Did you have to earn your pocket money?

[Eleuthera]

As A kid (<12) I got 1 comic book a month as 'allowance', I can't remember having to do chores very often. We (my brother and I) had to help out with the garden/lawn in spring/summer and occasionally tidy up our rooms.
Mom did all the cleaning, but she's a tad compulsive when it comes to cleaning, whatever we do is never going to be good enough anyway (even now, as an adult, I know my mom will complain about my apartment tomorrow when she's coming over to visit).

When we got older we my brother got a "clothing allowance" (since he spent all his money on clothes), while I (the older one) didn't (because they knew I'd never spent any of it on clothing). We never got enormous amounts of money, but he got a job to cover his expenses while I was fine with what little I got (or saved up from birthdays and the like).

After I finished highschool they did make me get a job though, basically "get a job or we're not paying for tuition."

 

[Ledan]

Nope, I used to get a small amount of pocket money every week (about 2 francs), then when I got older it increased a bit. Didn't get paid for doing chores, it was just sort of expected.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

There was a point where my parents and later on step father said they would give me a set allowance every week for doing more chores than usual. My normal chores was cleaning the cat box, picking up my room, and just making sure I cleaned off my plate after meals. However, if I did the extra bit, such as mowing the lawn, raking leaves, keeping the bathroom clean, helping with other house chores, they said they'd give me a bit of spending money (usually about $5-$20 depending on how much I did and how well I did it.) However, after weeks of doing these extra chores, they usually forget to give me any, and I was too afraid of seeming too selfish to ask about it. Three years later they said they would pay me in one lump sum for all the extra chores I did, but that passed too. Eventually I forgot and didn't really care. My parents usually rocked on Christmas when I was a kid anyway, so I didn't get upset in any way. It was basically as if they spent
my chore money for me anyway.

As I got older however, maybe 14, my step father grew very angry and bitter. If I asked for anything more than 10 cents he'd throw a fit and say I was wasting money. Meanwhile he would waste hundreds of dollars every month on beer, and most of that was my mothers money, but of course drunk macho man has to be macho. Sorry, went off topic a bit.

 

[Harlemura]

I never got pocket money from my parents, but they'd buy me something I wanted every now and again as a trade off. A pack of Yu-Gi-Oh cards when we went to town, a game every month or so. Worked for me.
I never really did anything to earn it, but I think I got stuff more as a reward for not being a little shit. I was a regular goody two shoes in school, always doing all my work and not getting into trouble and stuff. I just got treated for sticking to that.

My nan did give me pocket money, but it pretty much went straight into our family's collective pot of loose change. Not because I was made to do it, but because I got my £5 a month made up of 20p or less coins. Even if I did save it all up, that's gonna be a heavy bag of money to lug into town to buy a £30 or so game.

 

[Foolery]

Nope. Never had pocket money. Did chores anyway. Shoveling shit out of chicken coops and the cow barn almost ever summer. Oh and watering our ridiculously huge garden. Chopping and stacking wood for winter. Learned to use a chainsaw when I was 10. Basically, my parents put me to work as soon as I was able to.

 

[Mylinkay Asdara]

My parents went through loads of systems to do less than we did around the house as we got older, which I liked as a kid because it was actually kinda empowering (my favorite was a list of stuff to do + what you'd be paid for it / sign up sheet on the fridge weekly so you could control your earnings and project for what you wanted to save/buy - video games were all on me minus Santa's help with systems back then). After they got divorced and I was the older of two latch-key kids I basically just became the mom and that's been with me for life in a lot of ways, but I still got paid and my savings account was healthy enough to pay for my own school trips through high school as I supplemented it with babysitting job money.

Of course, I had only a sister so I couldn't speak to a gender divide. And we lived in apartments - so there was never yard work or things like that on the list, which I would imagine might account for some of the discrepancy. Mowing a big lawn is a lot more labor intensive than running the washing and drying machine then having to fold things for 15 minutes when they've done.

 

[Thanatos5150]

Ways in which I received cash as a kid:
Not Eating Lunch on days where everybody was too busy to make a sandwich (my mum would hand me a five or something)
Finding it on the ground somewhere (Oddly common)
Odd, informal job-like things (Walking a neighbor's dog when they were out of town, helping some random schmuck move in/out of the apartment complex
Outright theft and/or deception
Or, the only time I really received money from my parents for the express purpose of having money: I'd usually get 50-ish dollars when the tax refund checks came in

You'll note that none of those are an actual allowance. I liked to say that my allowance was exactly equal to my room and board fees, whcih was awfully convenient.

Oh, yeah, and my brothers and I all did chores around the house, pretty much constantly.

 

[Easton Dark]

I didn't have to do chores, but I also didn't get money. I think it was a fair trade.

My dad tried to start giving me an allowance, but then I never spent it since I was so used to having nothing, so that arrangement ended quickly.

 

[themind]

Pocket money from my parents, no.

If I wanted pocket money I had to go shovel driveways or rake leaves for people in my neighbourhood.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

What pocket money? The only time I got money was from birthday, Christmas, paper routes and dog walking.

We were pretty poor when I was growing up.

