What, if your kid doesn’t clean the dishes, then someone else gets the 25c? Hey, I’ll be right here to tell you, have your kid come clean my dishes and I’ll give him 25c.

I think your heart is in the right place, but I think that this type of execution is very bad.

If your kid opens someone’s door he gets a quarter?

In my opinion, it is much better execution to have the kid do his or her chores. Period. End of discussion. The allowance should really be used to encourage financial responsibility, and to reduce the opportunity of your own debt. Allowances place the burden of decision on the child — and the opportunity for growth, and learning cause/effect.

My only disagreement with you is in the assumption that money received must always be earned. I give my children an allowance, one that they didn’t earn. I do this on purpose, and I don’t care that they didn’t earn it.

My purpose for allowance is to give them some money to practice using, whether they earn it or not. I exercise this practice in other things I want them to learn about and it doesn’t bother me in the least. I don’t expect them to earn the cost of pencils, pens and paper in order to practice writing. I don’t expect them to earn the cost of rags, paper towels and soap in order to learn how to clean a bathroom. I happily provide those things to them for free because I want them to learn how to use them. Similarly, I provide my children with money (at no cost to them) so that they’ll have a chance to use it.

I have 4 sons. The oldest of which is 10. Currently I control almost every spending decision in their lives. But as they get older, I plan on letting them control more of the spending decisions that they have to make. The money that I spend on clothes for them (that I don’t expect them to earn) will gradually go from my decision on how to use it, to theirs. The money that I spend on transportation for them (that I also don’t expect them to earn) will gradually go from my decision to theirs. They will get increasing control of the budget that I have allocated for them. But with that control, comes consequences. If they spend their entire clothing budget on video games, they had better be prepared to live off the clothes from last year – clothes that might not fit well. (Frankly, I hope they make some dumb mistake like that. I’d rather that they learn the consequences early when the costs are low, than learn those consequences at 30 with a credit card.)

As they get old enough to get a job and earn their own money, the amount of the budget that I allocate to them will start to diminish. My goal is to get them to manage almost *all* spending decisions about their life by the time they graduate high school. (Housing will be a notable exception to that rule. Those who go to college will still get housing costs paid for by me. Those who don’t, won’t.)

My point is this: I have no problems with them getting money without earning it. I give them lots of things that they didn’t earn. I want them to get the practice of using money and running out, without the requirement that they earn it. If I require that they earn it, they may never get a chance to practice with it.