by Naoko Kensaku

Created on: April 07, 2009

Should older children be made to earn their pocket money?

That really depends on the reason why you want them to earn. While learning financial independence is all well and good, there has to be a line drawn so children don't spend their childhood chasing after money when they could be better off playing and having fun. It should also not come at the expense of their education and family.

My experiences with my family in this regard has been mixed. On one hand, the quest for money has been very well-regarded, but they have always been tempered by two things - timing and location (at least before my dad gave me his old car). My parents taught me that family came first, so my holiday and work schedule revolved around making it sure that it didn't clash with family outings.

A look within my own extended family convinced me that simply letting older children earn their own money without appreciating money was dangerous. My brother and his cousin both earned their own pocket money supplemented by our respective parents- as such they tended to spend beyond their means.

My cousin sister and me, on the other hand, didn't have that luxury. Our parents would often tell us to earn our own money if we wanted to go out with friends, so it taught us to balance our social lives with earning money and studies. Five years on, my brother is working with my uncle as a admins clerk (when he qualifies as a pastry chef), my cousin brother is a waiter (he dropped out of accounting school), while his sister is a kindergarten teacher and I'm a copywriter by profession.

My cousin sister enjoys working with children, and her financial discipline allowed her to pursue her dream shortly after getting her degree. I love writing, and I used the skills I picked up to land my current job. For both of us, earning our own pocket money lead us to an appreciation of what money could do, and more importantly, taught us how to plan our careers so we'd have enough money to do what we want without sacrificing the things we love.

My brother, on the other hand, simply lazed around, waiting for my parents to feed him until my dad got him a job with our uncle. My cousin brother went out to work as a waiter to get money to date his girlfriend. Both are learning to appreciate money slowly, but the lessons they're learning now are very similar to the ones my cousin sister and me learnt much earlier. In that regard, if we did not have our parents to show us how to appreciate money, making us earn our own pocket money would have been the same as giving it to us for nothing anyway.

So, should older children earn their own pocket money?

Only when parents are willing to sit down with their kids and show them what it actually means to be earning money, instead of trying to make as much as you can with one job.

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