By Greg Halbleib
BLOOMINGTON – A new survey is designed to help parents determine the price of household chores to set their’s child’s allowance, and to give kids an idea of what the jobs are really worth.
Country Financial Director of Wealth Management Troy Frerichs said the survey is meant to be a tool to help families develop a savings plan to help teach kids about money, and provide insight on how modern families handle allowances.
“Most parents who pay an allowance did so just to teach children that money does need to be earned and you just don’t get it,” said Frerichs.
Frerichs said the survey also shows at what age parents start paying allowances.
“Forty-four percent of the parents said between the ages of 8 and 10 were the right ages to start doing this,” said Frerichs, “but about a third of them said between 5 and 7. It’s somewhere in the 5-to-10-year-old age period is a good time to teach some of these lessons.”
The survey shows Illinois parents are paying an average of over eight dollars to clean the garage, less than three dollars to vacuum and under two bucks to do the dishes. Also, a sampling of the survey finds cleaning the garage is worth about nine bucks, doing laundry is worth about $2.65 and cleaning the bedroom is valued at a little more than two dollars.
Country has a free app called ChorePal to help families with allowances and savings.
Greg Halbleib can be reached at greg@wjbc.com.
