Allowances with Responsibilities
Aug 02 '00
When our oldest child turned three, my husband and I began discussing the "Allowance Issue". We were each raised with different viewpoints. My husband never received a weekly allowance, but was paid for working on his family's farm. I was given a weekly allowance until I began babysitting around age twelve. After reading books, talking with other parents, much discussion, and some trial and error, we developed a system that works for our family. We realize that our program may not meet your family's needs, but hope that it will be helpful to you as you develop your own system.
Here's how it works:
First, we decided to make a list of family responsibilities. In this list we included things such as cleaning your room, picking up after yourself, taking out the trash, and anything to do with cooking/cleaning the kitchen. We do not pay for these chores because we want our children to learn that we all work together as a team to serve the family.
Secondly, we made list of tasks that we would be willing to pay someone else to do for us. This list included things such as cleaning toilets, washing clothes, dusting, vacuuming, and yard work. We pay our children for these chores as long as they do quality work and do not complain. We emphasize that in the real world a company would not pay for a job that was not well done.
We adjust the task and the expected quality of work based on the age and maturity of the child. We also have on-the-job-training until the child is able to complete the job. For our childrens' ages, we still pour all of the cleaning solutions and supervise those tasks.
Each child in our family has a weekly "timesheet". After a task has been given our approval, the child gets to draw a star on that day. On Saturday evening we have "Payday". We gather around with the timesheets and our childrens' money jars and Dad officially pays the workers. From time to time our children even get raises. After each child gets paid, we divide their money into three categories. They give 10% to tithe, 30% for savings, and the remaining 60% is for spending.
We have found that this system is the most effective for our family. It requires a lot of parental involvement, but we enjoy the results. Our children are learning good work ethic, teamwork, and financial responsibility. On top of that all three of our boys can clean a toilet better than us--who can beat that? :)
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Epinions.com ID:
julieagee
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Member: Julie Agee
Location: Fort Worth, TX
Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 5 members
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