I still am not a huge fan of allowances, though. It bugs me when financial books say that kids *have* to have allowances in order to learn money sense. Really? My siblings and I never got allowance (though my dad did pay us a small amount for extra yardwork, on occasion) and I would say we all 3 have very good money principles. I’m not joking when I say I’m the least frugal of the three of us, and you know how frugal I am! I’d say if you look at the frequency of allowances and debt/misspending over the past century, you’d see allowances going up as debt and erratic spending also go up. I’m totally not saying there is a correlation, but my point is that it bothers me when people say kids *have* to have allowance to learn how to handle money, because there is NO historical precedence for that.

So, all that to say, I think allowance can have some benefits in the way of learning to handle money, but you can certainly learn money sense without it .
.-= Susan´s last blog .. =-.

I don’t know how I want to deal with chores/allowance/etc with my kids. I see the negatives of the system my parents implemented – we didn’t associate working with money. (But then, my parents don’t get paid for their jobs, so maybe that’s why it worked for us?) We were given money without doing anything to earn it. Does that teach a kid to expect handouts?

Then there’s a system like yours, that very much ties work with money. I see the benefits and negatives of that too. So I don’t know where I stand… Definitely things to think about over the next few years!
.-= ashley@twentysixcats´s last blog ..finally! videos! =-.

And as for the toys, I was totally with you, Susan, but then my kids started watching movies. Olivia pretty much didn’t watch movies until she was three or so. But now Disney has a hold on them. Visions of Cars and Princesses fill their little hearts.

But then I’m also very much of a minimalist when it comes to toys , so that very much biases me. I like a limited number of quality toys that promote imagination, development, etc. (so lots of books, duplos, blocks, puzzles, crayons, play kitchen and food, etc.), but anything more just becomes cluttery . Part of that is living in a small apartment, part of it is my educational philosophy on not over-stimulating kids. And then my frugal side factors in there too .