I recently started giving my son an allowance. He's 8 years old. I decided that I was taking him to far too many movies and giving in too often to getting him treats and little toys when we go to the store. I'm good at saying "no," so that wasn't the issue. The issue is that I want him to understand the value of money, and I found that he didn't.

So, I made a deal with him. I decided to give him the amount of his age in allowance. So that's $8 per week. But the deal is, I no longer buy him ANY treats or movie tickets or anything. If he wants to go to the movies, he has to pay his own way. If he wants to buy trading cards or even a candy at the store, he has to buy it.

So that's working out not too badly.

Here's my question. If you give your kids allowance, do you restrict what they can spend it on? For instance, this weekend, my son had enough saved up in the bank to get one of those handheld gameboy things, a Nintendo DS. He's wanted one for ages. I've never bought him one because I don't like them and don't want him to become addicted to it. But...I figure any eight year-old who manages to save up his birthday and Christmas money for a year or two, and tops it up by saving parts of his allowance, should probably not be denied buying an expensive toy with the savings.

One rule I DO have, though, is that he's not allowed to buy more than one candy treat per day, and I restrict what kind of treats he's allowed to buy as well.

Regarding working for it - he doesn't have to work for his allowance. But I've taken part of it away from him once as a punishment. What do you think of tying household chores to allowance? Or using allowance as something to take away from a child?

I'm biased, but I say let him have the games. Childhood is a good time to play games, and in hindsight it didn't cost me much in life. To be completely honest if I could go back I would skip more class in high school and play more video games, I'd be in the same position intellectually, academically and socially but with more happy memories. I have warm memories of playing Age of Empires II, I don't have any such memories of sitting in in Biology. Besides I would have just caught up in biology by cramming for the exam, that's how easy high school is. One thing I remember fondly is deceiving my mom by telling her I was sick at 8am, faking it till like 930, and then going to go play super mario kart and final fantasy.

If I could recommend one thing in greater seriousness though. I got my first job at 18. In hindsight, I would recommend to any kid getting a part-time job as soon as they can, be it working summer camp at 14 or flipping burgers at 15. That's how I really learned the value of money and if I had learned it earlier it would have been nice. Also, I would have avoided a situation whereby I almost flunked out of CEGEP because I couldn't afford reading glasses (so no class notes) and I couldn't afford any of the textbooks. Starting early also leads to opportunities such as being promoted to a managerial position. One friend got a manager's position at mcdonald's at 18; another friend was made a manager at famous players at 16 (almost 17), he was the youngest person ever to get that promotion for famous players. He would work 40 hours a week there while maintaining a full international baccalaureate course load, quite impressive I think.

[ 02 April 2007: Message edited by: 500_Apples ]

Our sons are 5 and 10 and don't receive allowances. The older tends to spend more than the younger. I have started charging them from their accumulated holiday surpluses for discretionary items. The oldest owes me $20 for a George Strait cd he purchased on Saturday and the younger the same amount for a DVD he purchased.

Over the years, we've tried different things to see if we can teach him the value of money and also, to add some incentive to modify some of his behaviour.

For example, he's not applying himself in school and is therefore, having a year that is frustrating -- for his parents and his teachers especially. So we've tried giving him a bonus to his allowance if he keeps his appointment with the teacher every day after school, to make sure he has everything he needs to complete his work at home. If he misses a day, no bonus -- although we don't dock him. It doesn't particularly work.

I'm not a neat-nik -- far from it -- but I really hate dishes left in the living room or at the computers and chip bags or other wrappers left anywhere except in the garbage. So for awhile, every time I had to pick up dishes or garbage, I took a quarter out of his bank. It didn't help though so I gave up.

He gets a fair amount of money from relatives at birthdays and Christmas but it's expected -- by them as well as by us -- that at least half of it goes into his education fund.

He's a pretty good saver but we still have a say in what he spends his savings on -- what games and movies he's permitted to rent etc.