How Much Allowance Should Kids Get? What Parents Actually Pay

How Much Allowance Should Kids Get (October 2026)

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If you are searching for how much allowance should kids get, the honest answer is a range, not a single number. Most families land somewhere between a few dollars a week for a kindergartener and forty to sixty dollars a week for a teenager, and the number that works for your family depends on your budget, your child’s age, and which expenses you decide they will now cover. Everything below is built from published 2025 data, a 2017 benchmark most competitors still quote out of date, and real amounts parents report in forum threads. Convert the US figures to Canadian dollars using the section further down, because the numbers published by Greenlight and Rooster Money are US dollars and Edmonton families feel them differently.

Table of Contents

How Much Allowance Should Kids Get? The Short Answer

Most families pay between 5 and 10 US dollars a week for a child aged 6 to 8, between 12 and 25 dollars a week for a child aged 9 to 13, and between 30 and 60 dollars a week for a teenager. Greenlight’s 2025 first-party data puts the average at 13.15 dollars per week for kids aged 5 to 19 and 6.66 dollars per week for ages 5 to 7. A common rule of thumb is 50 cents to one dollar per year of the child’s age, per week. Treat all of these as starting points, then adjust for your own budget and cost of living.

That is the fastest answer. The longer answer, which honestly matters more, is that the amount is the least important decision. What your kid covers, how often you pay, and what happens when the money runs out decide whether the allowance teaches anything at all.

Allowance by Age: The At-a-Glance Table

Here is the age-by-age allowance chart I wish more parents had. All figures are US dollars, so the monthly column is simply the weekly figure multiplied by four. Canadian families should read the Edmonton section before setting a number, because local prices sit above these US benchmarks.

AgeWeekly (USD)Monthly equivalent (USD)What it should start to cover
4 to 53 to 513 to 22Small choices: a sticker, a treat, a donation to a cause they pick
6 to 85 to 822 to 35Weekend spending, a school event, part of a small gift
9 to 118 to 1435 to 60Outings with friends, a portion of clothing, savings toward a bigger item
12 to 1314 to 2560 to 108Clothing and shoes they would otherwise get for free, phone top-ups
14 to 1525 to 40108 to 173A real slice of the clothing budget, transit, saving for a large want
16 to 1840 to 60173 to 260Phone plan, a clothing allowance, and their own entertainment budget

The pattern most families land on is roughly one dollar per year of age per week, with the 4-to-5 band deliberately kept low because the point at that age is practice, not purchasing power. One parent describing a fifteen-year schedule in an r/Parenting thread started at 5 dollars a week at age five and had moved to roughly 30 to 50 dollars a month by age thirteen, which sits almost exactly in the middle of the 12-to-13 band above.

What Parents Actually Pay in 2026

Published datasets and parent reports disagree with each other, and the disagreement itself is useful. Here is what parents actually pay, with every figure attached to its source and year.

  • Greenlight, 2025 data: the average weekly allowance for kids aged 5 to 19 in families using the service was 13.15 dollars. For ages 5 to 7 specifically, it was 6.66 dollars per week.
  • Rooster Money, reported 2017: the average child aged 4 to 14 earned 8.74 dollars per week, roughly 450 dollars across a year. This figure is nine years old and still circulating as current, which is why you see it everywhere.
  • A parent poll shared widely in 2025: reports a typical monthly allowance of about 16 dollars, with roughly 4 dollars of that treated as fun money rather than a set budget.
  • r/AskParents parents: one post put 400 dollars a month as generous for a teen, and the thread pushed back on comparing families. The consensus was that more money in one household does not mean a lesser amount is wrong in another.
  • r/Parenting parents: a family pays a flat 50 dollars a fortnight across a chore chart, and another described allowance as walking-around money with a paper route covering larger items. That split, pocket money for small stuff and earned income for big stuff, comes up again and again.

Two things stand out. First, the current US average for ages 5 to 7 sits below the range most parents assume, so a five dollar weekly allowance is genuinely typical rather than stingy. Second, the same parents who report generous numbers almost all describe their own setup as ordinary, which is the clearest signal in the data that there is no single correct figure.

When Should You Start Giving an Allowance?

