After many failed attempts, we finally came up with a system that works and have been using it for over a year with no issues at all. Each kid gets their age in dollars, and then everyone puts $1 into “a jar for good.” We choose a place to donate our jar savings annually at Christmas. My kids are 10, 8 and 5. I anticipate when they get older providing a monthly allowance of a greater amount for social spending with friends. For now though, the small monthly amounts work very well. They have finally grasped the concept that they have to wait to buy a small toy/candy if they don’t have enough money at the moment. Good luck!
I recommend the short book "Money Smart Kids" by Gail Vaz-Oxlade. Her advice is to use allowance to teach money management rather than an earning system. It's an interesting concept at the very least, and even if you don't adopt her system she has great thoughts about kids and money.
I generally do not remember the newsletter names, rather the authors: Emma Straub, Molly Wizenberg, Alison Roman, Nicola lamb (called kitchen projects, if you like baking), Luisa Weiss, Caroline d’onofrio.
A friend I grew up with in Michigan is brilliant and started a substack a couple years ago with her husband right before they moved to Taiwan (they had been living in Paris). She’s Taiwanese American and he grew up there. She has some amazingly insightful personal posts and more recently they cover issues in Taiwan. https://ampleroad.substack.com/about
We do a flat allowance based on age and not dependent on chores. My parents have a friend who says to his daughter “i get paid to do my job. Your job as a kid is to go to school and do your hw, etc. so that’s what you get an allowance for.” i went with that thought process.
But the issue of helping around the house is still real. I tried to talk to the kids about what they would prefer to do and it kinda worked. And then... it reverted to the usual nagfest so i gave up. Sadly, throughout all this my mantra in life has become “something’s gotta change”. I’m going to loose my mind if I have to tell someone to do one more thing.
So i came up with an open ended chore chart. If they see something that is in need of doing, they can do it. Then they write that down. For every 10 things they do, they get $5. (No idea if that’s a fair price, but they chose that amount) I also note when I actually paid it bc who has cash. It works decently well and usually in spurts where they want to save up for something.
The last issue I have yet to solve is when do I make them pay vs when do they pay. My daughter is getting a debit card for her next birthday in a couple months, so I think she’ll want to whip that out and be more inclined to pay. But i think the more I can slowly reign in my spending on them and force them to use their own money, it will incentivize them to help out and make more money.
I didn’t have allowance growing up - I think we just didn’t have enough money for us to all have it. I am one of four, and we were all assigned a main chore: oldest had dishes, I had laundry, younger brother had the bathroom, and my younger sister had the main living space. I started at around age 8. It all worked out until we started leaving for college, ha.
I really like Kafka’s Baby, After School by Casey Lewis, and Crone Sandwich lately. Less editorial and more bloggy, the better.
We never consistently did allowance. In fact, I just told C last week that I was giving up and if she needed anything to just tell me. They both seemed to get enough money from Christmas and birthdays to last them, plus jobs petsitting, etc. But, when we were doing allowance I gave them 20 a week as high school students and from this they paid for most of their stuff including makeup and some clothes. It doesn't sound like a lot but it was always enough?
I liked Ron Lieber's book "The Opposite of Spoiled" about allowance. My son is too young for allowance but I think we are going to go the money management route and require "chores" as part of being a member of the family.
My mom gave me an allowance not tied to chores and it worked pretty well. I saved up enough money to pay for my own New Kids on the Block concert ticket and for half of a Nintendo, and was pretty proud of that.
As for newsletters I always read as soon as they pop up: yours, Open Water by Wendy Robinson, Living Small, The Analog Family, Everything is Liminal, and The Purse.
Big newsletter reader here! Some of my faves are: A thing or two, A tiny apt, Extracurricular, Present Perfect, It's always something, Long Live, Maybe Baby, Things I would Buy if I didn't have to pay rent, Diary of a New Yorker, A Newsletter (by Alison Roman),
I read a lot of newsletters. My faves I read every time are Culture Study, Tea Notes by Erin Boyle, In Pursuit of Clean Countertops, yours (!), Your Local Epidemiologist, Living Small by Laura Fenton, Erin in the Morning by Erin Reed, and The Audacity by Roxane Gay.
