Allowances: conditional or unconditional?

[pne]

Thanks for all the responses on my post about pocket money! (And if you would still like to respond, by all means do.)

Several of you mentioned that you had to work for your allowances, i.e. whether or not you got any, or the amount of it, depended on chores you did or similar things.

How did that work out for you? How would you do it with your children, or how would you have wished things had been when you were a child?

I can see both sides: I've heard that allowances should be a fixed thing that children can rely on and budget with, and not dependent on good behaviour or chores; on the other hand, working for money also has its rewards, as does being able to supplement a base value with additional money from chores.

As for us, our pocket money was unconditional, as best I recall. We were expected to do chores, of course, but our pocket money wasn't tied to them.

Comments

[quinctia]

I don't think tying it to chores is a bad thing. I remember getting pretty frustrated as a kid, though, because my parents, while not huge slobs, have never been very diligent about cleaning on a regular basis. If things get really dusty, they break out the dusters, if something gets spilled, they sweep, that sort of thing. And, since I said, I was a bit older when they started paying me to do chores, I was wondering why suddenly I had to dust and vacuum weekly when they never used to.

Of course, Amy's young enough to where she probably can't do all of that now, even with help, anyway. So I wouldn't make any supposedly "mandatory" chore something that you don't already do on a regular basis. Though I think giving her a small base amount and letting her take over certain chores for more money as she gets older might be a good way to adjust her allowance and let her take over more responsibility as she gets older.