Making Allowances

Laurie Petersen  May 02, 2008 9:00 am

Making Allowances
 
Time to get a job.
 

 



I use the age system for allowance in my house. So now that I have an 11-year-old daughter, she’s getting bumped up to $11 per week.

I don't require my daughter to formally divvy her allowance into savings, earning, spending and giving categories. But she's supposed to pay her own Sunday School offering and does have a money box where she likes to stash her spare cash for our annual sojourn to the Jersey Shore. Spending is mostly done at typical tween haunts like Claire's Stores (CLE) and the Gap (GPS). But I've also schooled her on the joys of shopping at Kohls (KSS) and Target (TGT). New to the mix of her discretionary spending are iTunes from Apple (AAPL).

I also take the “allowance is for money management” approach and don’t tie it to specific jobs around the house. My daughter is quick to tell me what I’m doing wrong these days, and my allowance philosophy is now one of them.

“Mom, everybody else has jobs,” she told me the other night. “What are my jobs?”

I’m not a person with a strong domestic focus. To date, my daughter’s official jobs have been to get her homework done, do the best she can at school and stick with things to which she’s made a commitment - even if they seem hard at first, or mean getting up early on weekends.

I also leave the caretaking of her room to herself, and she knows how to do a load of laundry and throw it in the dryer. To me, that’s just the cost of living.

My kid inherited her grandfather’s clean gene and her mother’s sense of responsibility, and she now wants official jobs. I let her pick, and this is what she came up with: Cleaning the refrigerator and reseeding our little patch of lawn in the backyard.

Meanwhile, to make extra money, she’s finalizing the business plan and creating business cards for her first summer as a babysitter for hire.

I love it!

Not surprisingly, this concept ties nicely into MinyanLand, where my daughter is addicted to the quick and easy Catch the Money game in the Playground, but checks the School on every visit looking for her Things to Do.

I can pick from a pre-programmed list of duties or write in my own chores - up to three per week at the moment.

“Mom, you’ve got to give me more things to do,” she nags when I don’t follow through on the email alerting me it’s time to credit her for the jobs she’s done and assign the next set of tasks.

Maybe she could write next week’s column?

How do you handle allowance in your home? How much do you give? Is it tied to specific jobs? Weigh in on The Exchange.
2 of 2 (100%) found this helpful
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Comments (2) See All Comments »
05-05-2008, 7:14 pm
I have a 3 year old and the topic hasn't come up as yet. I wonder when I should expect it to?
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05-08-2008, 1:24 pm
I started at age 4. It depends on the child.
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