Failed allowance giver here! I think I had read somewhere that kids should get a dollar per age year, so I think we started when my kids were 5 and 7. We didn't tie it to chores, although my husband insists that the reason he makes the bed everyday is because his allowance was tied to it (I don't care if the bed is made, just that the covers are pulled up. And I don't really care if the kids make their beds, since they can shut their bedroom doors, lol). But eventually we stopped having the correct amount of cash on hand, had to make change from the kids own stash, and started saying "we'll just pay you double next week". So we stopped.
In its place we... just paid for everything, and gave birthday and holiday gifts ahead of time (I am in retail and have have never been precious about getting gifts. "Tell me what you want from the website/let's go shopping together" works for us). And the kids did get the occasional cash from their grandparents on birthdays or "just because". My kids are 20 and 22 now, work during the summers and school breaks and have never brought up that they feel ripped off or denied because they didn't have allowance.
Allowance! The bane of my existence! I don’t have it all figured out at ALL but I decided NOT to make it conditional bc of all the things you outlined. Just ... this is for some spending autonomy and your discretionary items. Like you want a $6 fried potato stick at the farmers market. Or something that’s $2-18 at Target. Anyway. I’ve had many backfires and re-sets involving me forgetting to pay them, wanting advances, etc. and my 2024 approach is: $20 to each kid (7 and almost 9. 7 is obsessed with money. 9 barely cares) at the top of the month, the end. I’m optimistic.
I like Big Salad, Crone Sandwich, Eliza Kinkz illustration newsletter - lots of children's illustrators. I can't keep up with Culture Study so had to unsubscribe!
After many failed attempts, we finally came up with a system that works and have been using it for over a year with no issues at all. Each kid gets their age in dollars, and then everyone puts $1 into “a jar for good.” We choose a place to donate our jar savings annually at Christmas. My kids are 10, 8 and 5. I anticipate when they get older providing a monthly allowance of a greater amount for social spending with friends. For now though, the small monthly amounts work very well. They have finally grasped the concept that they have to wait to buy a small toy/candy if they don’t have enough money at the moment. Good luck!
I recommend the short book "Money Smart Kids" by Gail Vaz-Oxlade. Her advice is to use allowance to teach money management rather than an earning system. It's an interesting concept at the very least, and even if you don't adopt her system she has great thoughts about kids and money.
I generally do not remember the newsletter names, rather the authors: Emma Straub, Molly Wizenberg, Alison Roman, Nicola lamb (called kitchen projects, if you like baking), Luisa Weiss, Caroline d’onofrio.
The Small Bow is a newsletter I always read!
A friend I grew up with in Michigan is brilliant and started a substack a couple years ago with her husband right before they moved to Taiwan (they had been living in Paris). She’s Taiwanese American and he grew up there. She has some amazingly insightful personal posts and more recently they cover issues in Taiwan. https://ampleroad.substack.com/about
We do a flat allowance based on age and not dependent on chores. My parents have a friend who says to his daughter “i get paid to do my job. Your job as a kid is to go to school and do your hw, etc. so that’s what you get an allowance for.” i went with that thought process.
But the issue of helping around the house is still real. I tried to talk to the kids about what they would prefer to do and it kinda worked. And then... it reverted to the usual nagfest so i gave up. Sadly, throughout all this my mantra in life has become “something’s gotta change”. I’m going to loose my mind if I have to tell someone to do one more thing.
So i came up with an open ended chore chart. If they see something that is in need of doing, they can do it. Then they write that down. For every 10 things they do, they get $5. (No idea if that’s a fair price, but they chose that amount) I also note when I actually paid it bc who has cash. It works decently well and usually in spurts where they want to save up for something.
