Allowance And Chore System For The Kids

Posted on: May 13, 2009 by Matt 5 Comments


Milton Bradley’s Allowance Game

Originally uploaded by photophonic

Over the past few months my girlfriend and I have been kicking around the idea of setting up a chore and allowance system for the children.  Earlier this week as I arrived home for lunch my girlfriend informed me that she had drafted a chore system that morning and offered it to me to review.  I was a bit surprised as all of our talks so far had been in theory and now I had a physical document in my hand to look over.

The basics of the system were pretty much as we had discussed and read about from other sources.  We also had the additional wrench of having a split household situation where the children are not home 100% of the time. We settled on pretty much a hybrid of several popular theories the quick details are:

  • Each child will receive a base rate of $1.00 for each year in age weekly.
  • Chores must be done in order to receive payment – each chore is assigned a value.
  • In our case each child has 4 chores.  They are 10 and 5 years old, hence $0.50 and $0.25 per chore respectively.
  • We based the system on a 5 day work week – they may be home a bit less than this over all but chores are to be done prior to leaving for their father’s on days they will not be home.
  • We reserved the right to assess bonuses for good behavior as well as penalties for attitude, unwillingness to do chores or not doing what is asked.
  • Chores need to be done before bed time - no staying up late to finish your chores.
  • 10% of the allowance will be placed in a jar for the child to donate to a charity of their choosing.
  • 20% goes to a savings account.
  • The rest is for them to spend.

On Monday night we had a family meeting and discussed the new system with the children.  Overall it seemed to go fairly well and yesterday was our first day in practice with the new system.  As of last night – each child has had one deduction for chores not being done and the 10 year old has had one $0.50 attitude deduction. I was not home last night at bed time due to another commitment but when I did get home I was informed that my girlfriend’s daughter (the 10 year old) was a little weepy about the deduction for not completing a chore. So time will tell but it seems that the kids are both excited about the opportunity to earn money and be part of the community.

For anyone interested in checking it out our plan in detail here are the documents that my girlfriend drafted on Monday morning (with the children’s names removed for privacy):

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