Welcome back to become a calm mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlyn Childress. I'm

a life and parenting coach. And today on the podcast, I wanna

talk about allowance and financial

literacy and how I teach the concept of

allowance to my clients. And I brought this up

today because the last few weeks in the Calm Mama Club, I have

coached a few different moms about allowance and how they

connect to chores and whether you should connect them to chores, whether you should

pay kids for doing their chores and how it all works.

So I wanted to break it all down on the podcast because I realized I

had not done a podcast episode on allowance

and chores. Today's podcast episode is not

really going to be about chores. Because as you'll see, the way

that I teach allowance is really

around the concept of financial literacy. And then I teach

chores around being in a community. I will

connect chores and allowance in this podcast, but not in the

way that you think that you typically think about them because we're not

gonna pay kids to do chores. Because as a part of your

community, in your family, they should participate in that

community because they live there. Right? Because they participate in that

community. So we want our kids to have chores so that they learn about

being in a community and being responsible, and we want them to have money

so they learn about being responsible with money.

Okay. No joke. I just got interrupted while recording this podcast from

my 18 year old son, who's a freshman in college, asking me

if I could send him his weekly allowance for college. Isn't that so

funny? It it's just made me chuckle. Okay.

Now I wanna talk to you about financial literacy, not so much

what it means, but just how important it is to give your

kids the skills around managing their money.

And I want to remind you that when you wanna teach your kids how

to read, you give them books. When you wanna

teach your kids about their feelings, you emotionally coach them

about their feelings. When you wanna teach them how to count

or to do math, you give them things that they can count, little

manipulatives, little math games. So if you wanna teach

your kids about money, you have to give them some. That's

my frame of reference when it comes to allowance is I

want to give my kids some money so that they

learn all sorts of things about money. So

one thing I want them to learn when it comes to money is I want

them to learn the feeling of having some

money and then spending that money, making

that decision to spend the money. I want them to

have the feeling of spending it and being thrilled by the purchase

and being really proud of themselves. And I also want them to have the

feeling of spending money on something that's

not quality or that breaks really fast or that they

regret and have a little buyer's remorse.

I want them to have a lot of different experiences with money,

which means I need to give them some and then let them make a lot

of decisions about it. I also want them to have

the feeling of saving their money in order

to get something. But I want them

also to have the feeling of wanting something and not having

enough because they didn't save. So in all these

examples, I'm giving them experiences with

being successful as well as failing. I want

them to have money and to use it in ways that

are great and not use it and use it in ways that aren't great. I

want them to have money and save and feel that really great feeling of

having a lot of money and then buying something if they wanna buy something or

whatever. And I want them to feel that sad feeling of, oh, I wish I

would have saved my money so I could afford blankety

blank. I also want them to experience

that the experience of paying

for fines, for lack of better term.

Like, sometimes in life, I might make a mistake. I

might not pay my credit card bill on time, or I might

accidentally leave my clothes in the washing machine, and they get

mildew or something like that. I might make a mistake in

life, speeding ticket, or don't turn off the,

the heater, and I get a big gas bill. Right? I

sometimes do things in life that make then I make a

mistake, then I have to pay money to fix it.

It costs me money when I make mistakes. So I want my kids to have

a little bit of money, so that they can also pay

actual money for the mistakes that they make. Now,

primarily, what I'm talking about here is chores.

So I'm gonna start there with the way that I think about

allowance with chores. Imagine you have a little, you know, 7 year

old and their job is to empty the dishwasher when they get

home from school or make their bed or wipe

down the sink, you know, in the after brushing their

teeth or putting their socks and shoes away, some kind

of task like that. And it's just a standard routine.

I'll teach you in another podcast episode how to create chores,

but like, how to create the rhythm of chores in your

family. But just thinking about the fact that you have expectations,

your kids kinda know what they're supposed to do. Right? They have jobs.

