Allowance for Kids

I originally wrote this article on July 4, 2015.

I give my kids a weekly allowance of three dollars each.  It’s a small amount, but seems to add up quickly for them.

I give them cash because I believe in the autotomy and privacy of our currency exchanges which cash allows for, and so my kids understand the correlation and concept of money in the real world.

I don’t give allowance in exchange for them doing anything.  I don’t want to equate ‘being a family and part of a team,’ ‘living together,’ or  ‘living life‘ with money or as a reward.

Doing things around the home, for the family, is just part of us living together and loving each other.  Granted, my kids don’t always feel like helping with the things I could use help with. I don’t push it because I don’t believe in home life being stressful.  I want for them to see on their own how helping can be enjoyable; and for them to have the pleasure of choosing to contribute without coercion.  I am fine with doing most of the chores myself; that just means they get done when I feel like doing them, my own way, and at my own pace.  I learn and grow from choosing this, and not feeling like a victim about it.

I give my kids allowance for the following reasons:

• To share my income with my kids, with the energy of abundance

• To let my kids have the experience of managing money before they get jobs of their own

• So my kids can have the responsibility to decide what they want to buy or what they want to save up for

• To take some pressure off of me from deciding what extras (non-necessities) I want to buy for them

Just this week, my younger child said as I was giving allowance to her, ‘I like having my own money because it makes me really think about what I want to spend it on, instead of just asking you to buy things for me.‘

Awesome.

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