Max is 9 years old. He loves buying things. He doesn’t care what it is, just let him buy it.

“Max, where does the money come from to pay for all of this?”

“From you Daddy.”

“Do you think I am made of money?”

“Yes.”

Trying to curb this buying addiction my wife and I declared the month of May a “No Buy Month”. This meant that we wouldn’t buy toys, or games, or tools for Max. The only exception we made was for food. We didn’t even allow him to spend his own money. This didn’t stop him from asking constantly. But we were saying “No” a lot more often.

And then what happened on June 1?

“Buy it for me now!!”

He is not thrilled that my answer is still “No”. But we aren’t happy that his requests are back full force either.

We had been having a discussion about giving him an allowance but my wife and I hadn’t been able to agree on how we would do it. But we know that we have to stop putting it off and come up with a solution.

She believes that we should set an amount that he will get each week. So far I agree. The disagreement comes in the next step. She thinks he should automatically get the money no matter what.

On the other hand I believe that he should have chores to do each week. How many of them he actually does will determine how much of his allowance he will get for that week.

After that I think he should divide his money up into 3 portions. If he gets 10 dollars per week then:

• 4 dollars can be used for spending

• 4 dollars must be put into the bank

• 2 dollars should be given to charity

This way he will learn what things he will want to spend his money on; how to save money; and how to help others.

He just discovered how the son of a friend has been saving for 10 years and now has 6,000 dollars in the bank. The sound of that excites him.

As for buying things, we both agree he can use his spending money pretty much anyway he wants to.

Now that June has come around we have been able to compromise on part of it. Max will get half his allowance just for living in the house. The other half he will only get if he does his chores. We will be coming up with a list of perhaps 10 jobs out of which he can choose 5 to do each week.

He will get paid one dollar per chore. Doing all 5 chores will earn him 5 dollars. If he does only 3, he will get 3 dollars.

We are still debating on whether he can choose to do what he wants with his whole allowance or only a portion of it as I described above.

As a side note, if he does other chores with me like mowing the lawn he will get paid extra. If he damages some things like the walls in the house he will have to repair them. I may or may not pay him for the repairs; in some cases the work will be a consequence.

Max has to learn the value of money. Most parents give allowances to teach their kids how to use their money. Today is the start of a new era in our house as Max learns how to spend, save, and buy things that are important to him.