And I love that. I want your kids to have lots of jobs. Now, what

happens if they don't do their job? That's one of the biggest questions

we get about, you know, when you have a kid and they don't do their

chores, what are you supposed to do about it? So here's how I do

it, is they have their chores.

And if I have to do their chore for them,

then they need to pay me for my time

or my energy or the attention.

They, they need to pay me back because I did their chore for them.

So it needs to cost them something. Not doing their chore is a

mistake. And when you make mistakes, you have to

pay for them, right? You have to make them right. You have

to do restitution and fix things.

And so that's how I handled

chores for the most part throughout the kids' elementary school

and even into high school. I would give them allowance.

Right? They would have some money that, you know, they could also earn more money

by doing extra chores that weren't their regular chores. So they'd have a little

bit of spending money. And then if they didn't do something,

like bring the trash cans in, that was one of their big jobs, empty the

dishwasher, obviously clean up after themselves. They didn't

do one of their chores, and I had to do it because I went to

bed and realized they went to bed and I realized they hadn't done it. Or

I go into the bathroom when I see the sink, something like that, and I

wipe it down. I would make a little note and I'd say, oh, this chore

cost $1. And then I would either

go the next day and say, hey, you owe me a dollar because I did

your chore. Or when it was time for allowance and I went

to give them the $5 I would hold back some of the money and I'd

say, oh, this is to pay me for the chores that I did for you.

You don't have as much because I'm docking your allowance

to pay for the chores that you didn't do. So I

love that concept. I'm not paying you

for doing your chores. The the allowance

is set. But if I have to do your chores

for you, then you're paying me.

Isn't that great? So

we wanna give our kids, an allowance. Right? So that they can

learn how to manage money, make mistakes,

how that to use money to pay for mistakes that they've made,

to spend money, to save money, to have all of

those feelings. So one of the things that I've

noticed has to come alongside when you start

with allowance is that you start

to eliminate or dramatically reduce

the things that you buy for your kids. So let

me break this down. Imagine that I'm going to, like,

a carnival, like, a state fair or like a local

carnival or or your school might have kind of a

festival or something like that. So as a parent, I decide

what I'm willing to buy and I decide that in advance.

I'm not impulsively getting there and just being like, oh my god. My kids keep

asking me for money and I'm so overwhelmed and you don't wanna say no. I

want you to think about how much you wanna spend, what you're willing to pay

for. So I'm like, I'm gonna give you each, you

know, $20 wristband or $20 in

coins or whatever the little thing is, and I'm willing to buy one

sweet treat. Right? Then anything

extra that you want, you can pay for it.

So that kind of idea is So that your kids have to have

some money if they want to pay for

something extra. So imagine you go to

Target or you go to, you know, a a drugstore or something like that.

And they're like, mom, I want to buy this, you know, little army men

or this little doll or these, you know, these stickers or these, you know,

stick on tattoos or something like that. One of those

impulse buys, you know. And then they say: mom, mom, mom, can you buy

this for me? And you can say: oh, no, no, no. I'm not spending my

money. Did you bring your money? They'll probably say: no, no. I

don't have any money with me. I have money. My money is at the house.

Can you Can I pay you back? And then you can decide whether

you want to lend money that day or not. So you can say no, the

bank's closed. I'm not open for lending money. Or if it's something

that you don't mind them having, you can say: sure. Go ahead. I'll happy to

lend you money. And then when they get home, you give they hand you the

money back. Now, what form is this money in?

It's really important for kids under 12,

even a little bit older, but for sure under 12 to have some sort

of piggy bank or a place to hold their money

so that they can see it and touch it and notice if it's

growing, if it's little bit of a lot. We wanna make

it concrete. So having a bank account and having a

money in the bank is a little bit vague for them. It's hard

for them to understand how much it is, how much is

available, those kinds of things. So we want our kids to have

a piggy bank of some kind. It doesn't have to be, like, an

actual piggy bank. We just want them to have something that they can put their

money in. I think my kids had, like,

well, some of them they had sometimes they had wallets, which was fun, but they'd

always lose them. But they'd have a little basket in their room, and they'd have

money in these little baskets. So when you think about

having your kids, when you are out and about,

start to buy them less stuff. Or when you're going to buy

them something, tell them in advance. And then let them decide if

they wanna buy something extra that it would be their money.

