Did You Get an Allowance?

[old guy]

Just curious. I was reading an article the other day and it mentioned that giving your kid an allowance was a thing of the past.

I got an allowance, starting when I first realized that my older brother was receiving one. But we did have a list of chores we had to do, otherwise you didn't get it. We were reasonably poor and the amount I received wasn't a lot, but I really counted on it so I did the work. As soon as I was old enough, I got a paper route to supplement my allowance, but as it tuned out, it negated it. I didn't mind, I figured that I was on my way up at that point.

I gave my son an allowance, but he started working full time during the summer when he turned 14. He had a list of things he had to do, and he did them. Seems like a long time ago. Actually, I guess it was a long time ago. I just always thought it was a good lesson for a kid.

I am wondering if people still do the allowance thing or if it is a thing of the past?

[gazhekwe]

I got a quarter a week, and if I wanted anything, that had to be saved up til I could afford it. For that quarter, I did all the dishes, set and cleared the table, sometimes fixed or started dinner, and on the weekend, straightened, dusted and vacuumed the living areas of the house.

I actually do not remember what we did with my son re: allowance and chores. I am pretty sure he got $5 a week and had to use it if he wanted something, no fair asking mom and dad for it. I think the chores were trash patrol, yard cleanup and room cleanup. He will probably jump in here and correct me though

[rb336]

I got $5/week starting when I was 5, it bumped to $15 at 10, then disappeared when I was 15. I had a savings account, and the deal was that on New Years, my parents would match what I had put away. I saved over $100 every year and they NEVER matched it. by the time I was 11 I decided to heck with it and spent every cent

[old guy]

I started out at a quarter too. When I hit $1.25 a week I was infatuated with trying to talk my mother into letting me buy a 12 foot aluminum rowboat from a Sears catalog. It was $5.00 a month. This almost sounds like a Jack Handy joke now that I think about it. Since we lived in the middle of a large industrial city in the Midwest with no lakes around she'd ask me what I was going to do with it, put it in the backyard and sit in it all day because I didn't have any money to do anything else. I bugged her for about six months.

[oladub]

I think I received $2.50/week but had to cut and weed the back yard, shovel snow, and do whatever was on the daily list in the summer .

My kids grew up on a farm so there was always work. I would figure out how much it would cost at minimum wage if I did it to cut grass or whatever and pay the kids in piecework. Also, I paid them handsomely for good grades but nothing for C's [[e.g. $5/A in fifth grade, $12/A in 12th grade). Today, I would double or triple those amounts to incentivize good grades to offset inflation.

[Ray1936]

I know the folks kicked some coins my way, but generally I worked from the time I was 12 when I got my Detroit Times route. Periods of time from then [[1948) until my retirement in '01 that I was not employed were few and short.

[WKL]

I think I started out at a quarter and made it all the way to one whole dollar. Like everyone else I had a list of things to do, mow the lawn, shovel the snow, take out the garbage. The allowance ended when I got a paper route, the chores, however, did not. How did that happen?

[EastsideAl]

Started at a nickel a week when I was 5, which was just enough money to go over to the corner store on Van Dyke and buy a few small pieces of candy. The threat of the loss of that nickel, and the candy, was a powerful motivating factor though for getting done the few little chores a 5 year old could do. It hit a buck a week when I was 10, and I thought I was in hog heaven. I could even afford Hot Wheels!

[jackie5275]

I started getting one around age 10. It was $1/week. I had to work for it. I didn't have specific chores, but my mom gave me various assignments everyday depending on what she needed done. I was starting to get into music back then & wanted to spend my money on records. They cost $5.99, so I had to save for 7 weeks to get enough to buy an album & cover the sales tax too.

[Honky Tonk]

I started getting one around age 10. It was $1/week. I had to work for it. I didn't have specific chores, but my mom gave me various assignments everyday depending on what she needed done. I was starting to get into music back then & wanted to spend my money on records. They cost $5.99, so I had to save for 7 weeks to get enough to buy an album & cover the sales tax too.

