June 03--Seventy percent of American kids ages 8 to 14 receive a weekly allowance from their parents, up from 48 percent in 2011, according to a new survey by T. Rowe Price.
Eighty-five percent of parents require kids to do chores or otherwise earn their allowance.
Fifty percent of parents reported giving their kids $10 or less per week, with the other half shelling out larger sums.
Nine percent say they give their kids $51 or more per week.
(Pausing here for deep breaths.)
This is interesting: From 2011 to 2015, the average weekly allowance amount increased 74.6 percent, according to the survey. The median weekly earning for full-time and salary workers, meanwhile, increased just 6.9 percent in that time frame.
Where are parents making up the difference? The survey finds just 44 percent of parents regularly save for retirement. And most of us (62 percent) don't maintain or contribute to an emergency fund.
I'm not judging. My relationship to allowance is, at best, complicated.
I have read some experts say you should always tie allowance to chores and other experts say you never should. (Both arguments are summed up nicely in this Wall Street Journal piece.)
I've made chore lists and told my kids (5 and 9) they have to complete them to earn their $4 a week.
I've abandoned chore lists when my kids ignore them, and I've doled out their allowance anyway.
I've offered them money on a job-by-job basis. (One quarter per washed window. That type of thing.)
I've skipped allowance altogether because my kids have acted entitled and, just as frequently, because I didn't have any cash on me.
I've overspent and underspent and, above all, approached the whole topic inconsistently.
(I figure it's just a matter of time before Mayor Rahm Emanuel taps me to run Chicago Public Schools.)
So, far be it for me to judge whether and how other parents give their kids allowance. Finances are a touchy, complicated matter to which we bring our childhood baggage, our adult insecurities and our anxiety about the future.
But kids pick up on our discomfort and mismanagement, the survey reveals, with less than half of kids (46 percent) saying their parents do a good job teaching them about money, and 61 percent of kids saying their parents worry about money.
And for that reason, I'm glad to have this data, which gives me newfound resolve to approach money -- specifically, allowance -- more mindfully with my kids.
(Seriously, though, $51 a week?)
hstevens@tribpub.com
