I received no allowance as a kid. I was also expected to do a set of chores each week to contribute to the family. These were things like cleaning my room, washing dishes, and taking out the trash.
Beyond these, however, I could perform additional chores in exchange for small amounts of money. My mom and I agreed on a price sheet. By doing a few of them I would have the equivalent of $10 a week or so. If there was, say, a computer game I wanted, I could do additional chores for a couple of weeks to earn the money for it. They encouraged this by helping me open a savings account early on.
Every now and then I approached my mom to renegotiate the prices (effectively to ask her for a raise). If I had been doing a good job, she would usually agree to small increases. Sometimes there were items that seemed too big for the return, and I would negotiate an increase by explaining this.
My first part-time job was at 15, but I helped where I could before that for odd money here and there. I paid for my first car with savings from that job, and I also paid my way through college (with some help from my parents for room and board).
I have never been afraid to negotiate on salary.
I feel like more than any of my friends growing up, and more than many adults I know, I understand the value of money, and I give a lot of this credit to my parents.
I really depends on the personality of the kid and their environment, too. I had a good friend whose parents paid him for chores. They paid pretty good rates (like $5 for cleaning his room or a bathroom or $10 for shoveling their driveway). When he was in elementary school he worked really hard and had lots of money. Combined with generous gifts from his parents and grandparents on special occasions, he always had the very best stuff. Then, in 8th grade or so, he realized that he had enough toys. He just stopped doing any chores. If he wanted something big, he'd just put it on his Christmas/birthday list. His parents didn't have a recourse since they'd set up a system that involved rewards for every household task.
Like I said above, it depends on the kid's personality and the family's economic situation, but I think that an allowance along with an expectation of age-appropriate daily and weekly chores works better than paying for individual chores or hours.
Well, I think I addressed that. I had chores I always had to do that paid nothing (cleaning my room was not negotiable, for instance). The money I earned from doing additional chores was not that much--a couple bucks plus or minus, depending on the difficulty.
My parents also didn't buy me much. I paid for many of my own toys after I was old enough to do chores. For example, I bought my own NES and every single game I owned for it. Each game represented perhaps a month or two of savings. Although I had fewer games than most kids I knew, I definitely valued them more. (Or tried to. I still distinctly remember the joy of buying the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game and the subsequent crushing disappointment of actually playing it.)
Christmas wasn't a lavish present shower that it is for a lot of kids. My parents didn't have a lot of money, so I'd usually receive a few action figures, maybe a small vehicle for them, a book, and some socks.
Perhaps I'm just using you as a substitute for all those kids that told me, "I don't get an allowance, I have to work for my money," and then finding out that their dads paid them $40/week to mow their lawns and clean their rooms.
I think this is about providing positive vs. negative incentives. My parents have never really given me any kind of regular allowance through my childhood, and very little irregular allowance (less than $50 a year) -- probably because they were poor when I was young. They got better during my teens, but that didn't improve my financial situation. They did require doing lots of house chores, though, and I would have been yelled at and punished if I didn't do them, with no reward for good behaviour.
When you was positively incentivized to do more work, I only grew up a barrier around me, and learned to totally ignore their rules, punishments, screams and their authority as a whole. Also, now I really detest the chores I was tasked with most often (vacuuming, surface cleaning, dish washing), while have no problem with ones I never had to do, like laundry or ironing.
Beyond these, however, I could perform additional chores in exchange for small amounts of money. My mom and I agreed on a price sheet. By doing a few of them I would have the equivalent of $10 a week or so. If there was, say, a computer game I wanted, I could do additional chores for a couple of weeks to earn the money for it. They encouraged this by helping me open a savings account early on.
Every now and then I approached my mom to renegotiate the prices (effectively to ask her for a raise). If I had been doing a good job, she would usually agree to small increases. Sometimes there were items that seemed too big for the return, and I would negotiate an increase by explaining this.
My first part-time job was at 15, but I helped where I could before that for odd money here and there. I paid for my first car with savings from that job, and I also paid my way through college (with some help from my parents for room and board).
I have never been afraid to negotiate on salary.
I feel like more than any of my friends growing up, and more than many adults I know, I understand the value of money, and I give a lot of this credit to my parents.