Now, what people often ask me is should they be able

to buy whatever they want? What if it's a piece of junk?

What if it's candy? Right? What if it's,

you know, something they wanna buy for their friend or they wanna spend too much

money on something? Then this is where we want

to begin to separate ourselves a little

bit and let them have that experience. Let them figure out for

themselves what they wanna spend money on. Let them buy

something and regret it. Let them buy something and be happy about

it. Let them find the feeling of giving a gift to a friend

and spending a lot of money. But then the next time when you go to

the carnival or you go to to the drugstore or wherever, and

they realize, oh, I spent all my money on that one thing.

So, yeah, that's tough. It's gonna take you a while.

How how many weeks did it take you to get that much

money? Do you know? And you start doing the budgeting, you start

doing the math, you start having conversations with them. If you give

them $5 a week and they want to buy something that costs

$60 that's 3 months of savings.

That's a lot of savings. That's a lot of time to not buy something

that they would want, something smaller,

something less expensive. So we want to stop buying

toys on demand, snacks on demand, extras on

demand. We want to help our kids look forward to

birthdays and holidays for the special items, but also having

that desire of saving your money to get something.

Now, obviously, with someone with ADHD or, I mean, most kids in

general, they're gonna have a lot of regret. They're

gonna buy things that are dumb. I

would rather your kids buy stupid stuff at age 7

than to waste tons of money when they're in college.

I want them to learn the feeling of not having enough money to

get something or to have something that they want. I want

them to have that experience. So we have to give them these small

examples and moments where they get to practice spending

money and things like that. So you have to start buying

less. Now, if your kid was trying to save something,

you know, save $60 and they only have, you know,

$20, you are welcome to create

chores or extra jobs that you can pay them

for. And you can be really generous. You can be stingy. I don't doesn't matter.

You can say, okay, you know, if you wanna do my chores for me, these

are things that I am responsible for. You're welcome to do those

and here's the going rate. So you could just make it up. If you

want them to, you know, do the laundry or mop

the floors or, I don't know, small chores

that you do in the house that you think that they're capable of doing properly,

you go ahead and give them that that responsibility. And then you

can quality control it and just say, nope. This is not you do

not do a $5 job. This is only a $4 job. If you want

the full $5, you're gonna need to do this and that. Right? Go

back and have them do that. That is really that feeling of,

like, you know, working hard to earn something

and to keep at it and to, you

know, do the right do it do it properly and to get

paid appropriately. That's a good feeling. So you can teach

your kids the value of working to get money,

working to earn, and then also how

important it is to do good work in order to

get your full pay. So you can teach a little bit of work ethic

and work habits in there when it comes to earning money.

So we have, like, a baseline for allowance and then we

have a, extra

opportunities if you want to. You don't have to. You actually don't have to do

any of this at all. You don't have to give your kids money if you

don't want to. You don't have to buy them extra stuff ever. There's no

requirement that you add anything to your life whatsoever.

I just know that some people are interested in teaching their kids about

money, and this is a good strategy to do it.

Now, how much money is is one of the

questions I get. And, obviously, that's very personal depending

on your financial situation, where you live, what your

kids have access to. You know, if

you had 4 kids and you give each one $5 a

week, then that's $20. That's $80 a month. Like, it can

add up quite a bit. The cool thing though is when you start

giving your kids allowance and you stop buying extra stuff,

you'll actually have a better handle on your own,

income, you know, your own money because you won't be just kind of throwing

money over here and there and buying everybody a Starbucks or everybody an ice

cream when you weren't planning on it because those are the kinds of things that

we're gonna pull back. We're gonna say, no. I'm not gonna buy those today. I'm

not willing to spend my money. You can spend yours.

