182. Stop Giving Allowance: The One Rule That Keeps Kids From Feeling Entitled

Should you give your kids an allowance—or is it better to make them earn money?

In today’s episode, I break down the real fear behind this question: you want kids who don’t feel entitled, but you also don’t want money to feel stressful in your home. I’ll share the simple rule that makes this decision clear, the difference between “chores you do because you live here” vs. paid tasks, and how to build an earning/commission system that actually works (without becoming complicated).

You’ll learn:

• The two parenting fears hiding behind the allowance debate (entitlement vs. stress)
• The one rule that keeps chores and money from getting messy
• What should be unpaid family contribution vs. what can be paid “above-and-beyond” work
• Simple ways to pay kids without constant cash (stars, payday rhythms, chore boards)
• How to handle “but my friends get an allowance,” and what to do with motivated vs. unmotivated kids
• A simple Give/Save/Spend approach to help kids manage money with confidence

🎯 Ready to start these conversations with your kids? My picture book Rosie Earns It Herself is on the way, and you can preorder now at AccelerateYourLegacy.com/rosie (preorder bonuses available!).

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Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants-29 0:00

Hey, accelerators, I'm really excited to talk about this one with you today. Should I give my kids an allowance or is it better to make them earn money? Why is this the big topic of the day and why am I so stinking excited? Because my picture book, Rosie earns it herself, is on the way. Hi, I'm Laura Sexton, your money and legacy coach and I help money feel easy, whether it's getting out of debt, building wealth, or learning. That legacy is mindset, tools, and habits that you leave behind. I'm here to help you make the most of your money. There are two things that you might actually be afraid of, and I'm going to touch on these really quickly. One of the questions is, what do I do if I don't want my kids to feel entitled? And the other one is. But what if I don't want money to feel stressful? So these can be on competing ends of things, but I don't want them to feel that way. So if you don't want your kids to be entitled. Don't entitle them to anything. Make them work for things. Make them work to be a part of the family. There's such great dignity in work, and I want your kids to know that. I want my kids to know that this is something that's very important to learn. We are created to work. We have drive, we have ambition. Sometimes it's really great to go ahead and put that out in front of our kids and be like, okay, let's get going. Your kids feel entitled when you just give them everything. When you never put up a boundary, you never tell them no. What happens to a kid who is never told no turns 18 and goes off to college? They have no idea how to put a boundary on themselves. They have no idea how to tell themselves no, because nobody's ever done it, and you will have. Taught them that it's okay to not have boundaries. Specifically with their money, right? But probably in other ways as well. So if you don't want your kids to feel entitled, stop entitling them to things. Allow them to work for things. It's good for their self-esteem. When you earn something, you treat it better. You care for your things. My kids that earned things, like one of them earned new controllers for their Nintendo switch, they worked very hard. They went and paid for them. You better believe they don't let their brother and sister throw'em around, chew on'em, do any kind of craziness, right? Because they care about them because they actually had to work to pay for them. But what if you don't want your money to feel stressful? All we do is work all day. One kid who God has given her big, big feelings and he gave me big feelings. So, you know, I kind of understand it, but her big feelings often comes out in, detrimental forward thinking, right? Like, well, I'm never gonna have enough money to do this ever, so I don't, I'm just gonna quit now. We get that a lot. Or I can't trust you. I can't trust anybody, so I'm never gonna get married. I'm like, honey, you're six. Things are gonna change. Life is gonna go on. You're gonna be okay. So, yes, sometimes things can feel stressful, but you know, the best way to keep them from feeling stressful is you talk about them openly. You have conversations, you put plans in place, you allow it to come out in the open, and you also don't put a lot of pressure. My 6-year-old, her one chores is to put away hers and her sisters clothes. I don't even make her fold them. Her job is simple and eventually she'll have more chores to do around the house, but for right now, she earns money and she gets it right away. Sometimes I don't have the money to give them like instantaneously because I pay them in quarters and they suck up all my quarters as fast as they can. So we've implemented a star system and every star they get is a quarter towards whatever. So now whenever they get four stars, I can give them a dollar bill instead of walking around with pounds and pounds of change. Now I know what you're thinking. Laura is paying kids for chores a good idea.'cause what if it backfires? Now look, there is one simple rule. That I think needs to be implemented first before we talk about an allowance versus a commission. Anything else? There are certain chores that kids should do because they live here. I like to say that we clean up our own messes, so in my house, you don't get paid to clean up your own mess. If you make a giant mess in the living room, you're required to clean that up. That is your job. You are not going to get paid for it. However, I do sometimes have children. They go out of their way to clean up messes that some other child has made, and I will pay them for that. That was not their mess that they cleaned up and I appreciate it. They do it with a happy heart. No brainer. Of course, I'm going to pay you for that. Wonderful, thank you. But we don't clean up our own messes. That also means making your bed. You messed up