Family · Ridiculousness

So, How Much is a Good Allowance For 2 Ungrateful Children?

hotmessmemoir

Ok, I want to hear from people with children and people who remember being children or find they are just an adult child. I need some advice on setting up chores for my sons.

Almost daily I ask the boys to unload the dishwasher. You would think I asked them to unload the dishwashers of a cruise ship after the formal dinner. What the hell? In my mind I’m thinking, ‘listen up Thing 1 and Thing 2, this is like the sole job I give you. We have a man maid for cryin’ out loud coming every other week. So God forbid if you help me with the dishes.

And would you like to see the extra time they take for putting away dishes, specifically the Tupperware cabinet?

TA-DA…..

Hot mess tupperware cabinet
JENGA! JENGA!

I love how the blue water bottle is balancing “just so” on the Pyrex measuring cup.

I think part of the reason why I’m so bad with money is because I never had an allowance to manage. My mother gave me the option of a fixed weekly income or a “do your chores, ask for it when you want it and a good portion of the time, I’ll say yes.”

My father tried the allowance thing till I became a smart ass at the age of 11.

“Your gonna get $2 whole dollars every week as an allowance.” My Father declared.

“Oh wow, your too generous dad. Perhaps I could take those $2 dollars and buy 1  schrunchie a week at Rite Aide. Or I could save up for a banana clip. The possibilities are endless with this sort of wealth.”

He gave me the evil eye, tucked it back into his money clip and declared there would be no allowance. In fact, we would now be working for free.

‘Yeah, we’ll see about that,’ I said under my breath on my way to ask my mom to take me to the mall.

So here I am now with 2 completely ungrateful children who find the dishwasher a challenge and always “forget” that I asked them to clean something.

I need suggestions people! I found this great website: My Job Chart and we used it until the boys got their Nooks and were like “screw you mom, we got what we came for and we are outtie.”

So I’m thinking like $5 a week for the oldest (10) and $2 for the youngest (7). Oh my God, I just said a $2 allowance. I’ve turned into my father. No, I’m worse then my father. I got $2 in the 80’s. With inflation, $2 is now what? $10?

Here are the basic chores I would love to see them do:

  • brush teeth (trust me they struggle with this)
  • make bed
  • unload dishwasher
  • feed Chi-chi
  • fold 1 load of laundry a week
  • sweep the floor

Not enough chores? I’m open for suggestions. What did you guys do? God, I want to be the kid again and not worry about this stuff.

 

Published by hotmessmemoir

Hello! My name is Angela (aka Hot Mess) and welcome to Hot Mess Memoir, a blog for the perfectly imperfect! Grab a glass of wine and let's discuss bad parenting, the things our kids do that makes us crazy, annoying people and everything that makes us shake our head!

17 thoughts on “So, How Much is a Good Allowance For 2 Ungrateful Children?”

  1. Well, there were always the dishes to be washed, dried and stacked away (orderly), later cooking once a week. Then, as of the age of ca. 8, the ironing, too. Our room (three kids in one, I am the oldest, so I was also made responsible of the outcome) was always our own responsibility (picking up, closets etc.). As of ten, also changing the sheets. Hanging up the washing, help in the garden (weeding I hated, also picking berries for marmalade). At my grandparents were the loved chores: mowing grass and foddering the pigs, collect the eggs from the hens hut, lead the cow or cows up into the woods to graze for the day and fetch them again at night, water them and get them in, help with haying and so on. Of course, later, when my mom fell ill for a long while, I had to run the entire household for a family of five. But that was a different story.
    Oh, the allowance? There was absolutely none, until one of my teachers suggested to my parents, that maybe it would be educational for me to learn to have some money to call my own. I was twelve or so, when I first got 10 Schillings a week, which today would be close to one dollar, but then, it was start of the eighties, too.

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  2. We run a communist type community here at the cracTpot household. It is expected that basic needs for each worker are met by the community, and there is no more to be obtained through working more than what is required. For example, if a worker puts in more time at work, he sees no additional reward, and production is minimally affected (ain’t that the truth!). It has obviously backfired as communism tends to do and has veered towards a dictatorship with the children obviously being the dictators and me the embittered working class eating the crusts off their bread and sacrificing everything in sake of state. On the bright side I don’t have to worry about not being organized enough to have cash on hand and left to write IOU’s on post it notes which I’m pretty sure would further destroy my credibility as a parent…so there’s that lol

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  3. My parents made a list of chores and actually let my brother and I choose a couple that we were willing to do. That way, we still had to help around the house in some way, but didn’t have to do something that we truly, truly hated. I chose unloading the dishwasher and sweeping so I could avoid the horrors of vacuuming 😀 I really don’t remember how much we were paid though – maybe $5 a week?

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  4. I just taught Munch how to sort his clothes and make his bed. I don’t really have any chores for him to do yet. But, I will figure it out and get back to you. I think $5.00 a week is fine for most children.

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  5. Room, board, transportation, clothing & shoes, hobby supplies, WiFi, etc, aren’t enough reason to do chores? Pfffttt! I taught my son to do all of the chores as soon as he was physically large enough to gain the skills he would need as an adult. I did give him money, but not on a weekly basis. He did his laundry or wore dirty clothes. He made his own lunch or went hungry. He helped in the yard or faced my wrath. Actions have consequences. I was a dictator because nothing else worked. He moved out and managed his own affairs for five years.

    Of course, he’s moved back in with me, so perhaps my method wasn’t all that successful…

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      1. It’s been a year and I AM NOT having a good time >:-( It seems to be a generational thing – many “kids” his age are moving back home and staying there. I’m refining my torture methods (and, yes, they do include doing chores) in an effort to convince him that moving out would be easier than staying, but he’s a stubborn little brat.

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  6. I’m a firm believer that if they’re old enough to speak in sentences, they’re old enough to chip in with home maintenance. We pay weekly allowances based on age: $1 x 1.5 years per each child. Until the kidlen gets a *real* job outside the home and are earning money from the outside. And then they get bupkis. Mom and Dad don’t get paid to chip in to the clan’s fold, so neither do you, Darlin’.

    We have a rotating chart that the kidlens do daily. The chart changes weekly so they don’t get too bored — or have the apparently AWFUL chore of kitchen duty for too long. We don’t have mutiny insurance here at Clan Allen.

    Best of luck!

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