Points and allowance, side by side
| Cash allowance | Point system | |
|---|---|---|
| What kids get | Money, usually weekly | Points right away, traded for rewards you choose |
| What it mainly teaches | Managing money: saving, choosing, running out | Doing the job: routines, follow-through, effort |
| How fast the payoff | Once a week | The moment the job is done |
| Best ages | About 6 and up, and essential for teens | From about 3, most useful up to the early teens |
| Rewards that are not money | No | Yes: screen time, outings, choosing dinner |
| Works with more than one child | Fine, if amounts are clearly by age | Well: everyone can see what each job is worth |
| Main risk | Becomes a payment for nothing if nothing is expected | Paying for help kids would have given anyway |
When a point system works better
- Younger children, for whom a dollar next Saturday means little and a point tonight means a lot. Rewards work best when they come right after the behavior.
- Building a new routine. Point charts with praise are a core part of parent training programs with long track records.
- Rewards that are not money: extra screen time, choosing the weekend outing, a later bedtime on Friday.
- Several kids, where a visible price on each job ends most fairness arguments.
When a cash allowance works better
- Teaching money itself. Hands-on experience managing money is linked to better financial behavior in young adulthood, and points cannot give that experience.
- Teenagers, who need practice with real prices, budgets and running out before the stakes get higher.
- Families who want chores done for their own sake. A base allowance that is not tied to jobs keeps money out of everyday helping.
The hybrid: a small allowance plus points
- Pay a small base allowance for learning to manage money, not for chores.
- Give points for chores and extra jobs, at the values on our age pages.
- Set a weekly reward budget you are comfortable with.
- Divide the budget by the points your child usually earns in a week. That is your rate. Round it to something easy, and keep it fixed.
- Let points buy money or non-money rewards at that rate, and review it every few months.
A worked example
Take the chore list for 9 year olds. Doing every daily chore earns 10 points a day, or 70 a week, and the weekly jobs add 11 more: 81 points in a full week.
With a reward budget of $10 a week, that is about 8.1 points to the dollar. Round up to 10 points to the dollar, which is easy to do in your head, and a perfect week costs $8.10. Most weeks will not be perfect, so you will usually spend less.
A caution about paying for everything
Do not put a price on everything. Experiments find that rewards people come to expect can reduce their interest in things they already did willingly, and toddlers rewarded for helping later helped less. Keep thank-yous for the help kids offer on their own, and use points for the jobs you are building.
Questions parents ask about points and allowance
Is a point system better than an allowance?
Neither is better across the board. Points are better for building routines and for younger kids. Cash is better for teaching money management, especially for teens. Many families use points for chores and a small allowance for money practice.
How many points should equal a dollar?
Divide what you want to spend on rewards each week by the points your child usually earns, then round to an easy number like 5, 10 or 25 points to the dollar. Keep it fixed once you have told your kids.
Can you pay allowance in points?
Yes. Some families give a set number of points every week as the allowance, and let chores add more on top. The points convert to money at your rate, so a child still practices saving and choosing.
See also: how much allowance by age, and chores by age for point values on every chore.
Sources
Where this page makes a claim about safety or research, it comes from:
- Parent management training (research chapter). Alan E. Kazdin, Yale University.
- Tips for Using Praise and Rewards. CDC, Essentials for Parenting Toddlers and Preschoolers.
- Talk is cheap: Parent financial socialization and emerging adult financial well-being. LeBaron-Black et al., Family Relations, 2023.
- A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Deci, Koestner and Ryan, Psychological Bulletin, 1999.
- Extrinsic rewards undermine altruistic tendencies in 20-month-olds. Warneken and Tomasello, Developmental Psychology, 2008.
- Children's weekly allowance average is approaching $20 (T. Rowe Price Parents, Kids & Money Survey). Local 12 News, reporting T. Rowe Price's 2022 survey.
