To Pay or Not to Pay

  Do you give your child an allowance? Do you pay them for chores?

I recently blogged about redoing my children's chore charts. About trying to finding meaningful (real help) chores for my 5 year old.
Now I want some input on what other parents are doing/or not for allowance.  I have read some articles on the Internet and apparently any money problems our future grown up children have can all be tied to whether we got the whole allowance thing right. Oh my LOL

The general consensus is that giving our children an allowance lets them learn how to manage money. My kids always seem to have money to spend from a variety of sources at different times of the year and I figured that is what they could be managing but as it is not a regular source it apparently doesn't help with the managing part. But then what are they managing? If they don't have regular expenses then what is the use of regular income? If they have $10 they have to figure if they spend it now or spend it later. Based on this idea ( regular expenses means regular income) none of my kids need an allowance as none of them have anything they need to pay for regularly. Phew because according to an allowance calculator I would be paying out $124 a month to them!

  

I am confused about what expenses a kid has anyway?

They need new shoes?
I want control over the purchases of my 5 and 9 year old so I also control the money. The 17 year old makes some of her clothing purchases and I make some of them but she also earns a  regular paycheck and probably has more disposable income than I do- no way am I giving her an allowance!

Then there is the question of do we tie allowance to chores performed? I have chores my children are expected to do each week and they need to do them because everyone who lives in this house needs to contribute to its upkeep. But what about extra chores they ask? Nope there is no "extra" stuff all of it is part of keeping our household running

 

But my children do receive some reward on a regular basis that is not cold hard cash. The two youngest have a membership on their fave computer game site ($5 a month each) and my oldest gets money for her cell phone bill ($10 a month) which I think equals the amount of chores expected of them but I don't call it an allowance, I call it "empty-the-dishwasher-without-a-fight-or-I-am-cancelling-your-membership"

To give allowance or not, to pay for chores or not I still don't have it all figured out but in my house I have two children who are savers and one can't spend it fast enough which probably reflects one of their parents style ( I am the non-spender)