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4 Tips for Giving Your Kids an Allowance

4 Tips for Giving Your Kids an Allowance

Many parents struggle on whether or not they should be giving their kids an allowance. However, allowances can be good teaching moments, helping your child learn how to better manage their money at an early age. If you’re planning on giving your kids an allowance, here are some tips to get you started: 

Make them earn it 

You shouldn’t just be handing out money to your kids every week. This will teach them very little about the rewards of hard work. Instead, have their allowance depend on the chores that they get done around the house. If they don’t do their chores, they don’t get their allowance. You can also add bonuses if your child does extra work around the house, or if they did particularly well on a recent exam. 

Give them one dollar per year of age, each week 

Once you have the rules set in place, the next thing you need to think about is how much you’re giving your kids each week. It’s recommended that you give them $1 per year of age, each week. In other words, if you have a 5-year-old at home, they should be earning $5 each week. Once they turn 6, they’ll earn $6 each week, and so on and so forth. 

Encourage them to save 

Kids have poor impulse control, so they will likely want to spend their money right away. If this is truly what they want to do, then let them, but you should try encouraging them to save their money for something else down the road. Help create an end-goal (such as tickets to an amusement park or a new stuffed animal) that they can build towards to teach them the benefits of saving. 

But let them spend their money how they want 

At the end of the day, your child earned that money fair and square, so they should be able to spend it on what they want. Even if it’s something silly that they won’t want in a few hours, buyer’s remorse can be a good teaching moment for your kids. The more they experiment with their money, the more they will learn how to better manage it in the long run. 

Once your child has saved up some money of their own, one of the many things they can buy for themselves is a stuffable animal from The Zoo Factory. Check out our inventory to get started! 

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