“The Smart Way to Pay Kids an Allowance - YAHOO!” plus 1 more |
| The Smart Way to Pay Kids an Allowance - YAHOO! Posted: 12 Jan 2011 09:06 AM PST For decades, parents have dutifully paid allowances to their children, often in exchange for chores around the house. Most of the time, they probably think that they're passing on the value of hard work and teaching valuable lessons on how to save and spend. It turns out they're mistaken. [In pictures: 10 Ways to Improve Your Finances in 2011.] According to new findings, paying children an allowance can do more harm than good when it comes to their future financial literacy skills. According to Lewis Mandell, a professor of finance at the University of Washington who recently studied more than 50 years' worth of allowance research, "The kids who receive [a regular, unconditional] allowance tend to think far less about money in general." In fact, he adds, those children appear more likely to grow up to be "slackers," since they aren't learning to associate work with money. Paying children for chores around the house can also lead to problems, because it teaches them that working for money isn't fun, warns Alisa T. Weinstein, author of Earn It, Learn It: Teach Your Child the Value of Money, Work, and Time Well Spent. Paying for good grades creates a similar problem: Instead of being driven by self-motivation, children learn to work hard just to earn the extra cash. Many parents, who are already stretched for time, skip regular allowances altogether, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. According to Mandell's review of decades of research, children who have to ask their parents for money each time they need it, whether it's for clothes or lunch, tend to fare better with money later in life. Perhaps because they are forced to think about what money is being used for, he says. "The kids who have to ask for the money have higher financial literacy than those who get allowances," says Mandell. But is there a smarter way to pay children an allowance, so that they learn how to handle money at an early age? Mandell says parents should talk about family finances with their children when they pay an allowance. "Allowance can be used very constructively, but to use it constructively requires time, effort, and a degree of honesty on the part of the parent," he explains. "Most parents don't want to do it because they don't have much time," he adds. Another alternative, and the subject of Weinstein's book, is to connect the allowance with tasks related to various careers. Children can choose a career--50 are profiled in the book, including a geologist, travel agent, and chef--and then complete tasks related to that career. Travel agent tasks include reporting on a destination in an appealing way, creating a brochure, and for older children, calculating exchange rates. "This way, the child is making the connection between effort and money, and the feeling that you worked hard for something. If you can capture that, then you're much more likely to have a child who grows up and can find emotional and financial fulfillment in their careers," says Weinstein. [In Pictures: 12 Money Mistakes Almost Everyone Makes] Dan Henderson, founder of the financial education toy line Zillionz, says consistency is one of the most important aspects of an allowance. Sticking with a regular schedule, whether it's weekly or monthly, lets children plan for and anticipate their "income," and also sends the message that it's important to uphold financial commitments. Henderson also recommends helping children learn what to do with their allowance by teaching them to dedicate a portion (30 percent) to spending, 30 percent to short-term savings for bigger purchases such as a bike, 30 percent to long-term savings such as college, and 10 percent to giving. That's a similar concept to the one promoted by Money Savvy Generation, a company co-founded by former financial services professional Susan Beacham. She invented a piggy bank with four compartments--save, spend, donate, and invest--to teach kids how to budget. "You're teaching them to stop, pause, and reflect, and this is the first step toward teaching them to delay gratification," she says. As for how much to pay children and when to begin, experts say it depends on the family, but they agree on some general guidelines. Henderson says that most three-year-olds are interested in learning about money, and that interest deepens as they get older, so starting conversations and even a regular allowance early can be helpful. "As soon as a child's 'gimmes' are past the toddler stage and they recognize that it costs money to pay for things, which can be as early as four, then it's a good time to start," says Weinstein. Henderson and Weinstein, along with many other financial experts, recommend paying about $1 for every year old the child is, on a monthly or weekly basis. Weinstein's six-year-old daughter recently used her allowance to purchase a book. On her way out of the store, she told her mom how happy she was with her purchase. The allowance system, says Weinstein, let her get "that feeling of working hard for something and now enjoying it"--which was music to her mother's ears. