There is a parenting debate about whether you should teach your children that they should do chores simply because they are a member of the household or if they should get paid for doing chores. I think that allowances should be contingent on work performed for these reasons:

• Children should learn that you need to earn money. That it comes with hard work and dedication. That it takes effort to work, earn, and save enough money to purchase what you want.

• Children learn how to manage the money they earn.

To test my theory (although I won’t be able to judge for sure if this works until my children are adults with savings accounts), I’ve decided to implement a chore chart for the Monkey and Puppy to following. The Puppy is not quite three years old; so, this really hasn’t made any sense to him, but the Monkey is VERY excited by this idea.

We printed out a chore chart from Simplemom.net, cut out the chores, and pasted them on. Then the Monkey happily performed a variety of the chores in exchange for a check mark in the box (which he was allowed to make as well). Each check mark could be exchanged for a nickel or 5 minutes of playing a video game or computer game (redeemable only only on certain days and in specific quantities – e.g. 30 minutes).