Childhood Allowances

I got a quarter ($ .25) per week, was expected to perform household chores. I used to go to a 7-Eleven store a blow that quarter on a handful of candy garbage. Life was good.
 

Children treat their parents like ATMs. They have no motive to work for it. No kids ring your doorbell anymore and ask if they could mow your lawn or shovel snow. Why do all that work when they can sit on their bums and text and have all the money they want.
 

debodun said:
Children treat their parents like ATMs. They have no motive to work for it. No kids ring your doorbell anymore and ask if they could mow your lawn or shovel snow. Why do all that work when they can sit on their bums and text and have all the money they want.
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I remember my baby brother, when he got the age of being old enough to push a lawnmower and shovel for neighbours, he was knocking on everyone's door.

An elderly neighbour who was a businessman, hired my baby brother when he was around age 9-10, to sweep the parking lot of his restaurant each spring.

I remember graduating from high-school, and if you didn't get an add out in the local newspaper (early and ahead of time) for work, odd jobs, babysitting, etc, there was nothing left a week after school was out.

I remember when we still subscribed to the newspaper (1980's and 90's), wanted ads were huge! There was rows of ads related to girls looking for babysitting work, boys looking for lawn-care/cutting jobs, and nowadays those ad columns are blank.

I don't know what happened. Too many parents forking-out money to their kids I suspect.
 
I feel sure I got an allowance but I cannot remember how much, not much when I was little and our family was painfully poor, definitely more when I was a teenager and we'd become middle-class. And I remember having the opportunity to make money by ironing the laundry (a penny for a pillowcase, little more for harder items) when I was elementary age - the scar I had from burning myself with the iron helps me remember that! ha ha.
We also got money for any A's we got in school, and money on our birthday equal to our age.
At one point I even got one share of stock bought with my A-grades money. I remember getting dividend checks for 5 cents. But that ended badly when my parents sold my stock without having clearly communicated that when I voted at the family meeting to move to a better house, that was equivalent to selling my stock and donating the proceeds to my parents.
When my daughter was little I read a very helpful parenting book about how to use allowances to teach money management, so for her, she got an allowance, but if she didn't do her chores I would deduct sums from the allowance. I also gave her other money-making chore opportunities (mostly cleaning up manure in the stalls/corral). It appears that it was a very good system because now as a young adult she is very good with money.
 
HoneyNut said:
I feel sure I got an allowance but I cannot remember how much, not much when I was little and our family was painfully poor, definitely more when I was a teenager and we'd become middle-class. And I remember having the opportunity to make money by ironing the laundry (a penny for a pillowcase, little more for harder items) when I was elementary age - the scar I had from burning myself with the iron helps me remember that! ha ha.
We also got money for any A's we got in school, and money on our birthday equal to our age.
At one point I even got one share of stock bought with my A-grades money. I remember getting dividend checks for 5 cents. But that ended badly when my parents sold my stock without having clearly communicated that when I voted at the family meeting to move to a better house, that was equivalent to selling my stock and donating the proceeds to my parents.
When my daughter was little I read a very helpful parenting book about how to use allowances to teach money management, so for her, she got an allowance, but if she didn't do her chores I would deduct sums from the allowance. I also gave her other money-making chore opportunities (mostly cleaning up manure in the stalls/corral). It appears that it was a very good system because now as a young adult she is very good with money.
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Love your story, HoneyNut.

I remember offering my assistance and help at every turn. Reading about you getting a penny for every pillowcase you ironed, made me think that I should have tried to hit my mom up for a penny for every diaper I changed on my baby siblings. A penny a diaper would have added up in a hurry back in the day! I did a lot of changing. LOL!

Absolutely love the "stock" and "dividend" idea your parents did with you!

I firmly believe a few little mundane chores for children a good thing, and rewarding them with a little change/spending money to say thank you, I believe helps mold and shape them into better people.
 

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