Kid's allowance

[Longhorned]

Before they're old enough to work in fast food, and if they're not inventing aps, what do kids get for an allowance these days? You know, they do some chores, and they get some cash. They don't pay taxes and they have no bills to pay, and you still buy their food and clothes, so they really get that money.

I don't have kids, but I'm curious to see if I make as much as they do after I make all of my grown up payments.

[ASUHATER!]

i wonder too. right when i turned 16 i had a job and before that i never really had an allowance. i rarely needed money to do anything and if i did my parents bought it. i can only remember a couple times ever as a kid asking for money. that was mostly on like school field trips or something i was given like 15 dollars to get lunch and a souvenir or something.

[azgreg]

My kids don't have an allowance. They have a chore chart to earn money.

[Longhorned]

i wonder too. right when i turned 16 i had a job and before that i never really had an allowance. i rarely needed money to do anything and if i did my parents bought it. i can only remember a couple times ever as a kid asking for money. that was mostly on like school field trips or something i was given like 15 dollars to get lunch and a souvenir or something.

I'd have sucked on a relish packet and stashed the $15. I wanted the money. Not to buy things with, but to show other kids how much I had. Then they'd raid my shoe box when I went to pee. I found that shoe box in my mom's garage recently. With a felt pen, I had scribbled across it "MONEY MOSHEEN."

[Alieberman]

We sort of have a reverse allowance policy thing going on here. My wife and I work but the kids get all the money. Luckily, we do earn just enough of it back to pay all of our bills by doing every chore around the house while the kids play video games and complain that their parents are mean.

So far it's working pretty well.

[Longhorned]

Ari, I read in a note in the district report that your oldest informed his teacher that you "went on and on about Abe Lincoln's childhood virtues while gesturing with a toilet brush for emphasis." Just to give you a heads-up.

[teemackdee]

You guys are killing me.^^^^ My kids are still young enough that giving them a quarter to take out all the trash in the house is good enough.

[azgreg]

You guys are killing me.^^^^ My kids are still young enough that giving them a quarter to take out all the trash in the house is good enough.

I've got meanagers so they are a little more expensive.

[gumby]

No allowance.

I just start every sentence with, "Why, when I was a kid ..."

Like: "Why, when I was a kid we didn't have teenagers."

We started some deal when they were toddlers where $5 of each paycheck went into their accounts. I had actually forgotten about this and when I checked on the accounts, both had hundreds of dollars.

So I leverage that to get them to do chores.

[JMarkJohns]

We got $5 a week for chores, but could also get "docked" if we shirked responsibilities. We did get $5 per "A", $2 per "B" on our schooling tests.

Typical month, after chores/dockings/grades factored in, we typically earned $25-50 a month. This was 90s, so it would be a generous 40-75 now, likely.

It was entirely up to us. Good grades, complete chores, get paid.

Now, by 15 I was earning $200 a week at a job, so the allowance was mostly just add on.

[Longhorned]

That $200 plus the allowance money was all yours.

I remember when I was nine, I told a guy working one of the rides at the state fair that he was lucky because he didn't have to go to school and he got to make money.

"I have to pay bills!" he objected.

I thought he used the same nonsensical phrases my parents used to end conversations with me.

When my dad cut me off after two years at the U of A and I had to leave college, I realized for the first time that you don't get the money you work for. I was that stupid. Still am, just in other ways. But I still love money. And I still don't have any.

[Miller time]

Right now, I only use money as a bribe...or reward (school, sports, etc.)

[JMarkJohns]

If I wanted anything, I had to save up and buy it. I had to pay my own car insurance. I had to pay my way through college.

In addition to the allowance, I had to mow lawns, wash cars, and did newspaper recycling to help earn money for sports leagues, camps, electronics, etc.

[Miller time]

If I wanted anything, I had to save up and buy it. I had to pay my own car insurance. I had to pay my way through college.

In addition to the allowance, I had to mow lawns, wash cars, and did newspaper recycling to help earn money for sports leagues, camps, electronics, etc.

Sadly, I think times have changed. I just don't see that being the same case with my kids.

[Longhorned]

I had it easier than you, until I had to put myself through the rest of college and the rest of life. I had a paper route, but my parents paid for me to go to camp and all that stuff.

[JMarkJohns]

I always had everything I needed. I got good birthday and Christmas presents. But they typically encouraged reading, activity, or sports tickets, etc. I saved money from from gifts, jobs, grades for months to buy my first stereo at 12, my first Discman at 14, and TV at 17. Any CDs, Movies, I had to spend money on. Any faddish clothes I had to buy.

I worked three jobs from 17-19 to save up to buy my first car.

But like I said, we had everything needed, I had privatized education, and we always spent time in San Diego. Hard to say I wasn't lucky. Just not spoiled. My cousins were. Maybe not spoiled brats, but never had to pay for anything until post college.

[gumby]

My son -- high school -- works. Karate instructor. Only way he was going to get a car.

I started working between 8th and 9th grade for a cousin's business. Saved most of it (drove my sisters crazy). Got a full-ride schollie to UNLV. So that was free for two years. Then used my savings to transfer to Arizona.

No help (except a bit from the cousins).

Missed out on a lot. Don't want that for my kids. So I've saved a lot for them to use for college. Fingers crossed, but they might get through without loans.

[gumby]

I joke about being from the ghettos of Vegas. It's true now, but was in transition when we lived there.

Checked up on my high school recently, and found out it was one of those failing schools that had to be taken over. Most of the staff was dumped.

http://www.publicschoolreview.com/schoo ... l_id/50239

Only 10 percent white now (was majority white when I was there, easily). Now it's 66 percent Hispanic. Three-fourths of the kids qualify for free/reduced lunch.

What's this have to do with allowance? Beats me. But thanks for listening.

[Longhorned]

I listened. Still, I'll go on believing that you're from the worst of Las Vegas. Not funny, but funny how an area's transitions to lower quality education accompanies higher percentages of non-whites. Most of my current neighborhood is non-white, but I'm grateful that we've all decided not to be funny about the school part, which is only as bad as (but not worse than) the majority white schools around here. Which are pretty bad, funny enough.

[Chicat]

My parents had this dumbfuck idea that allowance shouldn't be tied to work in any way (chores, schoolwork, etc). Now guess who has a shitty work ethic and would rather post 100 times a day than earn his paycheck?

Plan the total opposite for my kids. I'll have them out on the street corner selling apples and pencils for pennies and then charge them for meals and rent. A little starvation and a few nights sleeping in an alley will do them some good.

[gumby]

Think it's more income-based than anything, LH.

[gumby]

My parents had this dumbfuck idea that allowance shouldn't be tied to work in any way (chores, schoolwork, etc). Now guess who has a shitty work ethic and would rather post 100 times a day than earn his paycheck?

Plan the total opposite for my kids. I'll have them out on the street corner selling apples and pencils for pennies and then charge them for meals and rent. A little starvation and a few nights sleeping in an alley will do them some good.

Plus, they won't monopolize the computer, which is a problem I have.

[Longhorned]

Think it's more income-based than anything, LH.

Funny how there's a correlation....