the bed and you make it. You don't get paid for that. Keeping your room clean, you don't get paid for that. That is your mess that you made that you need to clean up, putting your dishes in the sink. After dinner, you made the mess, you clean it up. Does that make sense? So what kind of task should be paid if we're doing a commission or earnings system? Well, things that help out around the house that go above and beyond. I have one child whose job is to put the silverware away after I run the dishwasher. In the morning, the dishes are clean and he puts the silverware away. That is developmentally right on for him. He's five and he can do it. It's at his level. He doesn't have to strain, he doesn't have to work hard, and you know what? He gets up and does it right away with a happy heart, and it's so fun to watch him just be joyful about it. And he is doing it with a sibling now, his oldest sister. It is her job to. Empty the dishwasher, and she does that because she's tall enough to put everything away. She's so tall, she got so tall, so fast, they can do it together. And when they do it together, it doesn't feel lonely. It doesn't feel stressful, and so they're learning together to operate and to handle things, and so they get paid for that. Now Big Sister is also helping her younger sister, who's in between those two, helping her learn to put the laundry away because that was Big Sister's job for so long. So we get paid, like I said, to go above and beyond If you have animals, feeding the animals is a great way to show them responsibility. They get paid for, because you know what responsibility you get paid for going to work. That's a responsibility you get paid for. You're not cleaning up your mess. Most of the time, you're cleaning up somebody else's best and you get paid for that. So feeding the animals, cleaning up after the animals. Helping Dust, helping to vacuum. I love paying my kids to vacuum'cause I hate vacuuming. Do they do a perfect job? No. They don't, sometimes I have to come behind them, but I also believe that half done is undone, so they do not get paid. If they have to do the work, I will make them finish and do it well. If they're old enough to complete the task. Well, sometimes they're not. Sometimes they want to try because they want to help. Like I have a 3-year-old that likes to dust. She's not very good at it. I have to go behind her and help her. But developmentally, all she needs is to learn to do the work with us. Doing the work together is so much more fun. Folding the laundry with somebody is so much more fun than doing it by yourself. If you can implement those kinds of things inside the house. You're going to have so much more fun doing the work. And I think it's great to teach our children. Not only you work, you get paid. Where does money come from? It comes from work. But work can be fun, not just what you get after you're done working, where you take the money and you go buy whatever it's you want to do. But work itself can be fun, and I think that's something we need to teach our children. So you may be thinking, all right, I wanna do this commission system, but how do I do it without making it complicated? Well, you make it as easy as you can. Like with my kids, we have a star system, so I don't have to carry around cash and give it to them immediately. But I do give them a star immediately. As soon as they're done, we walk over to the board and give them a star immediately. Now I have another system that will be implemented as soon as they get older and they can tack on extra chores on their own volition. And the way we do that is we have a chore board and I will put. The dollar in a tiny Ziploc bag, and I will close pin it next to the chore. So let's say the chore is to vacuum the rug in the living room. They then would go vacuum, put the cord back around the vacuum, put the vacuum back in the closet, and then they come to me, I check it and go, great, you can grab it. And they just pull the money off. They don't have to do anything extra. They don't have to go run around. I've already put in the work to put the clothes pin up there with the money in it. It's already counted out, done, move forward. Right? I know people that do that with buckets of weeds. My mother was weeding her garden the other day and she's like, I'm on bucket number four. I can't wait till your kids get here and I can pay them per bucket. Great. That's not complicated. We don't want it to be, well, I'll give you 20, 20 cents an hour. If you go do like, they can't do that math. That's not really what we wanna do. We wanna make it clear cut and easily accessible for both of you. You don't want it to be a situation where you're like, oh, I forgot to go get the money and now I have to go. Like, just put it part of your rhythm. If you have implemented a family budget meeting, that would be a great time to pay your children. We keep payday on the weekend, so we pay them either on Saturday or Sunday. I always wanna make sure that they have enough opportunities, but also if they have a friend that has a birthday coming up, they need to be able to take their money and spend it on the birthday. How much should I pay for chores? Now some people have a baseline, like a minimum wage, right? And then you get paid above and beyond that like a tip. That's fine if that's what you wanna do. I don't. I pay per chore. And right now my kids are young enough and their duties are so small. That a quarter per chore is probably fine. Now, my one child that's putting away laundry, she's not putting away laundry for seven people. I put away laundry for four people and she puts away laundry for three. So her chore is not large. It's not asking a lot of her, and a lot of times her little sister likes to help, so she doesn't even do it all by herself. When it becomes more difficult, that's when you start adding more to it. So if my child were putting away laundry for seven people, I would pay her a lot more. Keep it within range, but also keep in mind what your financial position is. If you're still working on getting out of debt, you're probably gonna wanna keep this pretty minimal If you are. Well down your path to