Giving Your Kids Amazon Allowance
Nowadays, one of the things you’ll not mind ‘gifting’ your kids is an allowance. An allowance is an important tool to teach your kids about money, responsibility, saving and patience. But this kind gesture can have far-reaching consequences if extended in the wrong way. Three of the most challenging issues about providing an allowance are:
- How much money to give per week?
- At what age it should you begin giving an allowance?
- Should the allowance come with a receipt so that it is tied to a specific chore / task / behavior?
Of course, there hasn’t been a conclusive answer to the three questions. Amazon supports the opinion that kids should have an allowance and gives it a solid thumbs-up. However, the large e-commerce brand is proposing an incredible way of remitting the allowances –what it’s fondly referred to as an “e-allowance.”
What’s Amazon Allowance?
The giant internet e-tailer, Amazon has embarked on a project meant at helping parents pay their kids online. Dubbed “Amazon Allowance,” the initiative will allow them conveniently set aside funds which their children will spend on constructive purposes.
Here’s how the project works:
- This e-allowance is a virtual Amazon Gift Card that a parent adds funds periodically. It could be daily, weekly, fortnightly, monthly or just at the contributor’s discretion.
- Any kid who’s 13 years or older is eligible and will just need to create an Amazon account.
- Funding is done online, just the same way as buying a gift card and Amazon holds onto the funds until the day the child is old enough to spend it.
It’s a huge convenience, albeit with an unavoidable demerit!
The upside of Amazon Allowance is how it harries parents into remitting, but triggers something like set-it-and-forget-it. With regular payments, the kid will not throw tantrums for missed payments since Amazon reminds the parent. The kid will, however, monitor the balances via their Amazon Allowance accounts.
Kids with subscriptions to Amazon Prime will spend the money on stuff online before the retailer ships them free of charge.
The glaring disadvantage of it is that all the savings will be spent on Amazon only. The kid will not spend it on candy at the local store, buy a book at the bookstore next door or pay for a trip. The disadvantage also extends to parents not being able to teach parents the virtue of comparison shopping or frugal purchasing.
Bonus- answers to the three questions!
If you’re a parent interested in this, however, Amazon’s got your back. As for the answers to the three questions, $2.50 is the standard average per week, though you can pay more. You can start paying the allowance as soon as the kid is 6-7 years. Finally, since 89% of all parents believe kids should be paid for completing specific chores, you can start paying them!
