Paying Your Kid's Money to Complete Their Chores

When our daughter was around 5 years old we instituted a household chores system and did pay her accordingly for completing her chores. Back in 1990 when we started this we used to pay her $2.00 a week. Her chores at age 5 weren't much but did include picking up her toys, cleaning up her bedroom and helping me set the table.

As our daughter aged, her chore list increased and so did the amount that we used to pay her for her chores. By the time she graduated High School, we were paying her $25.00 a week to help us out around the house and do her chores, we felt this was reasonable and that was back in 2007.

We did deduct her a certain amount of money if she didn't complete a chore or didn't complete it on-time. We found that the deductions were actually an incentive for her to complete her chores fully and to do so on time, so we really didn't have any arguing issues like other families have.

My brother recently put both of his kids onto a chores schedule (one is 11 and one is 13) and it's not going too well for them. I think he waited way too late to get his kids onto a chores and reward system. In addition to that, I don't think $2.00 a week at their age level is a big motivating factor to complete them, not in today's world!

Anyway, I thought I would share my thoughts on kid's, chores and paying them for their chores today here on my blog. I know the system we used wasn't exactly perfect but it did work for us.