ownership and you have plenty of money, and giving a dollar per person of laundry that gets put away is okay for you, then do that. It's completely up to you. It is a system that you get to create. I do suggest starting small when they're little, so when they get bigger, they get more and they feel more accomplished. But also then as they get bigger, they're not asking you for money all the time. Also, what do we do when they're constantly asking us for money? We give them more chores. We give them more work to do. We ask them to help. Having them participate in the family is the best way to keep them from feeling entitled, but it's also the best way to keep them from living in a home when they're older. That is completely disheveled. We are teaching them how to work. We're teaching them that a maid is not coming around and doing everything for them. This is good for them on many different levels. When my kids come to me and say that they're bored, I give them a chore to do. They very rarely come to me and say that they're bored. I expect this summer they're gonna start going, mom, we're bored and I'm gonna get to go. Oh, goody, I have new chores for you because I do expect this summer to give them new and different chores. But I also like that they're bored. I want them to be bored because you know what happens when you're bored? Your brain starts to work and your brain starts to wander, and your brain starts to wander, and all of that is good. It is so good for your brain to be bored, to be tired, to think through things, to not be so focused on task after task, after task. It's okay for them to be bored, but if they're gonna come to you and they're constantly asking you for money, go ahead and give them another chore. Now, inevitably, your children are gonna come to you and go, but all of my friends get an allowance. I have to tell you the one thing that I'm very excited to do when it comes to this, and it's the thing that I've started doing with, well, everybody in my class gets to watch that show and all of my friends have braces. I am like, yeah, name one. And they'll tell me. I'm like, okay, great. Gimme their phone number and call. I'm gonna call their mom and ask. You'd be surprised. I mean, they'll give me the one friend that does have it and I'll call them and I'll ask, and they're like, yeah, absolutely. We do let her watch that show. We don't mind it at all. And I'm like, okay, great. And I come to her and I go, Hey, do you have any other friends that let you watch that show? And she will tell me a couple people. I'm like, well, what about this other person? Because there's certain kids I know that are and are not allowed to do things because I talk to their parents, talk to the other moms in your community. You can always tell them, we do things differently in this house and that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with stating out loud, we do things differently. This is just how we do things. That's okay. You don't have to be like everybody else. You were in fact called to be who you are, not who they are. So go ahead and call that out, but also, don't be afraid to call somebody's mom and ask the question. Speaking of questions. This one I get a lot. What do I do if one of my kids is motivated and the other one refuses to do anything? I love this question, so let's get into it. When one of your kids is motivated, let them keep working. Let them earn the money. The one that's not motivated, it's not gonna earn the money. And eventually they're gonna be asking for things. You're gonna be like, oh, you didn't earn money for that. That's a bummer. Guess what? They'll learn to be motivated. Now some of us just naturally aren't motivated and we have to push them a little bit and that's okay. It's good to push your children. It's good to push them to do things that they don't necessarily want to do. Now, I do have one child who will fuss and fight and throw a fit, and she does not wanna do the chore. I give her three chances to do them right away all the way with a happy heart. Those are my three chances. You didn't do it right away. I need you to get up and do it all the way. Didn't do that. And you're grumbling, you're fighting, you're complaining, but you got up and you did it. That's okay. But if we get to right away, all the way. With a happy heart and you have no happy heart. You did not do it right away. You did not do it all the way. You, in fact, are not doing it. Guess what? You have to get up and do it, and you do not get paid. Now, that may seem harsh because you're like, but they did. You said if they did the work, they would get paid. Yes, but I'm also not going to do it for them. And it also helps that I have become the mom that if they forget their homework. I am not bringing it to you now. I am I, I'm a work from home mom. I have the ability to, if it's something very important, obviously I'm going to, but I have to let them learn that they need to be responsible. Why do I let them learn to be responsible when they're in fourth and first grade? Because I want them to learn the lessons now when it's small, as opposed to the lessons when it's so much bigger. If they had to learn the lesson when they were. In 12th grade and they forgot a folder and it's the first time they've ever forgotten something. And I'm stuck doing who knows what with another child. And like we're at a doctor's appointment for a broken arm and I can't come help them. But they never learned to be responsible to bring their own stuff to school. Who failed? Who? It's me. I would've failed you if I didn't teach you at a young age to be responsible. Same thing goes with money my friends. If your kid is 12 and goes to the carnival and they take money with them, I've got one kid that has money that just burns a hole in her pocket and she will take$50 to a carnival and she will spend it all in the first 20 minutes if she can, and I make her carry whatever it is she buys. And I do not give her more money. If she wants something later, now I'm not gonna make her starve. I will buy her lunch, but I buy her what I choose to buy, or she doesn't get to buy whatever she wants. Letting her learn it now when she is young