--- title: Love and Money: How to Give Kids an Allowance | TIME description: Author Ron Lieber talks about how parents can use an allowance as a financial teaching tool for their kids. canonical: https://time.com/video/DpFJynym/ og:title: Love and Money: How to Give Kids an Allowance og:description: Author Ron Lieber talks about how parents can use an allowance as a financial teaching tool for their kids. og:url: https://time.com/video/DpFJynym/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/DpFJynym/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Love and Money: How to Give Kids an Allowance twitter:description: Author Ron Lieber talks about how parents can use an allowance as a financial teaching tool for their kids. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/DpFJynym/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Love and Money: How to Give Kids an Allowance > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Love and Money: How to Give Kids an Allowance [Watch (HLS stream): Love and Money: How to Give Kids an Allowance](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/DpFJynym.m3u8) (3:51)  _Published 2015-03-05. Author Ron Lieber talks about how parents can use an allowance as a financial teaching tool for their kids._ --- Jul 27, 2023 6:00 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Money Lessons for College Kids](/video/Ioy8QSMc/) ### Money Lessons for College Kids [How Much Parents Spend on Their Kids](/video/Yqw4C8oV/) ### How Much Parents Spend on Their Kids [Do You Give Your Kids an Allowance?](/video/CMBbf9zM/) ### Do You Give Your Kids an Allowance? --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] It is a topic for debate among parents. Is an allowance appropriate and if so, how do you go about it in a way that teaches kids real life lessons about money? Here to talk about allowance is Ron [ Leber ??]. He's the personal finance columnist for the New York Times and author of the book " The Opposite of Spoiled .". Raising kids who are grounded, generous and smart about money. Welcome Ron, good to have you. Thanks for having me. Okay, let's start with the why. Some parents are on defense about this. Why even have an allowance? What's the value? Money is for practice. Allowance is a teaching tool that falls in the same category as books, art supplies ,. Musical instruments. This is something that they need to learn to do well, to do better. It takes awhile, and they ought to practice at it. There are right ways and wrong ways to doing allowance. Which we'll get to in a moment. But what's an appropriate age to start? I think the best time to start is whenever they start wanting things, and often that will start at three or four, and they're sort of grabbing at you and asking, and you know at that point they're actually ready to start distinguishing between wants and needs, so you can start then. Now as far as how much, I've heard things like a dollar for every age that they are at. So if they are at seven, seven dollars a week. Is this a good way to measure it? I think that's a good place to start for the kids who are still in the single digits. They're, you wanna give them enough so that they can get some of the things they want, but not so much that they don't have to make a lot of really hard choices. Yes. And now, so, you can tell I'm like, really interested in this, because I have a very young one, and eventually, he'll have an allowance. And so now I wanna learn all the tactical stuff. Mm- hm. So, cash or bank account? Now there are like all these platforms where you can virtually give them money Yeah. And so they can see it growing. What do you prefer? Actually, I think you should do, do all three. And so between the ages of six and ten, you do cash. They need to learn to count. They need to watch it grow. It should be visceral. They should to use real money. I think between ten and 14, you can go virtual and let them use some of the apps like Allowance Manager or Famzoo that help you keep track of this. And then when the kids are in high school, I think they're ready for some version of a bank account, checking account, a debit card. So they can get used to. Using the same tools that grown- ups do. How should you earn the allowance? This is I think where sometimes you can go right or wrong, right? I mean in my, growing up in my house, I had to make my bed. I wasn't gonna get an allowance for making my bed, it was expected of me. So how. How should children earn the allowance so that it's a real teachable tool? Sure, so the logical problem at the root of this is that many parents that's usually between 80 and 90 % according to all the surveys that have been done. Will tie allowance to the completion of chores, but if you do that there will come a point when your smart aleck child will say you know what. I've got enough money for now, so I'm not gonna do the chores. Right. And then you're in a real pickle, right? Because you can either put your foot down or make them do the chores because you think, as you probably do, that everybody should do them or you're stuck keeping the terms of the deal and then you're doing all their chores and that's no fun either, so you don't want to set yourself up for that. I read a great a story about a parent who had their son. Figure out projects around the house that he wanted to do for money. So he was thinking okay what's the need in the household and then the second step was negotiate what you think you should earn. I love that story, 'cuz it's really not only teaching you about money but about entrepreneurship. Sure. So that's a way you can go, right? The chores can be done for free in the house, all of the basic chores, but you can encourage your child to say you know what? There are probably extra projects that need to be done here. If you can think of what they are, and if you can convince us that they are worth doing, and you can negotiate a wage for yourself, then you'll get some more money. I love it. Thank you so much, Ron Lieber. The book is called the Opposite of Spoiled, Raising Kids Who are Grounded, Generous, and Smart about Money. 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