So you'll probably actually spend less on your kids if you give them a

decent size allowance. What's a decent size allowance?

You can start this around 3. And I feel like $1

a week is great, up until

they're, like, 5 or 6, something like that. 7, you can keep

it to $1. And then you wanna kinda go up to a little bit more,

$2, $3, $5. Our thing was

$1 until you were 6. And then but I always did the

boys at the same. So, like, sore it was 4. He got a little bit

extra. And then we did $5 for a really long time. It was

$20 a month. That was seemed to be about right for them

in terms of stuff that they would probably wanna get. And then when they were

in high school, I started to change. I gave them

much more, but they had to buy their food when they were

out with their friends. They had to pay for their movies. They had to pay

for their bowling nights and whatever that kind of thing

was. They'd have to pay for those things. So it's more like

$20 a week. But if they saved it, they could have

$80 in a month and they would be able to do something really fun like

go to a concert. That's the same concept I have now

with how much money I give to my kids in college

is I give them slightly more than is necessary for the

week or for the month. 1 kid wants it weekly, 1 kid wants it

monthly cause they're trying to figure out how to budget. And I

give them a little bit extra because I've told them many times I'm

not willing to pay for spring break trips. I'm not willing

to pay for concerts. I'm not willing to pay for extra stuff

that comes up. You have to save your money

for those things. And they consistently don't have any

money. They blow it. So they're learning. They're figuring it out.

Okay. So the last thing I wanted to talk about was sweets and candy

because we I've given that as an example. So it's like, you

know, I'm gonna I'm willing to buy one sweet treat at the school

carnival. And that's only if you wanted to. You could also say

0. Now what if your kids like, I wanna spend $20. I

brought all my money and I wanna buy all of the sweets. Right? Some

of kids are gonna want that. You are, as

a parent, I've talked about this on the podcast, you are

responsible for what your kids eat,

when they eat and where they eat. Now, even

if it's their money, you always have that

right of refusal. So you can

say no, I'm not having you

buy extra sweets today. You can spend your money

on other things. You're welcome to spend your money as long as you don't spend

it on sweets. That's like, you know, when my kids

were in elementary school, we would go to this park every day. Every Wednesday after

school and there would be a ice cream truck. And that

ice cream truck would come and the boys knew and they would bring their dollar

and they would bring their, you know, like, very excited about it. And

they would buy, like, Spongebob Squarepants ice cream. It was, like, just such

junk that I and then finally, I said to them, you are welcome to

spend your money on non sweet things during

the school week. So I just kinda made this new rule where it's like,

you can maybe buy things on the weekends for sweets, but not during Monday

through Friday. I just made it up. And then they were like,

oh, okay. That's the rule. I can't buy anything. They're sad. And

that's fine. It's okay. So you get to say, no. You have

the veto. I would caution you.

Like, the first few times the boys bought ice cream on the ice cream truck,

I was like, fine. Whatever. But then I didn't, like,

make it a thing. But then it became kind of a habit and they I

was, like, essentially giving them money every week so they could buy stuff from the

ice cream truck that I didn't really want them to do. I realized that didn't

feel aligned. Then I pulled back, made a new rule.

So sometimes you kinda need to let let the failure happen or find out

what you're truly uncomfortable with. Maybe it's a one off. I actually want

them to buy some ice cream and then go, well, that was stupid. I'm done

with it, and I wasted my money. Like, I wanted them to have that

regret. But this in this case, it wasn't happening. They were, like,

excited every Wednesday. And I was, like, okay. No. I'm gonna fix this.

So I wanna caution you to not say no right away, but

let the situation play out a little bit.

See if they're gonna come to their own conclusion. Let them do

their own thinking. You can talk about it. You can say, oh,

remember, okay, you have $5. If you buy this thing for

$2.50, you're gonna have $2.50. But remember, this

weekend, we're going to whatever you're going to.

