Dirty Toilets

I'm on the fence about allowances.

As a kid, allowances are great! At least I thought they were. I did some work. I got paid. I do what I want with the money.

Now that I'm on the flip side, I'm asking myself why. What's the point of the allowance?

As a parent, what do I want to teach my son?

I want to teach my son that it feels good to help people. The point of working and helping is not to get paid, it's to help. Getting paid is a bonus. It's a side effect of the value you deliver.

I feel like the allowance goes against this. I want to teach my son how to find problems in people's lives and then solve them so that they want to pay him.

That being said, I'm happy to pay somebody to clean my toilets. Dirty toilets are a problem in my life. I guess the trick would be to have him figure out that dirty toilets are a problem as appose to me telling him. But does it matter?

Like I said, I'm on the fence about allowances...