Your Kids And Money: Teaching The Value Of A Dollar
What's the point of an allowance?
For Ron Lieber, personal finance writer for The New York Times, it's a tool to help teach values and character traits like patience, moderation, thrift and generosity. And Lieber, who's writing a book, The Opposite of Spoiled, about kids, money and values, tells Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there are three basic ways that parents approach an allowance.
No chores necessary.
This is the method that Lieber and his wife use. They give their 7-year-old daughter $3 a week, which she divides in thirds. She puts $1 into a "spend" jar to buy anything that she wants, $1 into a "save" jar for medium- to long-term goals and $1 into a "give" jar that ultimately goes to a cause of her choosing. "She spends a lot of time thinking about that," Lieber says.
He says this approach has fostered a sense of confidence and empowerment in his daughter, who, on a recent shopping trip "was so thrilled at the idea that she had the power to make some decisions for herself and that I or my wife wasn't going to have anything to do with it."
Do you give an allowance?