My allowance as a kid/teen was whatever money my mom hadn’t spent of my paycheck by the time I got home from work.
$0 as a teen, had to work once I was 10 starting with paper route.
Before that I got $3.25 every Sunday which I saved up for 50% of an N64 and then convinced my dad to help me buy it for Christmas one year which he agreed to.
He was extra generous and bought Super Mario World so I had a game to play day 1.
Oops.
Mowed lawns after age 12. Had 4 neighbors and made about $40 a week at the peak of summer.
You ever scrounge for lost cash? Swimming pool change rooms and the return slots on vending machines were my go to. Usually never found much more than a few coins, but sometimes you’d find paper bills!
Yup, we used to get all our arcade quarters by checking all the coin op lockers, especially underneath if there was space. There used to be at least a simpsons arcade games worth for my brothers and I.
I got 100 francs a week which is roughly 15€, but it was supposed to pay for my train tickets to and from boarding school. However if I played my cards right and skipped one ticket I could have 50 francs which could buy one iron maiden album (used) from the local record store.
Ha, I used to do the same thing, but with the $3/day I got to buy lunch at school. I would skip lunch, then head to the record shop in town and raid their used racks once or twice a week for CDs. Pretty sure that was even where and how I picked up my first Iron Maiden CD.
Same. I was also required to do chores. No allowance. Room and board in exchange for occasional light housework. I’m sure they knew that, looking back on it, I’d take that deal in a heartbeat any time after I moved out.
My younger sister got $20 a week then $50 after 13
I got $20 whenever my parents felt like it and used it to pay for school breakfast/lunch until the money would run out and I got caught steeling money out of my Dad’s wallet then had to get a part job and pay rent, as soon as I was old enough.
i maintained the exterior of the property, i cooked half of the meals, i cleaned the interior except for my parents’ room. i did the plumbing and some of the electrical. built walls. that was my rent. if i wanted fun money i had to get a job. what is this allowance?
Sounds like you did have a job
i mean i was one generation off of the farm, disabled, my parents explicitly had kids so they wouldn’t have to maintain their property (just like their parents before them) and they did no parenting unless we drew a lot of blood in our fights. that left me with most of the household maintenance for a family of six starting around the age of eight.
When my son lost his first tooth, my wife wanted to put $20 under his pillow because it was his first time, and I said “Are you nuts? We’re establishing a baseline here. If he gets $20, he’ll expect it for every tooth, and this Tooth Fairy is on a budget!”
Can’t be letting a 4 year old have too much disposable cash, you don’t know what they’ll get into.
fuck. a $20? i got a penny a tooth. you are making me feel really old Barn. I’m trying to calculate inflation rates and i can’t. a penny in 1913 is 33 cents today i feel 200 years old twenty dollars what the hell
Oh, he didn’t get $20. Maybe a dollar.
would you like to buy some teeth i got teeth if twenty dollar is the going rate. i got a friend with a jar of teeth and I called him crazy
i am going to be yelling at the clouds about this all week thank you i needed a good rant
I liked Shaquille O’Neal’s comment: My kids said “we’re rich” and I said “you’re not rich, I’m rich – you just live in a rich person’s house”.
Early to mid 2000’s, I earned one quarter each time I cleaned the cat box. Kept tallies on a chart and was paid monthly. Eventually I decided it wasn’t worth it. My parents disagreed.
Previous generations (in 50’s-60’s) teens were expected to get a part time job and contribute some money to the family budget.
yeah, previous generations to mine,
teenskids just worked on the farm. that’s why we were in the city.edit: teenagers did not exist in the generations i’m referring to. you went child to adult.
The invention of the teenager is an interesting topic to read about, by the way.
right? the changing of society as we went agrarian to urban is so neat. it’s part of why i studied history, then i forget, then history again, then economics with an emphasis in history in college. well that and the personality issues
our econ department had the best fundraising t-shirt:
[college] department of economics: we don’t wonder why we don’t get invited to parties. we know.
I had basically no allowance. I’ve been working since I was a kid. I would just do small jobs around the neighborhood, mostly gardening. Every summer break, I’d work for probably 10-15 hours every week at $10/hr. And that ended up letting me buy my first car when I was 16 for $8000.
I did grueling yard work every day for no money and was lucky if there was money for school stuff.
Same, also turns out I was not allowed to live there after I turned 18. I’m in my 30s now and still have callouses on my hands from all that yard work.
Same!
Negative $. I got rented out to mow lawns, general yard work, chores, etc.
Really? I’m the only one who remembers Grandad telling Huey Freeman this?
I allow you breath my air 😂
No allowance. We were to do chores and earned credit toward a big thing. one example I remember well is about a year of saving for TVs, and we didn’t even make it halfway to the target amount ($100 each was the target, this was mid-90s) so I assume we were making peanuts for each week’s chores… needless to say neither of us were enthusiastic about it…
At 16 I got a full time job and my parents worked with the school to allow me to leave for work in the afternoon. The next year they didn’t feel like messing with it, so I was emancipated (given legal control over, and responsibility for, myself) and could show up whenever I want and leave whenever I want. That worked well, and my senior year I was on campus for a total of 1.5 hours a day (only needed 2.5 elective credits that year, but they wouldn’t let me take them all in one semester because “reasons”, so I took a cooking class right before lunch both semesters) the rest of the time I was either sleeping or working.
