Day 133 - Allowances

Image of coins by oceandesetoiles, via Flickr

When I was a child, probably no older than five, I began to receive an allowance. I received 15 cents a week. Of that 15 cents, I put a dime into my piggy bank, a penny into my church envelope, and I could spend the remaining four cents any way I wanted to. Back in those days, four cents could buy quite a bit of penny candy and I learned quickly that if I bought the two-for-a-penny candy, I had many more pieces to eat. But I also learned that if I wanted to buy a candy bar, I had to save a penny from one week until the following week so that I would have a nickel, the price of the cheapest candy bar.

My penny wasn't the only coin that went into my church envelope each Sunday. Mom put in another coin, usually a dime or a quarter, so the amounts in my envelopes always were an unusual number - 11 cents or 26 cents.

No one could ever have convinced me that I only received four cents for my allowance. I knew I received 15 cents.

Those dimes in the piggy bank grew in number. I was saving them to buy a new bicycle. But I recognized that the pace at which they grew was pretty slow when compared to the total I would need for a new bicycle.  After a couple of years, I decided there might be another way to experience a new bike: I decided to use the dimes I had saved to buy paint to paint my bicycle, giving it a new look. Mom decided this would be an excellent opportunity to teach me about tithing. She suggested, or was it something stronger, that I should take one dime out of every ten to put into my church envelope. I was perhaps a bit too young to understand the lesson because what I did instead was to cheat just a little. Instead of taking one dime out of every ten for my envelope, I counted out ten dimes and then I took one from the remaining pile which had the net effect of my tithe being more like 9% than 10%. I can even recall thinking that I had already put nearly 10% of my allowance into my envelope in the past.

As I got older, my allowance increased. By high school, the amount had increased to $5.00 a week, and I no longer had requirements on how to use that amount. Instead of being told how much to save, how much to put into my church envelope, the guidelines were simpler: from that $5.00 weekly allowance, I was to buy all my clothes, shoes, cosmetics, and toiletries - anything that wasn't purchased by Mom for the whole family.

I learned a lot about managing money through that allowance. I learned that an allowance came with responsibilities. We kids shared the responsibility for washing dishes after the evening meal. I also helped with cleaning the house. I hated cleaning the Venetian blinds. I learned that steady accomplishments over time can lead to expectations of increases in income. I also learned that sometimes I had to put off getting things if my resources in hand were insufficient. And I learned that sometimes I had to put aside money now to have more later.

I could probably have learned these lessons even without a weekly allowance. But I had the gift of an allowance.