Do you think that a 4 year old is too young to get an allowance in exchange for his help aroud the house? Of course for a four year old, that would be cleaning up after himself, putting his dirty clothes in his basket, grabbing his plate/bowl/utensils/placemat for meal time, etc.
He can now count up to 30 and I'd like him to understand how money works. I read somewhere that a good allowance guide is $1 for every year. I'm thinking about it so he understands that we have an unlimited amount of money. I'd like him to understand that he has to save his money if he wants something and he needs to decide what is more important to him, that $2 hot wheel today or the $30 lego set in a few weeks. I think that I'm going to start this this week and let you know how it goes. He's already paid me back this week for something this week that he wanted from the toy store, he had some money stashed away from a few easter eggs. I hope that he learns the value of money early on in life.
Allowance
May 10th, 2006 at 05:44 pm
May 10th, 2006 at 07:20 pm 1147288823
May 10th, 2006 at 08:13 pm 1147291996
We've never given them money for good behaviour or high grades. These are expectations in our house, not a choice!
May 10th, 2006 at 08:45 pm 1147293925
Robex, I agree that good behavior is an expectation and not a choice.
May 10th, 2006 at 11:06 pm 1147302362
I went on the Internet to try to find out how much a child should recieve for an allowance. The word of veteran moms out there is this rule: take a child's age(in his case 4, multiply it by $1, then divide it in half), meaning his allowance would be $2. Because my boys are a little older, I simply set forth a straight $8.50 for each of them. At this point it is enough, although my 10 year old is already asking when I am going to consider raising their allowances. LOL!
May 11th, 2006 at 12:18 am 1147306724
They also get a penny for each dandelion head they bring me in the spring and a penny for each pinecone they bring me in the fall. If they help pick beans or berries they get 25 cents an hour.
I know it doesn't seem like much but I want them to learn how hard you have to work in real life for money. And one hour's work earns a dollar. My kids are six and nine and they have always had enough money from their work to purchase their special things. I will buy them each 2 magazines, comic digests or regular books a month, though.
May 11th, 2006 at 01:55 am 1147312535
August 15th, 2006 at 01:58 pm 1155650289