A child is never too young to teach about money. The younger you start them, the better. With this hub you will learn the fundamental of teaching your child how to be responsible for money and in return maybe then they will learn how to be responsible adult.

I'm no expert, but this advise was given to us by a psychologist when our girls were young. This lesson not only taught the girls the responsibility of money, but also being responsible for their own action as well. It does take a litle effort on the parents part, but in the long run it's a good learning lesson for the child.

If you already give your child an allowance, sit and write down why they get this allowance. Do they get the whole thing whether or not they have earned it? Do you actually give them an allowance just because they got up and went to school? Do you give them an allowance just because they tried their best? What did they try their best at? How much do you give them? Are you giving them too much or too little? These are questions you need to being asking yourself.

There really is no "set amount" that can be given. That needs to be totally up to you and what you can afford to give them. Here comes the fundamental to the allowance. It's just like you gettitng up and going to work.

Start your child out with small chores that can be done after school, but yet won't affect their homework time, and even as a child, they still need a little relaxation time or social time. Here are some simple ideas of small chores:

• Setting the table for dinner
• Washing, rinsing OR drying the dishes
• Letting the dog out
• Feeding the dog and/or cat
• Sweeping the floor after meal time

These are just simple ideas, maybe you have one or two of your own ideas. Just remember they are still children with clumsy hands and feet yet. Our daughters started out at a very young age, in fact even before they were in school. They loved to help with setting the table, this taught them the etiquette of table setting.

They also liked to help with dishes; usually I started them out by just rinsing dishes (silverware, plastic dishes, no breakables until they were older).

They even had fun helping with feeding the dog; this helped them to bond with the animal.

Sweeping the floor was our most comical moments. We each would have a broom and we worked together.

Now the weekend comes along and bigger chores have to be done. Why not allow the child to help. Make it a family time. here again are some ideas:

• Stripping the bed down
• Help make the bed
• Help with the sorting of the laundry
• Taking the clothes out of the washer and into the dryer
• Dusting the furniture
• If have a garden, let them help with weeding it out or watering it
• sweeping the sidewalk off

Again these are just some ideas, and maybe you have one or two of your own. The girls thought it was cool that they could tear their beds apart once a week. It allowed them to take out any frustration that they might had. Making the bed, sometimes was a bit of a challenge, and maybe didn't get done exactly the way you would have liked it, but remember, they are the ones sleeping in it and it does teach them how take care of their own "stuff".

With the sorting of the clothes, this helped them with color coordination and with our youngest daughter, that was a challenge in itself for her. When it came time for the clothes to be switched, I would take them out of the washer and hand them to the child to put in the dryer. This taught them how their clothes got clean and that Mom really didn't have any magic up her sleeves to get their favorite outfit washed.

We always allowed them to help with dusting, but usually not any of the fragile things; that was left to the adult to do.

We had a garden, and they enjoyed being out there with me and learning about the garden. Their favorite time was at the end of the season, and everything had to come out. They also liked to help dad out as well. When he got done mowing the lawn, they would help sweep off the sidewalk.

Now mind you, as the girls did get older, the chores did get bigger and we did give them more responsibility.

One of the things that we would do on the weekends when it came to doing our chores is the TV was turned off and we turned on the stereo. Sometimes we would listen to their music and sometimes they had to listen to ours. But we would "Jam" out and try to make it as fun as possible. Music usually helps keep the spirits up and the rhythm going, and tempers down.

I wished things would have always went to plan, but there were times that maybe one, two or even all three girls would buck us about doing their share of the chores. We got to the point that we just got tired of trying to "convince" them, punish them or whatever it would take to ge them to help out. That is where the allowance played a roll. If they chose not to do their share of chores, then that would reflect greatly on their allowance.

So here comes payday for the child. Let's say you give them $5.00 for the week and they didn't do all of their chores; well then, they didn't fully earned the full $5.00. As a parent that is where you need to decide what they actually earned. But before you hand over the money to them. Sit down with them and let them know what they did accomplish and then what they didn't do. And because they didn't do something, they therefore are docked. It would be just when you go to work and didn't do what is expected of you.

I have heard often how parents will pay their child if they get up on time and go to school? What's wrong with that picture? Instead, of paying them to get to school on time, they should be docked for being late. Aren't you docked if you are late for work? It should work the same way for the child. This helps teach them to be responsible for their own action and help prepare them into the worked of Adults.

Now I'm going to touch on another subject, but yet has to do with money and teaching your kids responsibility. How many times do they come into a room, turn on the light ,the TV or some electronic device and then leave, with everything still turned on? Do they pay the elctric bill? Of course not, you do and yet you keep yelling over and over again to please turn things off when they were not using it! The way the economy is today, we need to pinch every penny. Teach the same thing to your child.

We got to the point that we just quit yelling to turn things off, instead we would write on a calendar when something got left turned on. (Whenever we did write the girls initials down, we always would show them as soon as we could, so that way they didn't think we were ever "plotting" against them).