Most experts and most parents land in the same window: start around kindergarten or first grade, somewhere between age five and seven. Below that, children generally cannot hold a running balance in their head long enough for the money to mean anything.

Starting early does not mean starting big. A 5 dollar weekly amount at six is a reasonable opening number, and Greenlight’s 6.66 dollar average for ages 5 to 7 confirms families have already landed near it. One parent in a Reddit nostalgia thread put their own childhood allowance at 10 dollars a week and 20 dollars a week in high school, then noted that the amount mattered less than knowing the payday existed.

There is a strong second reason to start at a specific age rather than a specific amount: the moment a real expense can be shifted. Around the time a child can walk to school alone or ride transit alone, you can begin moving a portion of clothing or a phone top-up onto their allowance. That transition, rather than the birthday when you hand over the first five dollars, is what turns pocket money into money management.

Should Allowance Be Tied to Chores?

No. Chores and allowance should be separate, and this is the most argued point in every forum thread on the subject. The reasoning is straightforward: a chore is a family obligation and a member of the household pulls their weight. An allowance is money given so the child can practise decisions. The moment you link them, the money stops being a teaching tool and becomes a wage, and you have replaced practice with employment.

That said, plenty of families do link them and do not regret it. A 50 dollar a fortnight chore chart comes up often in parent discussions and works well when the family frames it as extra work above and beyond the regular duties, not the regular duties themselves.

The practical test I would apply: if your child stops doing their ordinary chores when the allowance stops, the two were never really separate in your home. If they keep doing them and simply lose their spending money, the structure is working.

Weekly or Monthly? Choosing a Payday Schedule

Weekly is the better default for children under about 12, and monthly works better once they are managing a real budget. This is the one practical question that no competitor article on this topic answers directly, and it matters more than most parents expect.

Weekly pay teaches budgeting in small, recoverable doses. A child who blows through 8 dollars on day two can recover before the end of the week, which is a lesson worth far more than any rule you write on a chart. A child who blows through 40 dollars in a month has to wait four weeks to try again, and delayed recovery teaches resentment rather than restraint.

Monthly pay works for teens for a different reason. Once the allowance is covering a clothing budget or a phone plan, a monthly number maps cleanly onto how those bills arrive, and it stops the habit of a mid-month top-up that quietly defeats the budget. If you go monthly, set the day it lands and never move it, because a payday that moves teaches nothing.

A fortnightly cycle, paid every second Friday, is the most common schedule in Canadian households and works well for a mid-size amount. Be aware that a longer gap between paydays needs a written plan for what happens when the money runs out, which is covered below.

How to Decide YOUR Number in Three Steps

Generic rules of thumb get you into the right neighbourhood. This three-step method gets you a number that fits your actual budget, and it takes about five minutes.

Step 1: Pick the category the money will cover. Pick one thing and one thing only. Options are pocket money only, a clothing and shoes budget, part of the phone plan, or a set savings goal. Families that try to cover everything with an allowance end up short every month, because the number was never scoped to a task.

Step 2: Set a share of that category, not a share of your income. A common approach for the clothing route is to shift 30 to 50 percent of what you would have spent on the child’s clothes and shoes for the year into an annual allowance budget, then divide that by the number of pay periods in the year. A 600 dollar annual clothing budget at 40 percent is 240 dollars a year, which is 20 dollars a month or about 5 dollars a week for a 10-year-old paid weekly.

Step 3: Convert to a child-friendly number. A monthly figure confuses younger children. Divide by four and give the weekly number instead, then adjust it slightly down so the arithmetic on the payment day is clean. Odd numbers like 7 or 8 dollars are easier to hand over than 6.75, and a number the child can count without help is worth more than a precise one.

Check the result against the table above. If your derived number lands far outside the band for your child’s age, the category you picked is probably too big, not your budgeting.

Adjusting for Canadian and Edmonton Cost of Living

Nearly every allowance guide published online is US-centric, which is why the raw numbers can feel off to a Canadian family. Two adjustments matter if you are in Edmonton.