Do you want to only have $2 or do you wanna

have $5? So you can start talking about

how do you wanna spend your money thinking about the future, giving

them perspective. But if they don't have any money, they're

just asking you for money, then that's a very different conversation. You're not

asking them to think about their money. You're just telling them no,

and they don't understand why you're saying no. You

probably don't even really understand why you're saying no half the time. Right?

So we to recap, we wanna give our kids

some money. We wanna give them some allowance. And that

just gives them the ability to have some money in their pocket

that you can teach them how to spend, how to save,

how to have regret, how to feel proud. And,

also, they have some money to pay you back for when you do

things for them, like their chores. And that

way, you have a little bit of, you know, another

way to have them re make repair back to you using

money. You don't have to. You can also just use time. Hey. You didn't do

your chores. The, I did your chores today, so you

can do mine. I'm happy to take you to soccer once you have done these

three things, like vacuumed the floor, tidied up the pillows,

you know, wipe down the doorknobs, you know, small little things like

that. You you can just have them repair back to you in

time. But, also, if they have some money, you can have them repair back to

you in money, which is pretty cool.

Alright. I think that is all I had to say about it.

Oh, I guess I was gonna say when to open in a bank account.

I would recommend more a little bit older, to be honest, like, when they're

12 or 13. And the green light cards

are really helpful because they can see that

they have you know, they can see their you give them a certain amount

of money, and then they can, like, practice with the debit card thing. But it's

it's very interesting how, like, my kids have a credit

card and they have a debit card, and they really like

using their debit card more than credit because they can see the money

going down. With the credit card, they don't

see it. They just kind of they're, like, waiting to just get to their max

or something. It's not real as much as, like, oh, I only have,

you know, $22 left in the bank. So they're constantly checking

their debit accounts. Now they're older. So how did they

learn how to do that is through having allowance and then

eventually having jobs, like actual jobs where they,

you know, made money and then learning how to manage that money

completely. Paying for gas and, you know, buying their own

clothing and paying for their food out and their drinks out,

like their Starbucks and their Red Bulls and whatever.

That's later. So when they're in middle school, you

kinda wanna establish, like, okay, we're gonna have a a bank account.

Now, if your kid has a ton of money from grandparents and you have to

make a bank account, like, of course, but realize that they don't know anything about

it. They're not connected to the bank account. You are you're the

one who's managing that. The only money that they really manage is the stuff that's

in their hands until around 12. Now, when you open

up a bank account for them, whatever age, I

suggest you opt for monthly statements, paper statements.

And I hopefully, banks still offer that where you can get something in the

mail because then it's addressed to them. They open it.

They start to review it. You can review it with them, and you get into

the habit of looking at how much you have and how much you spent

and, like, are you happy about your things you bought? What are

your goals? What do you wanna save money for? Are there anything

extras? Do you wanna spend money on doing paying me for your chores? Do you

wanna keep doing that? Or would you rather just do them? So you're having a

conversation with that monthly statement, which is really

cool. Okay. I

think that is it. If you have any questions,

of course, you are always welcome to join the Come Mama Club. We talk

about this kind of stuff in our weekly group sessions. That is

on Tuesdays at 9:30 Pacific. We meet every Tuesday for

about an hour. Lots of you know, the people come. The moms come. They ask

questions. And the moms ask me questions and I coach

them. And then there's some chat happening with, like, in the chat. There's lots of

really good ideas going on in there all the time, which I love. So the

Calm Mama Club is always available to you to join. It's $30 a

month. You get the online course, that Calm Mama handbook, weekly

group coaching, as well as a bunch of other online

resources. So that's pretty cool. Or you could reach out to

me and DM me on Instagram at darlin childress

or reply to an email if you're on my email list. And just let

me know, like, oh, hey. I have a question about this. And I'm happy to

answer. Alright, mamas. I hope you are having

a great week and that you've learned something today about

money. And I will talk to you next time.