When Elizabeth Winn stands in front of a new elementary or middle school class, she likes to ask the students to raise their hands if they think they cost their parents money.
“Nobody raises their hands,” Winn says. “They all think they are free.”
Winn, the district senior director for Junior Achievement’s Northern Colorado and Wyoming office, is part of a nationwide nonprofit that teaches students in public schools about finances and careers. Her prompt underscores a gap in how kids connect their own lives and habits to what will one day be expected of them as adults, she and others say. If kids don’t know that their parents are spending money on their school supplies, health insurance and clothes, for example, they also aren’t learning how their parents manage money.
Allowance is a good way to help kids learn about money management, Winn says, and it’s a common practice to tie it to chores around the house, almost like a salary for certain jobs parents assign their kids. Still, some argue that directly connecting all household chores with an allowance could cause kids to stray from the important developmental milestone of learning how to be selfless and responsible without a monetary reward.
Paid or not, essential duties, like helping to clear the table or put away clean laundry, remind kids that they are expected to contribute to their family, says Michelle Athanasiou, professor and chair of the School of Psychology at the University of Northern Colorado. Not only do those kinds of chores help kids practice time management, organization and self-discipline, but they also boost their sense of belonging, she says.
Ahead of summer break, Athanasiou and other experts offer pointers on getting a plan in place for chores and allowance that balances the importance of both.
A Junior Achievement class
Start with small tasks
Athanasiou recommends that parents familiarize their kids with small tasks starting as young as 3 years old. Putting away toys after they are finished playing is the perfect example. Starting such habits with a toddler is ideal, she says, because they are in a stage of wanting to help.
At around 4 or 5 years old, kids can start to make their beds, help feed pets or clear the table, she says. When they start school, they can help put away clean laundry, and by ages 10 or 11, they should be able to do almost any task, like clean bathrooms, change bed sheets or do yard work.
At each stage, Athanasiou says it’s important for parents to remember that kids aren’t going to perform those tasks perfectly—especially the first time. If kids are just learning how to make their bed, for instance, the sheets and comforter might still be crumpled. But a good first goal is to make sure the blanket covers the top of the bed so that the sheets are hidden.
As children get older, they will need an adult to model the more complicated tasks, Athanasiou says.
“You can’t just say, ‘Go do this,’” she says. “It has to be, ‘Watch me do this,’ then ‘Let’s do this together,’ then ‘I’m going to oversee this.’”
In addition to building important skills, chores can help remind kids that family members take care of each other, says Dr. Julie Brockway, a pediatrician with The Youth Clinic. They can give kids a sense of purpose and, when they have successfully finished a task, a sense of pride.
During the summer, chores can also offer much-needed structure. Some kids struggle with so much free time that they might feel like they are getting lost in their day, Brockway says.
For kids who are reluctant to do chores or for parents who implement chore expectations later in a kiddo’s life, she recommends having a conversation that centers on that same duty to family. Parents can point out that once the tasks in the house are finished, the whole family benefits by being able to do a fun activity together. If they refuse, that fun time never happens.
Of course, rewards for chores can vary from family to family. Prioritizing chores before play or screen time naturally creates motivation and a reward for what comes after. For example, a child who must clean their room before going to the movies experiences the natural satisfaction of getting to the fun activity at the end of the road.
“We call that grandma’s rule—you can’t have your dessert unless you’ve eaten your dinner,” Athanasiou says.
Show them the money?
Allowance can be a great way to expose kids to budgeting and practicing what Winn calls a core tenant of financial literacy: understanding a want versus a need.
If parents choose to connect chores with allowance, both Brockway and Athanasiou recommend elevating the difficulty or intensity of the paid tasks so that kids remain grounded in the habit of doing some chores for the benefit of the family.
However, they say it’s reasonable for kids to expect to be paid for jobs that are beyond routine. Brockway says clearing the table and making the bed might fall into the category of routine, whereas more involved chores, like mowing the lawn or cleaning up dog poop, could come with pay attached.
“It’s also important for kids to learn that money doesn’t come freely and that you have to work for it,” Brockway says. “When it’s your hard-earned work money, and you’re spending it on something you really want, it means more to you.”
To determine an appropriate pay scale, parents may want to consider what their child will be using an allowance for, Brockway and others say. Kids who are expected to use their allowance for all of their recreational activities might need more money than those who get an allowance for the purpose of being able to save up for something special at the toy store, Athanasiou says.
Winn says kids don’t necessarily need an allowance to have an educational experience. The lesson of distinguishing between a need and a want can be achieved by, say, bringing a child to the grocery store and including them in deciding what to buy for the week, she says. The more hands-on the experience is, the more effective it will be.
Winn’s goal is to get kids to be more financially adept than adults are today. She says about half of U.S. adults are financially illiterate, meaning they have little understanding of how to manage money and/or the cost of everyday life.
“If you don’t have that skill set before you graduate from high school, you’re kind of figuring it out as you go along,” she says. “Our philosophy is that’s not a healthy place to start.”
With chores and allowance, the key to a successful system is having a structure and sticking to it, Athanasiou says. Chore charts, calendar reminders and alarms are just a few helpful tools she suggests for sticking to a schedule. With allowance in particular, parents should be consistent about the challenge of not giving payment if a child does not complete a task. Again, she says, parents shouldn’t be looking for perfection, but commitment to the chore.
At the end of the day, good habits are best formed when parents model them and invite their kids to participate, Athanasiou says.
“Parenting is teaching,” she says. “We’re teaching our kids to be productive adults. We all had to learn the stuff that we know at some point.”