Sounds like we had the same Moms. One thing I'll say, as silly as these stories might sound to today's kids, it did teach me some values. Work, how to save my money, how to budget, and how to make ends meet. Lessons that seem lost today, or maybe just antiquated.

[Honky Tonk]

I agree, working and saving for our money were great lessons, also, the discipline of buying things for ourselves. My allowance quit when I started babysitting. I faithfully put away money in the bank, and in two years, I had saved up over $100. My folks took it to help finance our move to Detroit. Well, all for one and one for all, as the saying goes. I knew I had to help out even though I bet my fingernail tracks down US 27 are still visible today. I went on saving and scraping as learned and in three years was able to buy my own [[cheap used) car and finance my own college education. Great lessons all.

You mean you were smart enough not to sign for a $500K mortgage on a $35K income????

[Downriviera]

I had a Free Press route, saved up enough to buy a car as soon as I turned 16. Nowadays kids get iphones and ipads, etc. I'd like to know the answer to the op's question. Are kids these days getting cash on top of all the stuff, too?

[gazhekwe]

You mean you were smart enough not to sign for a $500K mortgage on a $35K income?


​Never gave it a thought.

[Jimaz]

We received 10¢/week, later raised to 25¢/week — far less than what our peers reported. But we never complained because we were always well cared for.

I guess the odd thing was that there was never a feeling of quid pro quo. We never associated allowance with chores. The chores were what we were asked to do for the tribe and, what benefits the tribe benefits its members. For that reason we did chores willingly because we were each members of the tribe.

Our family's collective survival of Hurricane Betsy in New Orleans might account for this sense of shared sacrifice. Trauma like that is seldomly understood by those who haven't experienced it. After such experiences folks tend to downgrade the "what's in it for me" aspect in favor of more important things.

[old guy]

Sounds like a lot of people either started out with a paper route or graduated to it. I enjoyed the route, [[ I had a morning route ) but I hated doing the collections. I'm assuming that paper routes don't exist anymore?

After my paper route career was over I worked as a pin setter at, I think it was a huge Moose Lodge in the city. They had about six lanes and a bar in the lower level. A bunch of guys smoking cigars and drinking whiskey. You'd set the pins in the rack, then you had to pull a big lever to lift the rack and then jump up on a couple of 2x4's just above it. And do it fast. These guys loved to watch when you were pulling the lever back, sling their ball right away and see if they could hit you with the pins before you could jump up on the platform. The drunker they'd get, the more they'd laugh if they could hit you. Tough job. That also prepared me for what to expect in life.

[Maof]

I never had an allowance but if I needed a few bucks here and there mom would give it to me. of course, I worked for it too..grass cutting, house cleaning and an occasional window washing

[JBMcB]

I got $2 an hour working at my parent's store, mostly doing stuff they felt bad making the other stock boys do. I also did yard work for neighbors in the summer.

My second job, making minimum wage at a video store to pay my way through college, was quite a step up.

[rb336]

Sounds like a lot of people either started out with a paper route or graduated to it. I enjoyed the route, [[ I had a morning route ) but I hated doing the collections. I'm assuming that paper routes don't exist anymore?

they do, but mostly they are done by middle aged guys in cars

[Honky Tonk]

Sounds like a lot of people either started out with a paper route or graduated to it. I enjoyed the route, [[ I had a morning route ) but I hated doing the collections. I'm assuming that paper routes don't exist anymore?

After my paper route career was over I worked as a pin setter at, I think it was a huge Moose Lodge in the city. They had about six lanes and a bar in the lower level. A bunch of guys smoking cigars and drinking whiskey. You'd set the pins in the rack, then you had to pull a big lever to lift the rack and then jump up on a couple of 2x4's just above it. And do it fast. These guys loved to watch when you were pulling the lever back, sling their ball right away and see if they could hit you with the pins before you could jump up on the platform. The drunker they'd get, the more they'd laugh if they could hit you. Tough job. That also prepared me for what to expect in life.

