The Allowance Debate

As the new school year quickly approaches Glen and I are once again faced with a recurring debate in our home... to pay allowances or not to pay allowances.

It seems like it should be a simple answer, but there are so many philosophical questions attached to it that after 14+ years of parenthood we've never really come to a strong stance of where we stand on the issue.

When I was a kid my family did a neighborhood paper route together. We took turns and each helped out with the monumental task of waking up early in the frosty mornings of Minnesota, rolling the papers and binding them until our fingers were black, and finally running up to each house and placing them inside people's screen doors (unlike the lazy paper deliverers of today who are lucky to toss it past our mailbox). Man oh man, did we ever learn to work hard and to value our hard-earned money, but the brunt of that burden definitely fell on my parents' shoulders who never got a day off for the several years we did that. As much as I like the concept, they don't do little neighborhood routes anymore and Glen's work schedule definitely would not allow that kind of early commitment.

As parents we've tried paying the kids dependent on completing their chores and then requiring them to set aside a certain percentage to savings, but it's never lasted more than a couple of months. We're just disorganized and not that great at keeping track of what they've done and haven't done, plus I don't feel like they've ever really valued the money they receive. The little ones lose it and the older ones waste it.

So last night, Spencer began begging in earnest for us to reinstitute some kind of allowance for the new school year. He argued that it was only fair now that we're expecting him to pay for his own fun activities that he have some kind of set income. I personally think it has more to do with a little sibling jealousy over the fact that Cami is raking in the dough with her babysitting jobs and as yet he has not found as many opportunities for him to earn money on a regular basis. He gave us the full deposition of why he needed an allowance and soon had a whole chorus of kids joining him in the effort.

As per our usual Glen+Lara style, we hemmed and we hawed to the kids and promised them once again that we would think about it. Which we did and still came up empty.

This morning when I checked our Google Reader I came across this article on one of the blogs I faithfully follow. It was Michelle's (a stranger to me) well-thought out position on allowances. I was floored at how well it encapsulated a lot of the feelings and the concerns that we had and I felt like it gave me a new perspective to look at the issue from.

It made me really think about what is it that we're really trying to teach our kids...about how to manage money, how to work hard, how to contribute to the family, and how to not to be selfish or materialistic. So how can we best teach these to values to our kids?

I've decided that I really like Michelle's (and my parents') philosophy on having kids EARN their income and not just by doing their everyday chores which are a part of being in a family, but by doing REAL jobs.

Although it should have come easily to me, having been taught that way myself, but I'm beginning to learn that when it comes to parenting I can be a little daft sometimes. It just makes good common sense that kids would learn to work hard and would learn to manage money better, because it's their money. The money they labored for.

So now that I've finally captured what my stance on all this really is, how can we implement it in our family?

I was thinking of making a list of jobs, each with a certain "salary" attached to it depending on the difficulty level. The kids would need to have completed their normal chores first and then could CHOOSE whether or not to complete any of the other paid tasks. There will be no coercion at all, only the promise of a "paycheck" when they're done.

So now the question is what kind of jobs to offer with kids ages 4-14 in the house? Maybe mowing the lawn, weeding the garden, cleaning out a cupboard, vacuuming out the car, washing the car, organizing a book shelf...what do you think? Any great ideas?

So how do you do allowance in your family? Do you feel like it's been successful? Any helpful advice for me in my quest for raising fiscally responsible children?