The last issue I have yet to solve is when do I make them pay vs when do they pay. My daughter is getting a debit card for her next birthday in a couple months, so I think she’ll want to whip that out and be more inclined to pay. But i think the more I can slowly reign in my spending on them and force them to use their own money, it will incentivize them to help out and make more money.
I didn’t have allowance growing up - I think we just didn’t have enough money for us to all have it. I am one of four, and we were all assigned a main chore: oldest had dishes, I had laundry, younger brother had the bathroom, and my younger sister had the main living space. I started at around age 8. It all worked out until we started leaving for college, ha.
I really like Kafka’s Baby, After School by Casey Lewis, and Crone Sandwich lately. Less editorial and more bloggy, the better.
We never consistently did allowance. In fact, I just told C last week that I was giving up and if she needed anything to just tell me. They both seemed to get enough money from Christmas and birthdays to last them, plus jobs petsitting, etc. But, when we were doing allowance I gave them 20 a week as high school students and from this they paid for most of their stuff including makeup and some clothes. It doesn't sound like a lot but it was always enough?
I liked Ron Lieber's book "The Opposite of Spoiled" about allowance. My son is too young for allowance but I think we are going to go the money management route and require "chores" as part of being a member of the family.
My mom gave me an allowance not tied to chores and it worked pretty well. I saved up enough money to pay for my own New Kids on the Block concert ticket and for half of a Nintendo, and was pretty proud of that.
As for newsletters I always read as soon as they pop up: yours, Open Water by Wendy Robinson, Living Small, The Analog Family, Everything is Liminal, and The Purse.
Big newsletter reader here! Some of my faves are: A thing or two, A tiny apt, Extracurricular, Present Perfect, It's always something, Long Live, Maybe Baby, Things I would Buy if I didn't have to pay rent, Diary of a New Yorker, A Newsletter (by Alison Roman),
I read a lot of newsletters. My faves I read every time are Culture Study, Tea Notes by Erin Boyle, In Pursuit of Clean Countertops, yours (!), Your Local Epidemiologist, Living Small by Laura Fenton, Erin in the Morning by Erin Reed, and The Audacity by Roxane Gay.
Failed allowance giver here! I think I had read somewhere that kids should get a dollar per age year, so I think we started when my kids were 5 and 7. We didn't tie it to chores, although my husband insists that the reason he makes the bed everyday is because his allowance was tied to it (I don't care if the bed is made, just that the covers are pulled up. And I don't really care if the kids make their beds, since they can shut their bedroom doors, lol). But eventually we stopped having the correct amount of cash on hand, had to make change from the kids own stash, and started saying "we'll just pay you double next week". So we stopped.
In its place we... just paid for everything, and gave birthday and holiday gifts ahead of time (I am in retail and have have never been precious about getting gifts. "Tell me what you want from the website/let's go shopping together" works for us). And the kids did get the occasional cash from their grandparents on birthdays or "just because". My kids are 20 and 22 now, work during the summers and school breaks and have never brought up that they feel ripped off or denied because they didn't have allowance.
Allowance! The bane of my existence! I don’t have it all figured out at ALL but I decided NOT to make it conditional bc of all the things you outlined. Just ... this is for some spending autonomy and your discretionary items. Like you want a $6 fried potato stick at the farmers market. Or something that’s $2-18 at Target. Anyway. I’ve had many backfires and re-sets involving me forgetting to pay them, wanting advances, etc. and my 2024 approach is: $20 to each kid (7 and almost 9. 7 is obsessed with money. 9 barely cares) at the top of the month, the end. I’m optimistic.
I always read and enjoy Kelsey Keith's Ground Condition newsletter: https://kelseykeith.substack.com/ and I think you will too!
I like Big Salad, Crone Sandwich, Eliza Kinkz illustration newsletter - lots of children's illustrators. I can't keep up with Culture Study so had to unsubscribe!