In middle school in the 90s, my parents decided to give me an allowance of $20 a month. Seems like a lot? They also stopped paying for my school lunch - which, not coincidentally, was $20 a month. So I did what any enterprising student of economics would do, and started making my lunch at home and pocketing the $20. Rather than praise my keen grasp of profit and loss, my parents stopped giving me an allowance after 2 months. I really think they taught me the wrong lesson here.
Five bucks a week in the mid-90s. And we didn’t get money for hot lunch. I could afford to do that a couple of times a week (and nothing else), but lunch at our school was almost $2 a pop. Mostly brown-bagged it (oh how I hated having to bring a cold lunch).
My mom never gave me a formal allowance. If I saw something I wanted at the store, I asked her for it. I didn’t ask for much, so when I did, I usually got it.
One thing that she would not buy for me was a Nintendo. She made it clear that she had no objection to it; she just wouldn’t pay for it. So I had to resort to my own resources to buy it, mostly babysitting.
I’m fairly certain I got an allowance but I’ll be damned if I remember how much it was and when I received it.
I do remember having money to buy toys at KMart, so it happened. I know we did chores but it wasn’t a pay-for-service type deal.
I was born in 1961, and got my first allowance at age 7- a princely 50 cents a week.
You had dirt?
I don’t recall getting an allowance. I’d ask my parents for money if I wanted to do something, or make a few bucks by mowing lawns. When I was a child in the 50s, Saturday matinee and popcorn was $.25. Usually a western, and included a cartoon and a cliffhanger series.
five cents in 1966, got up to fifty cents when it ended in 1974
The mid-to-late 80s and an allowance of a dollar a week. Went up all the way to $20 a week in high school.
Never got money, but I was “allowed” to eat food out of the fridge and “allowed” to sleep in a warm bed each night.
FWIW, I give my kid’s $1 per year old (currently 8, 11, and 15), which may seem generous but I do make them buy most of their incidentals (candy, toys, etc). And the 15 year old knows that this is his last year getting allowance… at 16 he can get a real job (and make more than $16/week.)
At age 10 (in 1960) I would get 50 cents every Saturday which was enough to go to the movies and buy a soda and candy bar to sneak in to the thearter. Within a few years I realized that if I wanted any real money I’d have to find ways to earn it by working for neighbors.
For what it’s worth, we never gave our kids an allowance. They were good at conning their grandparents to pay them for good grades, etc. and we supplied them with whatever they needed. They did have to do chores and not doing so would have consequences far worse than money being withheld.
Some of my kid’s friends get paid for good grades, so my daughter asked me the other day if she would get money for good grades. I told her “Yes, eventually, but not from me.”
I started out with 25 cents at 8, as I got older it would increase by a quarter. This went on until I was 12, old enough to care for my 2 younger sister’s, then it jumped to $5. If my mom went out on a date she would give me baby sitting money, she felt that that fell under a different category than watching them during the day. So by the time I was 16 I was getting $25 a week in allowance since I had more thing to do ( laundry, dishes, cooking).
I remember getting an allowance as a small child- late 80’s/early 90’s- but I don’t remember how much it was. Once I got older, my parents made a deal with me: I could either continue to get an allowance, but they wouldn’t even help me out with a nickle if I was short, or I could stop getting an allowance and they would buy things (within reason) for me. It probably came out fairy even, actually! I was never huge on the Gimme Gimmes as a kid.
Once in high school, I also kept most of my allotted lunch money for spending. I think I was given $20 per week, and I probably kept $15 most weeks.
I remember getting a quarter a week back in the 1960s, but I’m not sure if it was lower earlier. I do know I could buy two 5¢ Hershey bars and a 15¢ comic book with my allowance. I realized a couple of years ago that two candy bars and a comic book will run you about $5 now, so I raised our daughters allowance to that.
You got real dirt? Lucky sod. We got rocks and had to beat them together to get our dirt. When we got home from school and were real good, our Dad would strap us with his belt. 