Smart Ways To Pay Your Kids Allowance
There’s more than one way to teach your child the value of a dollar. By giving your kids an allowance, you’re starting to instill in them good spending and saving habits way before they can even legally drive or before they head off to college where they’ll undoubtedly make a few financial mistakes of their own. There are some approaches that you can use to teach your kids about the value of money without even giving them money.
No Allowance
Not every parent believes in giving their child money for doing chores. Some believe that a child picking up after themselves and doing chores is helping them to be more responsible and isn’t something that they should get money for. These parents aren’t entirely against compensating their son or daughter if they go above the call of family duty and really help out with dinner or setting the table. This is a good way to teach children that they shouldn’t expect to be paid every time they do what they’re supposed to in the first place.
Earn It
You might decide to subscribe to the old fashioned method of giving your child an allowance whenever they do their chores. Exchanging hard work for money is sometimes the only way to get a child to clean their room, make their bed, cut the grass, empty the trash and do anything else that reeks of responsibility. Some parents will reduce the amount of their child’s allowance if they don’t complete all of their chores. Even with this method, you can still have your child divide up their money into spending money, savings account money and money that they give to charity. One of the good things about this strategy is that it teaches children that they have to work for their money and that no one will just give them money for nothing when they get older. A reloadable debit card is a great way to compliment this approach. A prepaid debit card has the added bonus of also teaching them how to save. See how prepaid works and whether it’s right for your family.
Purse Strings Attached
Some parents will give their child an allowance, but will require them to give a certain percentage of their allowance to charity in order to help those less fortunate than them. Other parents require their child to put a percentage of allowance in their savings account before they’re allowed to spend the rest on whatever they’d like. Parents of older children require them to pay for their cell phones bills every month before they can spend the rest on whatever they wish. This is a good way to get your child into the habit of putting part of their paycheck into a savings account before they spend money on anything else.
Free Money
Some children and teenagers are expected to do chores and complete their homework and none of it is tied to an allowance, but their parents will still give them money. There are also some parents who will give their child money and let them spend it as they see fit rather than requiring them to put a portion into a savings account or give it to charity. The free money allowance method is a good way to teach kids how to make up their own minds about how and where they’ll spend their money, which is exactly what they’ll have to do as adults.
Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide how you’ll give your child allowance or if you’ll give them an allowance at all.