money doesn't just sit there & grow unless you put stuff in (figuring that you're not quite ready to tackle the concept of interest, daily and/or compound, just quite yet ;) ). In short, it's some real-life stuff you're getting into teaching here & I believe real-life examples of how it works are often among the most effective tools for those sort of lessons.

And, at the risk of piling on a bit, I'll add my voice to those who kind of flinched at the kids-cash-
for-school-lunch idea. I do not for one moment believe you're intending to deny Anthony anything with that, or that it would ever get anywhere near becoming that sort of situation - I've seen too many posts about him from you guys to think that for a second. But even so, there's just something that felt very uncomfortable to me about that suggestion. Not my business really, but since it was brought up & was in play, I don't feel bad about commenting on it either.

And no matter what advice you get, from me or anybody else be it FOFC'er, Dr. Spock, or Dr. Phil, remember this: Nobody knows your child as well as you do, nobody is likely to be able to judge/predict what will be effective/helpful with them as you are. When it comes down to it, don't be afraid to trust your own instincts about what to try, they should turn out right more often than anyone else.

[Cards4ever]

I have a 6yo daughter who has a few jobs she has to do to receive her allowance. She got sloppy and started to neglect her chores, so, I took the allowance away. That didn't seem to work for some of the reasons you state above. So, we decided to take away TV for a couple of days, and when you are that young and you lose TV on a Friday and Saturday, you start to realize the importance of earning the allowance! I personally wouldn't try to make it so complicated, keeping it easy IMHO would work best, but as JIMG stated above though, you are the ones that know your son the best, so, you need to figure out what works best for all of you.

[vex]

If I was 8, and had to pay for my food, I just wouldn't eat.

[Zippo]

the lunch thing might be tricky, he might just start skipping lunch to save money, and that can't be good for a growing kid.

[Radii]

And, at the risk of piling on a bit, I'll add my voice to those who kind of flinched at the kids-cash-
for-school-lunch idea. I do not for one moment believe you're intending to deny Anthony anything with that, or that it would ever get anywhere near becoming that sort of situation - I've seen too many posts about him from you guys to think that for a second. But even so, there's just something that felt very uncomfortable to me about that suggestion. Not my business really, but since it was brought up & was in play, I don't feel bad about commenting on it either.


In case anyone is confused and thinking we are going to force our kid to pay for his food no matter what, that's not what the suggestion is.

The deal had been that we would allow him to buy his lunch twice a week and he is required to make his lunch 3 days a week. Somehow he's been buying his lunch 5 days a week lately, and for whatever reason just won't make his own lunch, he likes the sandwiches he makes, etc etc. It's obviously our responsibility to enforce that, so I'm not interested in punishing him for us slacking on enforcing that rule and spending an extra $50 or so in the last couple of months, that's our fault. If we don't do something allowance related then he will be making his lunch 3 days a week no options allowed, whehter he wants to or not.

So the suggestion is that we'll let him pick his two days to buy his lunch, and if he chooses not to make his lunch the other three days(despite our encouraging and reminding) then he has to buy his lunch at school.


Now, if that's what everyone interpreted to begin with and that still seems overboard, I'm listening.

The main point here is that he seems to put no value on money at all. And the idea that that's not a big deal is the only idea in this thread that I'll patently disagree with. Anything else I'm open to suggestions on myself.

He doesn't need toys and he rarely wants toys. When he asks us for stuff, its silly little $1 items at the dollar store or pieces of candy at target, etc. He doesn't have any interest in big ticket items. I love(and have thought of myself) the idea of helping him find something to save for, and we'll be trying that I'm pretty sure, the idea of using some sort of visual aid to show how he's doing is great too. But the reason that we're looking at what seems like 'alternative' ideas like paying for additional school lunches than what we have previously agreed to, or paying to rent some of his movies that we like to rent a couple of weekends a month, is that the kid has toys beyond belief. He for the most part appreciates it, which is great, and he likely won't ask us for anything that costs more than $10 between now and his birthday, which again is great, but we want him spending some money somewhere(at least, my theory is that he needs ot have *something* that he wants*).

Anyway, I'm not offended, so suggest/critisize away!