How true! GREAT story!

[Jimaz]

... I worked as a pin setter.... The drunker they'd get, the more they'd laugh if they could hit you.

LOL! Hire you as a pin setter but use you as a pin.

That's when you intercept their ball and secretly pack some fecal matter in the finger holes. A drunk wouldn't notice it for a while. Eeeeuuuuw!

[gnome]

No allowance. As a six-year-old I picked strawberries and whatnot and then pulled my RadioFlyer around the neighborhood to sell my wares. As I got a little older I mowed grass and tossed newspapers on people's roofs for cash.

the newspaper throwing didn't pay very well as folks would hide behind their drapes when I came collecting. Bastards. That is why I will buy just about anything if you come knocking and you are under age 15.

the mowing and snow shoveling were big money makers after I figured out that widows hate mowing grass. They also will talk your ear off.

Not all of my 32 customers were widows though. One gentleman was a real talker but had a lot to say. He was from the leather-helmet era of football playing and had played against Red Grange. He also spent some time in China and the Pacific before and during WWII. A real-live Hemingway kind of fellow.

he was one of my customers who preferred I use his mower and once when he was not around I rushed through his lawn. In my hurry I clipped a landscaping rock and broke the housing on his mower. I owned up to my fuck-up and he told me not to worry about it. Since I was going on a family vacation he said he'd use his old reel mower, no problem.

i returned to find his lawn half mowed and him dead from a heart attack.

[Maof]

i returned to find his lawn half mowed and him dead from a heart attack.

oh no.....

[old guy]

LOL! Hire you as a pin setter but use you as a pin.

That's when you intercept their ball and secretly pack some fecal matter in the finger holes. A drunk wouldn't notice it for a while. Eeeeuuuuw!

Not a bad idea Jimaz. Never thought of it. If they would have had super glue back then, that would have been a good trick too.

I hear you on the paper route collection thing gnome. I remember seeing people sneaking a look through the blinds or the curtains moving and then nobody answering the door.
As far as the lawn mowing thing... wow. I hope when you got back from vacation there weren't a bunch of angry neighbors out in the street yelling, there's that little S.O.B. Let's get him.

[gnome]

Not a bad idea Jimaz. Never thought of it. If they would have had super glue back then, that would have been a good trick too.

I hear you on the paper route collection thing gnome. I remember seeing people sneaking a look through the blinds or the curtains moving and then nobody answering the door.
As far as the lawn mowing thing... wow. I hope when you got back from vacation there weren't a bunch of angry neighbors out in the street yelling, there's that little S.O.B. Let's get him.

No one knew about the broken lawnmower except he and I.

The whole thing was pretty darn sad. I cried like a little kid at his funeral. He was just a hell of a man and he treated me like a equal. He had been a lineman way back when and showed me some questionable techniques he used on opposing players, he made sarcastic comments about the neighbors ...especially the widows who were in keen competition with each other over petty things; he was just a good guy and by literally cutting corners I directly contributed to his death.

He had a heart condition and knew he should not be out their humping around a rusty reel mower, but he liked a shipshape lawn and didn't want to wait for me to get back from camping with my Mom and Dad.

It was just a shitty thing to do and experience. It goes into that bag of regrets that come out and visit at uncomfortable times.

That bag gets heavier every year.

So, ... Yeah, collecting from tightwads was plain stupid. The peeking through the blinds and turning off their tv and pretending they couldn't afford the .35 cents a week. Shit man, I was a kid, had bought the papers from the station manager, stuffed them in two massive bags and had to hump a mile just to start delivering their future birdcage liners.

i saw no future in the newspaper business; after a hot summer followed by a snowy winter, I gave up my media career. Rupert Murdock breathed a sigh at my early retirement.

[MizMotown]

$10 bucks a week. Extra for A's on report card.