First, convert rather than copy. When Greenlight reports 13.15 US dollars a week for ages 5 to 19, the Canadian equivalent lands meaningfully higher once exchange rates and local prices are accounted for. Using the US figure directly as your Canadian number quietly under-budgets you, because the Canadian dollar is worth more than the US dollar on most days of the past several years. Check the current rate on the day you set the number rather than relying on a number written down a year ago.

Second, price the real categories locally. Edmonton families know that a school-supply list, a pair of winter boots, and a children’s haircut all cost more here than the US figures in a Greenlight table imply. When you scope the clothing and shoes category in step 2 above, use what you actually spend on your own child here, not a national average.

A practical local starting point, for families who want a round figure: begin at 5 dollars a week for ages 5 to 7, 10 dollars for ages 8 to 10, 15 to 20 for ages 11 to 13, and 40 to 60 for teens 14 and up. These are CAD figures, and they sit at or above the US benchmarks because local costs do.

Three Ways to Split the Money (Save, Spend, Share)

The three-jar method, sometimes called save, spend and share, is the simplest budgeting system for a child and the one most often recommended alongside an allowance. The 50/30/20 rule for kids maps onto it directly: 50 percent to spend, 30 percent to save, 20 percent to share.

  • Spend jar: the part they decide from this week to this week. Set it low enough that running out is likely, because that is the lesson.
  • Save jar: money aimed at a specific named goal with a date attached. A goal without a target amount is a wish, not a plan.
  • Share jar: a donation or gift budget, which also gives parents a natural opening to talk about needs versus wants.

Three physical jars on a shelf work better than an app for most families, because the child can see the level drop. Once they reliably split their own money, an app that does the same arithmetic becomes reasonable, and at that point the jar teaches the habit and the tool just keeps score.

Allowance for Tweens and Teens: The Break-Through Allowance

The break-through allowance is the phased shift of real expenses onto the child, and it is the concept that changed how our family handled the teen years. Rather than a flat weekly figure forever, you start transferring ownership of one category at a time.

A typical sequence looks like this. At about 11 or 12, they take over a slice of clothing and shoes. At 13 or 14, they contribute a fixed portion of the phone plan, and you stop paying it in full. At 15 or 16, they cover their own transit pass and a share of family entertainment costs. The allowance number itself stays fairly steady while its destination shifts, which keeps the amount predictable and the responsibility growing.

Parents describe this transition as the moment a kid stops asking and starts budgeting. It also solves the resentment problem, because the money now buys something real instead of functioning as a treat that gets compared against what friends appear to have. One r/Parenting parent put it plainly: allowance is walking-around money, and bigger items should come from a job, not from a larger weekly figure.

What to Do When the Allowance Runs Out

Nothing is scheduled for this moment, and almost every parent faces it. Here is the escalation order that works, in sequence.

  1. Let it run out. Nothing happens. This is the entire point of the allowance, and the discomfort of a child asking for a top-up is not your problem to solve.
  2. Set a matching job. If they want money now, offer paid work at a rate you choose, paid the same day. A car wash, an hour of leaf raking, an errand for a neighbour. Keep the rate well below an outside job rate, because the point is participation, not income.
  3. Advance from the next payday. If the family is tight, let them take half of next week’s amount now and work out the balance. Write down the agreement so nobody relies on memory a month later.
  4. Adjust the system, not the child. If a child runs out every single week, the number is wrong for the expenses they now cover, or the split between spend and save needs to shift. Change the setup rather than adding penalties.

The one rule I would hold firm on: never give an emergency top-up with no structure. One unexamined top-up teaches the child that the budget is negotiable, and you will get that request every payday after.

Common Allowance Mistakes

These are the errors that show up repeatedly, drawn from parent discussions and from the most-read allowance guide on the web, which was published in July 2017 and is badly out of date on the numbers while still being broadly right on the behaviour.