[MrBug708]

The main reason we are thinking of tying it to school lunches is because he is especially irresponsible (if that is the right word) with food. Example: this morning he asks me if he can have a "second breakfast"...I ask why he is still hungry if he has already had a first breakfast and he says that his loose tooth was hurting so he only ate half a poptart (he usually has 2), so I told him he could have the rest of the poptarts he didn't eat. He informs me that he threw them away...the half of the one he didn't eat (which is fine) and the entire untouched one also...we have run into this before, he pours a whole bowl of cereal and after a bite says he isn't hungry and dumps it down the drain, or pours a huge glass of milk and after a couple sips says he isn't thirsty anymore and pours it out into the sink. This has happened with lots of different things lots of times and we both feel that given everything else, he just has NO idea how much it costs to keep food in the pantry/refrigerator, or for that matter, how much it costs just to "live" (basic food, bills, rent, etc...)

Why does an 8 year old have two breakfasts?

[SackAttack]

Why does an 8 year old have two breakfasts?

He's really a Hobbit?

[JonInMiddleGA]

Why does an 8 year old have two breakfasts?

As I read that, "second breakfast" was his description of something that probably fell around mid-morning & only came up after he basically blew off breakfast itself.

Too early for lunch yet, but hungry, so he (rather creatively I thought) dubbed it as "second breakfast" instead of what we might have called brunch. Or more simply, a snack.

At least that's how I read it.

[stevew]

Since she started first grave, I give my 7 year old a 20 dollar allowance every 4 weeks. I find for 20 dollars most of the time she can actually buy something fairly decent, like a doll or some art supplies, or a new board game. Whereas when I was giving her 5 dollars a week, she would never have enough money to buy anything other than cheap plastic crap(dollar store stuff), and her mom was ending up giving her that extra 3-10 dollars she needed to get something better anyways. And I also end up making a lot less trips to the store cause she doesnt have the weekly money burning a hole in her pocket. At this point I find it's pretty hard to practice saving, merely because there isnt really anything she wants that costs a great deal of money. She just got the double whammy of Decemeber birthday/christmas over with, has pretty much anything she needs.

Now at least I know that I've capped the amount of money she gets per month, and its easier to keep track of. She does an assortment of chores in exchange for this money. Occasionally when she doesnt want to help me out with something, a gentle reminder of a small fine from her allowance tends to work out. She understands that if she spends all her money, she won't get any more, so usually she looks for something she really wants, instead of something she wants right now. Some more expensive things I still help her out on, such as video games, but I only pay half, and its gotta be something that I myself will actually play.

[stevew]

dola, I like the lunch idea. You have the food available to him, and if he decides to not make a sandwich for lunch, its totally reasonable to make him pay for those extra lunches. Its a real life lesson that all of us learn at work....you can eat a lot cheaper if you bring a sandwich from home, than if you buy something from the cafeteria.

[Telle]

I don't see any problem at all with having him pay for his extra lunches. When I was growing up we were only allowed to buy lunch at school twice a week, because that was all my mother could afford. When we got the school lunch menu each month, we'd mark which two days each week we wanted to buy. I never thought to use my own money to buy lunch on additional days, but I'm sure if I had really wanted to buy lunch more than twice a week then that would have been what it came down to. I think part of the problem is having that lunch card.. he doesn't have to ask you to give him money in order to buy lunch. Maybe you could just hang onto the lunch card yourselves and only give it to him on the days that he predetermined he'd be buying lunch? And then if he decides that he really wants to buy on another day, he has to give you the money for the lunch before you give him the card? I'm just thinking that having him pay you back at the end of the week is kind of making it like a credit card.. and that might be a little advanced for a child of that age.

[oliegirl]

I don't see any problem at all with having him pay for his extra lunches. When I was growing up we were only allowed to buy lunch at school twice a week, because that was all my mother could afford. When we got the school lunch menu each month, we'd mark which two days each week we wanted to buy. I never thought to use my own money to buy lunch on additional days, but I'm sure if I had really wanted to buy lunch more than twice a week then that would have been what it came down to. I think part of the problem is having that lunch card.. he doesn't have to ask you to give him money in order to buy lunch. Maybe you could just hang onto the lunch card yourselves and only give it to him on the days that he predetermined he'd be buying lunch? And then if he decides that he really wants to buy on another day, he has to give you the money for the lunch before you give him the card? I'm just thinking that having him pay you back at the end of the week is kind of making it like a credit card.. and that might be a little advanced for a child of that age.

I love that idea, but since the school keeps the lunch cards, it's not an option :( They get the card as they are going to lunch (if they didn't bring their lunch), when they pay the lunch lady keeps the card and then it is returned to them the next day. I thought the same thing about the "credit card", but since it would be done weekly and basically taken out of his allowance before he gets his hands on the money, I think it will be OK. More of a "you could have had this much, but now you only get this much" kind of thing...