is a favor to her. You want them to learn it when they're young so that they don't have to learn it when they're older. You are the parent and you are the teacher. Now this gets into how do I teach savings and giving without making my kids anxious about money? And the truth of the matter is, especially my spender, right? Once you've earned the money, there are three things you can do with it. You can give it, you can save it, you can spend it. You need to do all three, and you need to encourage your children to do all three. Now, I have one child who is a spender, just told you that I have one child who is a saver. She never finds anything that she needs to spend her money on, and she's okay with keeping her money in her pocket. And I have one child that's a giver, he will just give it away. He does not even care about it. Anytime he has a chance to give a gift to a friend, that's what he really wants to do. So sometimes we just have different attitudes about our money and we have different habits and the way that we do things, and that's okay. And I think that we should honor who our children are, but I think that we also need to strengthen those pieces of them that are weak. That's our job as parents. So. Teach them when you give them the money. When you have those paydays, sit down with them and go, how much of this do you wanna give? How much of it do you wanna spend? How much of it do you wanna save? They should be doing all three, and it's okay to champion them in the places where they're already naturally bent, but also it is okay to help them learn and strengthen them in the places where they're not as naturally gifted. The simplest way to help your kids manage their money once they have earned it is by helping them have three different jars, a give safe and a spend. Now I have a strong desire to create a three container piggy bank of sorts, and I haven't figured out how to manufacture that yet. That will have to happen after the picture book comes out on May 27th. The picture book talks more about this, and this is gonna be a great episode. I'm probably gonna link this episode into the children's book so people can get ahold of it to know what I think about all of these money things. But I would love to have my own bank system to give to kids, and I think it should be clear so you can see through it, so they can see the money. Kids are very tactile when they're young. Having a debit card is not as good for them as if they have tangible money. When you're first learning how to handle your money, having tangible money is better than having a debit card because a debit card is fake money. It's monopoly money. It doesn't mean anything, especially when you're a kid, but having something you can hold is really, really helpful. So I think the simplest way that you can help your kids manage their money once they earn it, is to sit down with them and help them divide it into those three jars a give a save a spend. Also, if they have something big that they want to earn, like my kids with the switch controllers, or I have one kid that would like to buy a guitar. We're going, okay, how much does it cost? How much work are we gonna have to do to get that? Is there a birthday between now and then that you might be getting some birthday money? Like we're planning all of these things. They don't need to give away their birthday money. Just for the record. If you're a person that's like, oh, we tithe and so we do 10% birthday, money doesn't count. That's not an earned income. That's not a, that's not an earned gain, that is a gift. Some of you may be thinking, all of this sounds great, Laura, but how do I talk about money with my kids if I'm still stressed about money? I completely understand that. I know exactly where you're coming from, but you have to talk about it openly. Pretending like you are not stressed out about money or you're not learning about money is not a good way to go. Because then you're gonna, kids are gonna know that you're trying to hide things from them. So I think it's okay to talk to them on a developmentally correct level. It is okay to go to them and go, Hey guys, I've made some mistakes with money and I'm still learning. And so I would love for us to learn together. In fact, that might be the best way to go about it. No, that's not how, we don't, we don't need to tell them that you're stressed. Okay? We, we still want them to feel safe. But saying, I've made some mistakes with money and I'm learning, so I'm gonna do things differently with you than I did them myself. That's okay. That's completely developmentally appropriate. If you want to start building money, confidence at home, you have to talk about money openly out loud. You can't let it be something that we hope they learn in school. I never learned anything about money in school. The only thing I learned about money was how to count change, and they've gotten rid of the penny and now I'm very confused. That's not true. I'm not confused, but I, I'm having a hard time with getting rid of the penny.'cause I like the penny. It's cute. It's the only one that's a different color. It's silly. I understand that. I have a hard time with change. It's okay. It's okay. But if you want a simple plan for teaching money in your family, I have a picture book that is coming out on May the 27th, and you can pre-order it on my website. Accelerate your legacy.com/rosie. I am so excited about this book. Rosie earns it herself. It is about a 7-year-old little girl who earns the dignity of earning money. I love it. I'm so excited about this book, and I would love for you to check it out. Come pick it up, buy a copy for you. I have options for you to buy copies that you can give away that come with extra fun bonuses. If you pre-order the book, there are free bonuses that you can get. I cannot tell you how hard I have worked on this book, how excited I am to get it in your hands, because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are going to be. Blessed by having these money conversations with your children early and often. I can't wait for you to get the book. Alright, accelerators, that is it for this week. Go out and make a difference. I.