I have never given my children an allowance. Mainly my own laziness kept me from starting another accounting challenge. I also felt that with six of us in the house, each family member needed to realize early on that he or she needed to contribute to the household in one way or another. The question then is how do you teach your children the value of money? Or, for that matter, how will they learn to handle money if you don’t give them anything?

Easy: I’ve been talking to my kids about money since they were babies. When we would go to a toy store or grocery store, I would tell them how much I was willing to spend and they needed to find something they liked that matched the price. In fact, if the item’s price was lower than what I had set, they might get an additional item that would add up to my price altogether. Math 101 – Check! No tantrums – check it out! However, when the items were more expensive than the limit I set, that’s when the breeding work began. Saying no and sticking with it was hard; giving in and buying the item would have been the easy way out but lazy and self-defeating over time. Since I always set their expectations ahead of time, they weren’t surprised when they heard the word “no” and just left to find another option.

I’ll give you an example of how this attitude paid off years later. My oldest daughter wanted a pair of winter boots that cost $120. I don’t spend that much on boots for myself, so I certainly wasn’t going to buy them for her. After seeing them I couldn’t believe such an ugly pair of boots would cost so much. I told her that she would not buy them because the price was too high. Since I was responsible for buying winter boots for each of my children, spending so much on one wasn’t fair to the others. If she wanted them, she would have to buy them herself. She sees, whenever my children received cash gifts, they could keep the money and spend it however they wanted. Since this only happens on birthdays and certain holidays, they have always saved their money carefully. I offered to give her the $30 I planned to spend on some no-name boots for her that she could put into her savings. The rest of the money she needed to find out how she could earn it herself.

That winter he did not get the boots but the issue did not go away. In fact, the following fall she had an idea. She offered to throw her sister’s next birthday party instead of me throwing the party somewhere far from our house and paying a small fortune for an hour and a half event. She offered to host the party in our basement with her friend and all she would have to do is provide the food and supplies for an arts and crafts project and she would set everything up. The party was a success, and he earned a lot of money as a result. After brainstorming several more great ideas, she saved enough money to buy a few pairs of boots.

That winter my mom took her shopping and bought a pair of boots with her own money plus the $30 I promised her. She never wore them in the rain and when she came home she cleaned them and put them away carefully. She protected and loved them because she valued them. In contrast, a colleague shared with me how her daughter ruined her new pair of boots and demanded a new pair. Her response was: what could she do? So she bought him a new pair. Here’s the lesson: There’s nothing wrong with setting boundaries and saying no. By sticking to my ideas and putting a value on what she thought the boots should cost, my daughter needed to work and use her imagination to figure out how to earn the extra money for something she thought was worth it. Using her imagination she came up with a business idea, she put together the business plan, she presented it to me and sold it to her sister. The planning that she did in collaboration with her sister and friend required serious teamwork. Ultimately, executing the plan successfully was a real job that she did exceptionally well. The actual result of earning the money and then being able to spend it on an item that she valued highly was the lesson that gave her satisfaction and a great sense of accomplishment.

I sincerely believe that parenting is the most difficult job that we are all lucky enough to do. Teaching our children the value of money requires work and imagination on our part. Making the process a bit complicated and not as simple as saying “yes” to everything they want, I think it helps them achieve so much more. Don’t be afraid to set limits and expectations for your children that will force them to stretch and reach higher. They will only get stronger, wiser and more creative.