Is Paying Your Teen For Doing Chores A Good Idea?
We may be sophisticated and cultured social animals, but human beings are still very much governed by our primitive monkey minds. We still process risk, reward, and pleasure on very basic terms and hence the best way to get humans to do something, as every friendly neighborhood growth hacker and marketer would attest, is to provide an incentive.
There’s nothing wrong with incentivising, it is the basis of our survival. Looking back, you’ll find that you’ve been incentivised to and incentivised others since the very early ages. Conditioning allows humans to be high achievers, but at the same time it also opens up the possibility of us turning into Pavlovian machines.
As household chores pile up, incentivising your teen to put some of their raw energy into accomplishing them is a tempting proposition. Their flame of independence can be harnessed to power their future. However, this can also be a double edged sword. There’s gold at the end of this rainbow, but there’s also risk. At the end of the day, the call is yours so here’s what we offer:
The Gold
Incentivising teens to do chores with money can work either of these ways. Get too trigger happy and you'll need to show your teen the green to get them to make their bed. However, in the right balance it can also be a positive influence.
A good way to strike this balance is to associate formative habits with things your teen wants, and not money. Making their bed every day for two weeks in a row gets them an extra hour of TV time on the weekend, or waking up earlier and exercising gets them a new bicycle (which then compliments the exercise habit).
At the same time, when you make the proposition about *what they want* instead of *how much they are earning*, it will mould them into a mentality that will help them get wealthy. Money is a conduit, not a destination. Here’s a thread we did on the Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel which can be useful!
The Risk
Let's take the example of training a pet dog (we're not trying to equate your teen to a pet, but habit formation and incentive recognition is surprisingly similar in animals). When teaching the dog to sit while holding a treat in hand, it's easy to get them to do what you want. However, when they notice you don't have a treat ready to offer when they sit, your dog can also turn tail and ignore your request. The problem, the incentive has overpowered the formation of a habit.
On the other hand, startups have gotten pretty good at habit formation through incentives. Cab aggregators, food delivery services, and even mobile service providers have successfully got users hooked to their services with incentives and negligible fees. Once people are used to the convenience, they crank up the fees steadily, and we continue to pay. Think about it, when was the last time you consciously evaluated how much your Uber ride costs?
The big No-No: When nothing else seems to be working the lines, “As long as you live under my roof, you’ll do as I say” is often thrown around. This is an example of a negative incentive which can irreparably damage the relationship with your kids.
The Bottom Line
Monetary incentives can come in handy for larger tasks. The garden is in bad shape and needs a couple of days work? Recruit them with money. Incentivising larger but intermittent tasks with financial rewards ensures they get a decent incentive but don't get used to the money as an incentive for daily tasks. And if you're already educating them on personal finance, this bonus will hopefully find its way to their savings. (Make sure to add a little extra to the savings pile if they do this, to reinforce the habit further).
Moral of the story: incentivising your teen to do chores with money can be a powerful tool. But like most things in life, it needs to be used with common sense and moderation, not as a quick fix.
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