Motivated By Money

Although they did not know it until recently, I have given each of my children a weekly allowance. Since the day they were born, I have put five dollars a week into their savings accounts. I know this isn’t much, but I wanted to put a little something away for them and I wanted to get in the habit of budgeting in their allowances before I actually had to lay down the cold, hard cash. Now that my children are older, my wife and I have started giving them their allowance, although I still stick something into their savings account each week.

At nine and seven, my two boys are starting to figure out the power of money. They have also figured out that mom and dad will not buy them a toy or a pack of Pokemon cards every time we go to Target. This is where their allowances have come into play. Overcome with the desire to expand their card and/or toy collections, they decided that they should be able to use their allowance for this purpose, quite reasonably I might add (this is when I had to start slapping down the cash rather than just sticking it in the bank.)

Now that the kids are old enough to receive their allowance in cash, they actually have to earn it. They earn their allowance by completing their assigned chores each week. If they forget to do a chore, then I deduct part of their allowance. Although this “system” seems perfectly rational, a problem has arisen. When I started handing the allowances in cash, I decided to give it to the kids in quarters. Why quarters you ask? Well, I decided on quarters so that I could easily deduct my “fee” for forgotten chores. I give my kids their allowances on Friday and then for the rest of the week, I take a quarter, maybe even two, for each forgotten chore or task. The unforeseen consequence of this is that my boys have become obsessed with their quarters. Every time they lose a quarter, they cry, they complain, and truly become upset because they are losing their money. The money has become the main focus of this endeavor, not the learning of responsibility.

Now, I don’t want my children to become obsessed with money. I want them to realize that money is a tool, a means to an end, not the end itself. Money is important, but it is not the most important thing in their lives. So I ask you, should I use money as a motivator? Should I come up with another consequence for forgotten chores and if so what? If I come up with another consequence, what do I do about the allowance? I really am at a loss here. My boys care about money, so it seemed logical to use the quarters as a consequence, but now that they are becoming “quarter crazed”, I am not so sure.