Should kids be paid for chores? Both camps are right.

Ask ten parents whether children should be paid for doing chores and you will get two passionate answers and one very long argument.

Camp one: “Kids should earn their pocket money. Nobody pays me for doing nothing.”

Camp two: “Chores are what you do because you live here. I am not going to pay my daughter to take her own plate to the sink.”

Both camps have a point, and both have the same hidden problem: whichever philosophy you pick, somebody still has to keep track of the chores. The sticky chart on the fridge lasts about eleven days. Then the arguments start about who did what, and the money question comes back through the side door.

What the two camps are really arguing about

Strip away the emotion and the camps disagree on what money is for, not on chores.

Camp one wants money to be a consequence: effort in, reward out. That is a real-life lesson. Most adults earn money by doing things other people need done.

Camp two wants money to be a tool for learning to manage money: a steady allowance the child can budget, save and occasionally waste, with chores being a separate, unpaid matter of family membership. That is also a real-life lesson. Most adults get a paycheck on a schedule and are expected to make it last.

Neither camp is wrong. They are teaching different lessons, and a child needs both eventually.

Setup A: earn it (zero allowance, paid chores)

If you belong to camp one, set each child’s weekly allowance to zero and give every chore a price. In MoneyOrc that looks like this:

• Dishes: $0.50 per day
• Trash and recycling: $1.00 per week
• Walk the dog: $0.75 per walk

The child ticks chores off on the weekly chore card. On Sunday the card is submitted, you review it, approve it, and the money lands in the account. No money moves until you approve, which keeps the system honest without turning you into an accountant.

Tip: keep the per-chore amounts small and the list short. A seven-year-old who can earn $3.50 a week by doing four small things every day learns more than one who is promised $20 for a vague “help around the house”.

Setup B: membership dues (allowance plus penalties)

If you belong to camp two, set a fixed weekly allowance and attach no money to chores at all. Chores still go on the card, because the point is tracking and habit, not pay. Then add a modest penalty for chores that are explicitly marked as missed.

This is the part people miss: in MoneyOrc a chore can be open, done or missed, and only a parent can mark it missed. A chore that simply didn’t happen because you were on vacation stays open and costs nothing. A chore that was skipped while the child played video games gets marked missed, and the penalty comes out of the allowance on approval.

The lesson is subtle and very adult: the money is yours, and your choices can cost you some of it.

Setup C: a bit of both

Many families end up here after a year. A small base allowance (membership dues), a few paid jobs for genuine extra work (washing the car, cleaning the garage), and penalties for the non-negotiables (homework before screens, teeth before bed).

MoneyOrc separates these on purpose. Chores repeat on a schedule and pay out weekly. Jobs are one-offs with a deadline and a reward, submitted when done and paid when approved. Fines are for rules you agreed in advance. Mixing them in one app without blurring them is most of what the Chores and Jobs modules are about.

Whichever you pick, do these three things

1. Decide the rule before the first chore, not after the first argument. Write it down in the app, where everybody can see it.
2. Keep the weekly cycle sacred. Approve chore cards on the same day every week. Kids learn from rhythm more than from amounts.
3. Don’t expect perfection. A card with five of seven days ticked is a success in month one. Praise the five, don’t lecture about the two.

MoneyOrc is just a tool. It will happily run any of these systems, and switch between them when your philosophy changes, which, if our own families are anything to go by, it will.