Should allowances be tied to chores?
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How to Teach Your Kids About Money
Why is it important to teach my kids about money?
How early should I begin teaching my kids about money?
Should I rely on schools to educate my children about money?
What are good ways to teach younger children about money?
Should I give my kids an allowance?
What is the right amount of allowance to give my children?
Should allowances be tied to chores?
What are "financial jobs?"
How can I help my teens learn good money habits?
At what age should my children open a savings account?
What are some everyday ways to teach my children about money?
At what age should my children get a debit card?
At what age should my children get a credit card?
Should I use money to reward or punish my children?
At what age should my children get a job?
Should my children donate to charities?
How much should my children contribute to savings for college?
How can I teach my children to invest money?
How can I set a good financial example as a parent?
What do I say to my children if we manage money badly as parents?
What do I do when my children ask for expensive things?
Should we discuss finances as a family?
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Janet Bodnar is deputy editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, for which she has written articles on a wide range of topics, including investing, money management and the economy.
Bodnar is a nationally recognized expert in the field of children's and family finances. Her latest book is Money Smart Women: Everything You Need to Know to Achieve a Lifetime of Financial Security (Kaplan). She speaks frequently on the subject of women and money.
Bodnar's "Money-Smart Kids" column appears regularly in Kiplinger's magazine and at <a>www.kiplinger.com/columns/kids</a>. It was chosen by Moneysmartz.com as one of the top financial columns online. Bodnar is also the kids and money coach on the AOL Coaches site.
Her book Raising Money Smart Kids (Kaplan Publishing) was a finalist in the personal finance category of the Books for a Better Life awards, honoring the best self-improvement books of 2005. It was also a selection of the Washington Post's Color of Money book club.
Bodnar has appeared on Oprah, Today, Good Morning America, The Early Show on CBS, Fox, CNN and PBS. She has done hundreds of radio and TV interviews and appears regularly on WUSA, the CBS-TV affiliate in Washington, D.C., and WTOP, the major all-news radio station in Washington. She is a popular speaker and has been quoted in publications ranging from The Wall Street Journal and Institutional Investor to Parents and Glamour.
Bodnar has been recognized by American University for excellence in personal finance reporting, and by the National Council on Family Relations for her televised reports on children and money. The audio version of her book (read by the author) received three "best of" awards, from Publishers Weekly (business category), Library Journal (nonfiction) and the Audio Publishers Association (educational category).
Prior to joining Kiplinger's, Bodnar worked for The Providence Journal and The Washington Post. She received her master's degree in journalism from Columbia University, where she was also a Knight-Bagehot Fellow in Business and Economics Journalism.
Married, she is the mother of three children.
Should allowances be tied to chores?
Family financial expert Janet Bodnar discusses how to teach your kids about money, including whether allowances should be tied to chores.
Transcripts
Speaker: Should allowances be tied to chores? Janet Bodnar: Should allowances be tied to chores is probably one of the most controversial issues there is, as far as kids and money is concerned and it's controversial because some parents like the idea of paying for chores, paying for work they want to teach their kids it's value. Other parents say, no, no, no, I don't want to pay for things that they should be doing around the house anyway. So, I have come up with -- and there is also a third hitch in this that I have discovered again from years of writing about this subject and sometimes what I discovered is that parents liked the idea of timely allowance to chores, but then they can't manage the system and they forget whether the kids actually did the work. So do they get paid or don't they get paid. So the Janet Bodnar system is this, it's a little bit of both. I think that the basic allowance should not be tied to actual chores that the kids do around the house. I am of the opinion that if they make up the mess they should clean it up and I shouldn't have to pay them for it; but I do believe that the allowance should be tied to financial chores. They should have certain financial jobs, financial responsibilities that come with that allowance. So it's not a freebie. It's not extra money, on top of everything else you already buy for them. You actually give them certain financial responsibilities with that money and then above the base allowance you can pay them on a chore by chore basis, so they can earn additional money, extra money and it's easy for you to manage the system like that because you are only paying for one chore at a time, plus they can make extra money if they want to spend extra money on top of the base allowance.
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