We want our kids to help around the house because of their keen sense of appreciation for what we do for them…..they should do it because of their responsibility as a citizen of the home…..and because of a range of other intrinsic motivations…..but kids will be kids. Socialism is a warm, wonderful “wish” too, but it also doesn’t work in reality.
Behavior normally follows Attitude – you feel a certain way so you behave accordingly. But how do you create change? Dale Carnegie teaches something that seems counter-intuitive – that Attitude can follow Behavior. If you “Act enthusiastic (a behavior), you’ll be enthusiastic (an attitude)”. The idea is that if you want to feel a certain way, try changing your behavior – it’s a lot easier to change behavior than it is to change attitude…..and that a changed attitude will follow.
With Responsibilities linked to Allowance and perhaps other rewards, we may initially be working on the behavior part, but we can see in our children that with consistency and constant reinforcement, it’s showing up in our their attitudes as well (admittedly after several years).
OK. I’m exulting. We just had a fantastic time visiting Canada’s Wonderland, a huge amusement park near Toronto, with our 9 and 11 year olds.
You may recall Poor Boy – he’s still poor and rebelling. But his 9 year old brother is comparatively rich (he takes after our 13 year old).
When we went to the park, they understood that Mum ‘n Dad cover the cost of park entrance (includes rides) and lunch. But if they want to play arcade games, it’s on their dime and they’d have to write a check from their Active Allowance account as soon as they got home.
Well, Rich Boy chose to spend $5.00 throwing 2 basketballs….missing of course. But there wasn’t a peep nor a nay from Mum ‘n Dad. Not even when he spent another $4.00 trying to ring the bell with a sledgehammer. It was his money to spend (full disclosure – I REALLY had to bite my lip. What a colossal waste!!).
And not a peep from Poor Boy. He looked longingly at the basketballs…currently his 2nd favorite sport. But he knew he had no money, so he couldn’t play – he could only step back and watch. So sad…..but what a great teaching moment. Another step on the path to his understanding that earnings and savings might actually have some merit.
We spent over 6 hours at the park and didn’t hear one “gimme”.
As Hannibal Smith used to say on the A-Team TV show: “I love it when a plan comes together”
PS. Rich Boy was later heard to said to his brother on the way home “those games were a big waste of money”. And I don’t think he was just trying to make his brother feel better. Both kids learned something today!
Recently, we’ve seen many Quicken Kids & Money members join Active Allowance. A hearty “Welcome” to all of you!
It seems that, Intuit, the company behind Quicken, have shuttered the Quicken Kids & Money site, deciding to focus resources on their core corporate business lines.
We have to admit – we admired Quicken Kids and Money….and were also a little envious of their enormous budget. They did an outstanding job of helping parents teach children financial literacy. The world needs more of this.
And we also admired them because they espoused many similar views to our own. Quicken Kids & Money was skewed more towards advice, while Active Allowance is skewed more toward online, flexible tools…but the core philosophies are similar.
We know there’s a real need for this kind of service – our members tell us this every day. So we plan to continue to meet this need. And since our youngest is only 9 (we’re heavy users ourselves), we’ll be doing this for a very, very long time!
Our 13 year old is a great saver, diligent about doing his chores and fulfilling his responsibilities, and even remembers to check things off on his Active Allowance checklists. As a result, he usually earns his entire allowance and often earns bonuses. And when he babysits, he asks us to put it into his big ticket item account so he wouldn’t be tempted to spend it on movies. This summer, he finally bought that big ticket item – an electric guitar.
End of story, great lesson learned, right? Well….right, but there’s more to the story…..
Our 11 year old is also pretty diligent about his chores and responsibilities. But as soon as he has some money in his Family Bank Account (note for non-members: it’s on Active Allowance), it manages to burn a hole in his pocket. And to make matters worse, he hates filling out the checklist….so he hasn’t been doing it. And therefore earns no allowance. He still does his chores – he knows there will be non-allowance consequences if he doesn’t. But he just doesn’t fill out the checklist (go figure!).
We’ve hung tough, so when he wants to buy something, our simple answer is “Do you have the money?”.
Last week, Poor Boy came downstairs with a few gift cards in his hands – he’d previously received some as gifts and some as prizes for winning squash tournaments. He asked me if I’d “buy” them from him. I smiled, told him I’d buy the one from an electronics store since we needed a new DVD player. But not the one from the music store.
So he went to 13 year old Rich Boy to see if he had a buyer. No dice. Then a brain wave. “I know you want to buy a DVD of a rock concert. I’ll sell you a $25 card for $20.”
That was brilliant! Necessity – the mother of invention. He managed to figure out on his own some basic principles of economics, use his salesmanship and demonstrate resourcefulness. I’m not quite ready to put this on his college application, but not bad!
Rich Boy said yes. And now Poor Boy has $20 cash instead of an unwanted gift card. Rich Boy learned cash is king. Poor Boy learned about market principles. Both of them won.
And we learned again that sticking with our Allowance and Responsibilities process and making it part of everyday life teaches the kids important lessons – even when it’s not initially apparent.
Mind you, now that Poor Boy has sold off his “assets, I sure hope he gets into “earning” mode real soon! Stay tuned for future episodes in the ongoing saga.
In our case, I mistakenly thought our 14 year old understood this but I never explained it explicitly. It was the source of a great amount of unstated frustration for her which festered over several months and created unnecessary animosity towards the system. It took a while to get back on track.
By doing this, you’d be telling your teen “I’ve kept the list small, to relatively few important things, but if you don’t do them, it has a significant impact on your allowance. It’s important to us that you do them”.
While all family philosophies are different, we don’t include homework on the list for any of our children. However, for the younger ones, we do include “homework finished by 6:00 pm” as a bonus item to earn an extra point. And for all our kids, we also give bonus points for finishing major projects (yikes!) early. And it works! Each of our kids accomplished this herculean task twice this year. And they’ve lived to tell the tale
“Any idea how we can inspire our 13-yr old to actually cooperate with our new allowance & chores system?”
There’s no doubt it’s tougher to get teens started on a new system if they never had chores or responsibilities when they were younger. Nevertheless, we do have members who tell us they’ve had good success. Before I elaborate, here’s a brain teaser: Try to distinguish between teenagers’ “Yecch’s” and the “Yay’s” for the following words:
I know it sounds unlikely to some parents, but teenagers CAN often be mature and rational too……but you may need to connect the dots for them. The key is to accentuate the positives – more freedom to decide what they buy, more opportunities to earn extra, more clarity and consistency from Mom and Dad, as just a few examples.
There are no hard and fast rules as to what will work for your kids and your family since a) all kids are different and b) there are so many different family philosophies on this subject. Nevertheless, here are a few things to consider:
For the allowance, create a mini-budget, making it clear how much spending power you’re shifting into his hands and in what areas. Also make it clear what he needs to do to earn extra. This is usually pretty exciting and empowering. For a teen, it’s called “freedom”!
And – especially important – collaborate on creating the chores/responsibilities list too – don’t just hand her a finished version of what you’d like to see. Seek her input and ideas. You can use it as an opportunity to teach her the importance of sharing the family effort as well as help her connect the dots.
Out of the box tip: Sometimes teens suggest a tough task (I’ll wash the floor EVERY DAY!). Resist the urge to rub your hands with glee, or murmur mwah-ha-ha. Consider rejecting it or making it easier, at least temporarily. You might say “Let’s agree to add that one next month” or even reject it altogether. You will be modeling reasonableness which, in turn, encourages buy-in.
