ShannonAlbert.com - June 2009

We do allowance a bit different at our house. We don't tie allowance to chores because we view allowance as a chance to learn how to manage money and chores are just done separately.

When Payton was little, she got a few dollars a week to work with. As she's gotten older, the dollar amount has increased a lot but her responsibility has too. She gets paid on the first of every month and with that money, she's responsible for paying for her school lunches (during the school year obviously), mall purchases, gifts for friends, movies, clothes (outside of our twice yearly clothing purchases when the seasons change) and other things she chooses to buy. It has worked well and she loves the freedom to make choices and has done a good job budgeting.

We ran into an issue with Payton not wanting to carry too much cash with her so we took her to get her own account setup where the money is automatically transferred from our account to hers on the first of the month and she can have checks, make ATM withdrawals and ...drum roll.....

...use a debit card! This is exciting in 13-year-old Land, people. We managed to make Payton happy. For this day anyway.

(btw, those aren't fake nails, they are her real ones that she did her own french manicure on. Further proof that she's my exact opposite as I sit here chewing on my nails.)