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My daughter Alex, at 5 years old, has not yet received an allowance -- but I'm strongly thinking that in the coming months, when she officially starts kindergarten, I'm going to start giving her one.
This decision has necessarily caused me a bit of consternation: how much allowance, for example, is appropriate for a 5-year-old? And how often?
I think I was about 5 years old myself, when I started receiving an allowance: fifty Trinidad & Tobago cents (about US$ 0.09) a week, if I remember correctly. One thing that I am certain of, however, is that my chores were in no way tied to my allowance. In my parents' thinking, chores were not something for which a child received pay; instead, in exchange for doing chores, the child got to remain a tenant of the house. Money was another thing entirely.
And I think that I sort of like that philosophy.
One of the methods I definitely will be using is one I read a while ago -- I can't remember the source, unfortunately. It involved having not one, but three "piggy banks" (or mason jars, or whatever) -- and each was labeled, respectively, "spend," "save" and "charity." The thinking is, obviously, that this method gets the child thinking about the various ways in which money can be used. I love this idea, because to be honest, when I left home, I had very little street savvy when it came to how to manage money, and honestly, I'm not entirely comfortable with my money intelligence, now. I think having a spend-save-charity methodology at a young age might be just the way to ensure that Alex has more confidence around money when she's an adult.
After this, however, I really don't have any idea what else to do. My gut is saying to give her, say, $1.50 (50 cents for each mason jar) -- but is that right? What's the going allowance rate these days?
How have you guys done it?
Karen is a writer and photographer in Houston, Texas. You can read and see more of her work at Chookooloonks.