  1. Paying too much for the age. Greenlight’s own data shows the typical weekly amount for ages 5 to 7 is under 7 dollars. Parents frequently start well above that and then wonder why the money feels meaningless.
  2. Tying it to ordinary chores. Household duties are not a wage. A child who is paid for the dishwasher learns that the dishwasher is a job.
  3. Inconsistent payday. If the day moves, the teaching moves with it. Fix the date and keep it.
  4. Not teaching alongside it. A number with no conversation produces a child who spends without thinking. Ten minutes on a Friday beats a lecture in the moment.
  5. Paying inconsistently between siblings. This one is remembered for a very long time. If a 9-year-old gets 5 and a 14-year-old gets 30, say out loud that the difference is age and the category each one now covers.
  6. Never letting them make mistakes. A rescued budget teaches nothing. Let the bad purchase happen and stay quiet.
  7. Rewarding all saving. A child who saves everything learns nothing about choosing. A spend jar with a low cap is doing its job.
  8. Using an allowance to avoid the harder conversations. An allowance is for the small stuff. The phone bill, the car, the first real job still need a conversation you are not postponing.

On the 7-7-7 rule, which shows up alongside this question often: it is a habit framework built around dividing a goal into three parts, one part now, one part soon, and one part much later. It maps cleanly onto a child’s savings goal, and a jar labelled with three dates is a straightforward way to use it.

On Dave Ramsey’s position, which is one of the most searched variations of this question: his framework treats allowance as unconditional money given on a schedule, separate from chores, with the child’s choices carrying consequences rather than a parent imposing them. That matches the anti-chore-conditional view held by most of the parents in the threads above.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much is a good allowance for a 7 year old?

Between 5 and 8 US dollars a week, or about 22 to 35 dollars a month. Greenlight’s 2025 data puts the average for ages 5 to 7 at 6.66 dollars per week, so a 5 dollar or 7 dollar weekly amount is squarely typical. In Edmonton, start a little higher because local costs run above the US figures.

At what age should kids get an allowance?

Around kindergarten or first grade, roughly ages 5 to 7. Start the amount small, because the value at that age is practice rather than purchasing power. A better reason to start on a specific date is when a real expense can be shifted, usually around age 11 or 12.

Should allowance be tied to chores?

No. Chores are a family obligation and allowance is practice money. Linking them turns the allowance into a wage. Families that do combine them, such as a chore chart paid a flat amount each fortnight, should frame it as extra work above the regular duties.

Should allowance be weekly or monthly?

Weekly for children under about 12, because a blown budget can be recovered within days rather than weeks. Monthly for teens, because it maps onto clothing and phone bills that arrive that way. Whichever you pick, keep the payday date fixed.

How much allowance is too much?

There is no ceiling, but there is a usefulness limit. If your child is 7 and getting 25 dollars a week, the money is too large to shape decisions at that age. The 2025 average across all ages 5 to 19 was 13.15 dollars per week, which is a useful ceiling for younger children.

What is the 50/30/20 rule for kids?

It splits a child’s money into 50 percent to spend, 30 percent to save, and 20 percent to share. It maps directly onto the three-jar method, where the spend jar is deliberately small enough to run out and the save jar is tied to a named goal with a date.

What is the 7-7-7 rule for parenting?

A habit framework that splits a goal into three parts: one part now, one part soon, and one part much later. It works well for a child’s savings goal, where a jar with three labelled dates makes the timeline visible.

What do parents actually pay for allowance?

Greenlight’s 2025 data shows 13.15 dollars a week for kids aged 5 to 19 and 6.66 dollars for ages 5 to 7. Parents report anywhere from 5 dollars a week at age five to 400 dollars a month for some teens, with most describing their own setup as ordinary rather than generous.

What do I do when my child runs out of allowance before payday?

Let it run out, then offer paid work at a rate you set and pay the same day. If the family is tight, let them take a portion of the next amount and write the agreement down. If it happens every week, the amount is wrong for the expenses the child now covers, so change the system instead of adding a top-up.

Conclusion

So how much allowance should kids get? Most families land between 5 and 8 dollars a week for a child aged 6 to 8, 14 to 25 for a young teen, and 40 to 60 for a teenager, and a five dollar weekly amount for a kindergartener is closer to the real average than most parents assume. Pick your number by choosing one category the money will cover, setting a share of that category, and converting it into a weekly figure small enough for a child to reason about. Then keep the payday fixed, keep it separate from chores, and let the money run out at least once so the lesson lands. That structure will do more for your child’s money skills than any amount on the table.

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