 

[Teoes]

I never got pocket money, but I did get some cash for doing chores around the house. If I wanted/needed something - within reason! We weren't rich by a long shot - and had been a decent kid and done some work for it, my folks would get it for me.

But by the same token I've had jobs since I was 14 so I was mostly earning my own spending money.

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

I got a flat amount of pocket money, that got higher as i grew older, but my parents always told us, that we get it as long as we do our chores.
So we didn't really get payed for each chore we did, but we knew that it's the tradeoff: Kids do the chores, kids get pocket money.

But i guess me and my sister never concieved it like that. It's common around here that kids get pocket money and that they help in the household, but it delieverd the message: "You gotta work for your money" and in the end that's what counts.

 

[Lieju]

My kids get a flat amount of pocket money (when I remember!), and so did I when I was a kid. Did you have to earn yours? And was there a gender divide?

I'm an only child, so no siblings to compare to, but I had a small weekly sum, and could get more for extra chores.

A family I knew, though, had two boys and a girl. They would all get the same amount of money. The girl would save it, the boys spent their money on slot-machines, lost it all, and then came asking more from their dad, who gave in.

That always stroke me as horribly unfair and stupid.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well we had/have a farm so the chore part was pretty much work from duck til dawn every day of the week, and there was no allowance, but my parents didn't mind buying things for us on special occasions if you found a good reason for it... sadly my dad considers all but work related products a waste so that was kind of a tough wall to climb.

My sister however became a master of deception and would invent all sorts of nonsense to get stuff, hell even my first computer would never happen unless she came up with an elaborate scheme to make it seem critical for our education.

 

[OneCatch]

Nope.

Having "food on the table" for me to eat was what my parents considered to be "payment" for me doing chores around the house.
I never got paid pocket money. I guess my parents just didn't believe in it. (Plus, we weren't exactly very well-off

That wasn't my parent's explicit reasoning, but I never got pocket money either, and was rightly expected to help out around the house. It was more "Would you do the dishes and hoovering because I don't have time" than having a fixed rota though. I didn't have defined chores.
On the flipside, I could usually borrow or be given a tenner 'as and when' if I wanted to go to the cinema or something.

And I think it rubbed off quite well because it taught me to be restrained (some would say miserly) with money, but still be fairly generous and relaxed about it on the whole.

My kids get a flat amount of pocket money (when I remember!), and so did I when I was a kid. Did you have to earn yours? And was there a gender divide?

Me and my sister got the same treatment, though she did start being able to be loaned/given money to go out a little younger - courtesy of being the younger sibling.
I don't think there was a gender element at all.

 

[guitarsniper]

My parents are pretty well-off, but did their best to teach me the value of money. I got an allowance as long as I did chores, but they put pressure on me to get actual work, babysitting and during the summer teaching camps, so now I am pretty thrifty, and know how to do basic household tasks.

 

[rasputin0009]

My parents own a small business and are very well off. Not once have they given me or my siblings an allowance or pocket money for chores. We lived out in the country so we had more chores than the average person (Animals, gardening, landscaping on 20 acres). They did start us working at the business for minimum wage when we were pretty young so that's how we got our spending cash.

What they did pay for was sports and anything school related. They never bought any one of us a vehicle (or let us use one of theirs) or paid for insurance, but they did pay for our gas until we finished high school (just to get to school and back). During high school, I had a part-time job at the local grocery store rather than working for my parents because I wanted to do things separate from the family. My mother also loaned me money for the first 2 years of university because you can't get student loans if your parents have too much income.

I feel extremely grateful to my parents for teaching me a very strong work ethic and how nothing in this world is free. From that, I already make over 100 grand a year with no debt at the tender age of 21.

 

[thejackyl]

Until I got a job, my only source of income was holidays. Thing is, my parents took it and put it into a bank account that I wasn't allowed to touch until I started putting my own money in it.

Kind of defeated the purpose of getting money at Christmas when you can't spend it for another 5 years.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I never got pocket money from my parents, we just had to do our chores.

When I was older I got paid 20 bucks and a gatorade to mow the lawn for my Grandma every week, but that was about it. My Dad took it anyways and deposited it in my bank account

I always find that so strange. My parents are Hopi, In Hopi tradition the children get to decide for themselves and parents don't make their choices for them or force them to do anything. They instead teach them to make good decisions and let them decide. It is really strange to hear when " parents take this away" or " my parents made me do this". I have no idea why some cultures are like that and make children feel so helpless.

I don't think that makes for good life skills. When children like that grow up they are thrown into the world having to make their decisions and having responsibility for the first time they don't really know what to do with it and it is extremely stressful when it really should never have been any other way for them. It is like they create a " children's world" and "adult world" separate and are not really preparing kids to make their own decisions.

funny thing, my parents tried doing this with my next youngest brother, and he is the laziest and biggest piece of shit in the family, all because he couldn't give two fucks about "life skills" or "what's good for *such and such*", he's a greedy arrogant pain in the ass, and he is the only one who was taught like that.

not saying you're culture/traditions are wrong, just saying I have seen them in my own household and it did the complete opposite, and my parents went back to being disciplined and making us do chores/save money and my other siblings are all turning out to be great. hell the fucking 6 year old does more around the house than the piece of shit does, and that's saying something.