So now comes the child's "payday". Hand them what money they have earned. Now show them the calendar with their initials and how many times their name was written down for that week. Let them help count it up with you. Now, they owe you some money back...make them pay you back. This teaches them that money really doesn't grow on trees. Again our youngest daughter (poor Jessi), was notorious for leaving the water faucet on after washing her hands. She soon stopped when her first allowance was so small....

I bet you have a "Not Me Ghost" lurking around your house. I know we sure did! Sometimes, not often, for you see as parents, we have eyes behind our heads, but on an occasion, we didn't actually catch the child at hand on who left the light on. So there fore the "Not Me Ghost" always got the blame. In those instance, you can't dock the Ghost, but you sure can dock all the kids. And we didn't go for tattling; The tattler would loose double, and the child that left on the light, would also loose. Sooner or later the child that was guilty would eventually own up to leaving the light on.

On occasion, yes as parents we would goof ourselves. Once in a blue moon we would forget to turn something off. Of course, then the child just loves to remind us about it. Then their little mind gets to wondering, if I get docked, why don't they? In a sense we do, we pay the bills. But a child don't completely comprehend that part. So to make it feel like it was "fair" to the child, if they caught one of us leaving something turned on, we would then erase one of their initials off the calendar.

Now let's put a real twist to all of this. What is the child going to do with their allowance? Probably spend it foolishly on candy or junk food. So why not sit down with your child and ask them if they could save money what would they really, really want to buy? Help them learn to save some of that money. Do you go out and buy them toys just "because" or do they have to wait for their Birthday or Christmas to get what they want?

So let's say that the child is getting $5.00 a week. They have earned a grand total of $4.00 that is all theirs to do what they wish. Have them put half of that $4.00 away in a little "saving account' that you hang onto for them. Sit down and have the child tell you what their "wish list" is (make sure they stay in a reasonable amount and stick with reality). Write the wish list down and place this in the envelope along with the money. The next time you go to the store with the child, price out what they want. Once they have reached that amount (including tax), take that child to the store and allow them to buy one thing off their wish list. This will give the child the responsibility and teaches them how to handle money. This also makes the child feel "grown up" and worthy of themselves.

I remember the first time that Jessi (our youngest) saved enough money to buy one of those electronic babies. We went to the store and she picked out what one she wanted, went to check out and the cashier asked her if that was birthday money that she got. With a huge grin on her face, she told the checker "Nope, I earned this all by myself and I get to spend it all by myself". She was so proud of herself, and we were too as well.

Our middle daughter had a faddish with shoes. Being on a tight budget such as we were, we couldn't afford to buy her name brand shoes that she wanted. So she would save her money to buy herself those name brand shoes . By the time she was a Junior in high school, I think she owned over a hundred pair of shoes-no joke!

As the girls got a little older, well, allowances just wasn't enough for them anymore. So they ventured out on looking for other ways a kid could make money. One that they found was the local Advertiser in our hometown. Once a week they would deliver this free newspaper door to door in our neighborhood. The paper route wasn't very big and easy for them to handle. They considered doing the local newspaper, but we didn't feel as parents that the child should have to buy the newspaper and then try and get the money out of the customers, so we discourage that one. Another one was babysitting which brought in good money for them.

When they got to where they wanted to make more money, then we encourage them to save money in a different way. The money would be divided up 3 ways. One was what we called a long term savings in which we got them a savings account at our bank. The other was their "spendy" savings that we hung onto in an envelope and then their blow money. Many times we would find that one of our daughters would prefer putting more money towards savings than just blowing it on "junk".

By the time that our middle daughter was 15 years of age and just about ready for Drivers Ed, she wanted a car. She actually had enough in her savings account to buy her own car and it was no junker either.

There are exceptions to all of this. One is we never docked a child when they were sick. You don't go to work when you are sick do you? So we didn't expect our kids to do chores when not feeling good. When you are that miserable, you could care less if a light is left on or not, so we didn't dock them on that either. Occasionally a school function would interfere with maybe doing a chore, again we did not dock during those times. We felt that school and school activities are very important and we always tried to encourage them to stay involve with school activities.

So let's simply how all this worked:

1. You are 1st the Parent and the Teacher; teaching them about money. You set the allowance amount and what they should receive and when they should receive it
2. You now are the Bill Collector; collecting what they owe you for leaving lights on
3. Now you have become the Banker; you are going to help them learn how to save money
4. And lastly you are the Chauffeur; someones gotta take them shopping!

This sounds like a lot of work and it does take a little work, but look at it this way. Not only are you teaching your child the value of money, but it also builds bonding relation between you as well.

Well I hope this helps you and maybe give you and idea or two and even take some stress out of life for you. I think it has helped our girls to become responsible adults now. Our yungest one that seemed to had the most problems as a child is diong the best. She actually works for a bank in her hometown, as a bill collector and ranks top of her peer.