Host: How much allowance is the right amount?

Rene Hackney: Allowance is seen as been appropriate, $1 per year of life. So, a three year old might get three dollars per week. Now, I know that sounds like a lot of money to some folks because it builds up pretty quickly. When children are earning allowance, it's good for parents to help them start dividing that money. It's suggested that children learn about spending, saving and charity. So, a three year old who gets $3 might put a dollar fifty in saving, a dollar in spending and then fifty cents in charity.

Now, as children are doing that the spending money, they just get to spend, they can spend it today on gum or they can collect it over a couple of weeks and spend it on something bigger. That saving money, when children are three, four, five years old, when they are young it really should be for something that they can actually purchase that it's something like maybe a tricycle, something big, but that they have to save for.

It's suggested that as early as three to five years old, but they are not saving for something like a car or college because it's just seen as so far away. So, saving becomes just a black hole, they don't ever get to see it. The charity which seems like just a little fifty cents a week, it's not meant to save the world, that's just meant to teach the child about giving to charity. So, when they have a penny drive at preschool, they already have theirs, so when they go to give tiding at church they already have that fund.