There are two schools of thought on the matter: the first, to reward children for doing household chores with an allowance, and the second, to keep chores and allowances separate. Hodgens falls into the latter: “If you tie them together, you lose consistency. Your kid might decide one week that doing chores isn’t worth the money.”
Children still need to learn how to earn money though, so “an allowance should be enough to cover most of their expenses, but not all,” says Hodgens. Parents can offer kids paid jobs beyond daily household duties, like washing the car or mowing the lawn, for which they’ll earn extra money to put away for that new iPod.
