My boyfriend's son gets 5 dollars, whether he does his chores or not.
However, in the past year my boyfriend has implemented chores, but his son has to do them. If he does the bare minimum or complains a lot, he gets seven dollars. If he does them without any reminders, does extra chores per day, doesn't complain, etc, he can get up to ten dollars, depending on how often he made extra effort during the week. Essentially, the harder you work, the better the outcome.
His chores include: setting the table at dinner, bringing the recycling to the back door (this will turn into bringing them outside now that the weather is finally nice), helping clean out the gerbil cage, helping put dishes in the dishwasher and away, helping pack his lunch, help make an easy dinner, putting leftovers away, helping tidy the living areas, bringing the washroom and office garbage bags to the big garbage can, etc. He has to do at least one chore per day, and we have a weekly chart so none of them get missed. He also has responsibilities that are expected but are not tied to allowance: cleaning his room, washing up the sink after he's finished brushing his teeth, feeding the gerbil, etc.
His son has finally started learning that the more effort he makes, the more money he gets. And if he wants something in particular he tries to work extra hard to save up for it. Right now he's trying to save up for a neighbourhood garage sale event we are going to in two weeks. Because he wants to have money for it, he has been doing his chores without being told (which is a first), doing extra, and has a good attitude. When chores first started, the attitude sucked.
His son has shown that he understands that chores are essential and the reason he is now doing them is so that all of us are sharing in them, which gives all of us a little bit extra time for fun. The last time one of us went above and beyond our own "chores" he actually went and got a dollar from his wallet and tried to give us an allowance in return! We had to explain that because we do real jobs we make looooots of money and don't need allowance.
My boyfriend wants to teach his son that in an ideal world you will get a bare minimum of money to live (five dollars), but if you work you get a bit more (seven dollars) and if you put in a lot of effort, you'll get a bonus (ten dollars).
I'm well aware not every parent agrees with the allowance/chore approach, but it is actually working in our home, and his son's attitude toward "unfun" things has changed immensely in the past year.
(which would have driven me crazy,b/c he would have done nothing at all to help out) Another simply thrives on a $1 or $2 per job system,and makes quite a bit of pocket money by doing jobs as needed! (he writes it down in a notebook as he does them,and presents me with the list every month or so,for a huge 'paycheck') The second kiddo is also quite good about doing non paying house chores too,so like I said, personality makes a difference in how parents handle things.... my kids also knew from VERY early on how to budget their own money,and taxes for whatever they wanted in life... now that they're (much) older, they still use those skills daily.(ex. I never ' loaned' them extra money while at a store, they either had the money,or they had to wait,tax included from about 5 years on up) the whole point of jobs/money for them is that I no longer had to deal with 'can I have that' stuff..... I never told them they had to save anything, they figured that out fairly quickly....(when ds1 got old enough he got a job,and saved cash till he bought a very nice 2ndhand car on his own,so I guess we were successful in this.....I'm super proud of him for not needing a loan and doing it on his own)