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| What posters did you have on your wall as a kid? - San Francisco Gate Posted: 11 Jan 2011 06:08 AM PST One of the favorite things about my parents: They saved all my stuff. As previously reported , the moment I left for college, my parents covered my room in Laura Ashley. But they neatly boxed up my... One of the favorite things about my parents: They saved all my stuff. As previously reported, the moment I left for college, my parents covered my room in Laura Ashley. But they neatly boxed up my possessions, which they've been handing back to me in slow increments for the past 22 years. My life is a never-ending time capsule.  www.beliefnet.com Was this on your wall? My mother will drop by to see the kids, and bring a box full of letters I kept from girlfriends I went out with in my teens. Or my father will bring a small leather lockbox filled with my old Army men. Some of these gifts are themed. When I became a reporter at the Chronicle, my father sent me the 1983 services contract between myself and the San Francisco Newspaper Agency (on pink paper!) for the Chronicle paper route I had in the mid-1980s. One of the more recent hand-offs was a rolled-up collection of posters -- held together by a rubberband that disintegrated in my hands before I could pull it off. "What's that?" I asked. "Some posters from your room," my father said, as if he pulled them down last week. Inside was a perfectly preserved representation of what my room looked like in 1988. Some highlights are below. Please inventory the posters that were on the wall of your childhood room in the comments. If you know where they are now, tell us. (My posters tend to skew toward the teen years, mostly because I had a sweet wallpaper mural of a sunset on my wall in my pre-teens, and wasn't allowed to put up posters until I was maybe 14. If you had this on your wall when you were 7, please include that as well.) .  1. "Top Gun" movie poster Not a huge surprise. Just like every college-aged girl in the years 1988-93 had this Robert Doisneau poster on their wall, every high school-aged boy in 1986 owned a poster from "Top Gun." Other than a tattered corner, the poster is in excellent condition. When I'm done with Phase 3 of my basement remodel, I'm planning to use lacquer to permanently affix this to my office door. .  2. Led Zeppelin band collage I looked on eBay and this poster is actually worth some money. I probably bought it in 1986 or 1987 when I was at the peak of my Led Zeppelin phase. (I still appreciate the band, but don't have a single one of their tracks on my iPod. Still listening on cassette ...) I'm pretty sure I was stoned when I bought it from a smoke shop on Haight Street, and remember having a hard time figuring out whether to hang it vertical or horizontal. I also had a Led Zeppelin black light poster -- now worth hundreds of dollars in good condition -- but brought it to college and lost it in storage during the summer break in 1990. .  3. San Francisco 49ers 1980s team photo This one has been relocated to an honored spot in the Wall of Fame in my Chronicle office. (Note the photos of Pat McCormick, Ann & Ross and my Johnnie LeMaster baseball card collection.) It was one of several 49ers and Warriors posters that my dad handed over. I can't explain what a poster from 1989 was doing with the others, considering the tranformation of my room occurred in 1988. I think a black hole might have been involved. When I shared this office with fellow 49ers fan and ex-Chronicle TV critic Tim Goodman, we would both tap the poster twice on the way out to bring good luck to the team. It didn't do much for the 49ers, but Tim got a new gig with The Hollywood Reporter ... . And the one that got away ...  4. A blank wall is the disease. This poster is the cure. Yes, I rocked a Stallone "Cobra" poster. Over the years, this has gone from being cool, to being very uncool, to being cool again, to being one of my proudest achievements. "Cobra" wasn't among the other posters that my father handed over. Initially, I theorized that my father kept it for his own office, but it never showed up there. Then I recalled that I hung it on the back of my door which faced a wall when opened, so it would be really easy for a realtor staging the house to miss it. In my dreams, it's still in the house, being enjoyed by the next generation ... Enough about me. What posters were on your bedroom wall when you were a kid? PETER HARTLAUB is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle and founder of this parenting blog, which admittedly sometimes has nothing to do with parenting. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/peterhartlaub. Your questions answered on VYou at www.vyou.com/peterhartlaub. | January 11 2011 at 06:11 AM One of the favorite things about my parents: They saved all my stuff. As previously reported , the moment I left for college, my parents covered my room in Laura Ashley. But they neatly boxed up my... This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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