Dr. Kevin Leman says..."In my view, an allowance is part of a family's recreational budget. It's one of the perks of being a member of the family." (p. 95)"Having 'money of my own' gives a child some dominion over dollars and a growing understanding of how long it takes you to pile up the cash needed to buy certain things for your family." (p. 97)
"Children need to know that when the money is spent, it's spent. There's no free lunch in life. If a child wants to spend money on something above the cost of what he has in his allowance, do not pad his allowance money. Have the child wait to purchase that item until he has enough money to buy the item himself." (p. 97)
"Children need to know that upholding their end of the bargain as a family member is important. If they don't, there are consequences. If your child doesn't get around to a certain task, don't cajole her, remind her, or lecture her. Simple hire a sibling or a neighbor child to do it for them and take whatever you had to pay that person from the child's allowance. There are no threats, no warnings-only action." (p. 99)
I never had an allowance while growing up, but Richard did, so we are still debating what we will do with Samuel?
3 comments:
I think allowance is a really important way to teach kids about money. But I think at the same time, it's important to keep it relatively small. I think I started at something like $1 a week, and then as I got older it increase to around $5, simply for the fact that as you get older, the things you want to buy are often more expensive. But I knew kids who got $20+ a week. Personally, I don't they ever learned to save, due to the fact that just a week or two of saving could easily get them what they want.
I didn't get an allowance either, but I am leaning toward giving my son an allowance... I'm pretty sure my husband will agree. ;-)
We have decided against a weekly allowance for our eight year old. However, we do have a chore chart that she can do to earn some money. She has chores that are required and then she has extra (optional) chores that she can do to earn some money. When she asks for toys at the store my reply is always, "Do some chores and save your money."
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