My parents gave me a large allowance, but they didn't give me extra money if I needed it. That made me more independent. For practical purposes, assume 1 CHF =

My parents gave me a large allowance, but they didn't give me extra money if I needed it. That made me more independent. For practical purposes, assume 1 CHF = 1 USD (it's actually 1.04 USD, but close enough). Also note that my parents lived in the countryside and didn't have "curfew" rules. There was no bus to their house, so if I stayed out after they went to bed, I wouldn't be able to get back home! It was lonely, but effective at keeping me out of trouble. From age 5 to 11, I got 10 CHF. From age 11 to 14, I got 25 CHF. Of that, 12.5 was "current", 10 was "savings" (only spend on things that cost over 100 CHF), and 2.5 was "giving". From my own money, I had to pay 10% of all my trips (e.g. church camp, travel alone, etc). From age 14 to 16, I got 125 CHF. Of that, 25 CHF was the same as above. The extra 100 CHF was for "trips". Then I had to pay 50% of travels. This was a big expense, and important for some volunteer service projects I joined. From age 16 to 18, I got 270 CHF. Of that, 23 CHF was "current", 20 CHF was "savings", 27 CHF was "giving", and 200 CHF was "trips". I then had to pay 100% of trips, although I negotiated with my parents to let me pay only 50% of a trip to visit universities. I used an Excel spreadsheet to manage my money from when I was 13 years old. It has a record of 230 expenses over 4 years, and is interesting to look back at now, to see what was important to me then (iPod accessories, the price of my first date). The allowance money was not tied to chores. I could earn an extra 0.5 CHF for washing or drying dishes, or 5 CHF for some gardening. I also got some lunch money for school, and secretly saved the change from that. My dad gave me a broken computer when I was 8, which I fixed and then used until he gave me my own laptop. That broke, and I then bought & sold a class set of old laptops from the school to let me upgrade. My parents did not pay for TV. They said that my brother and I would have to share our allowance and pay for the subscription to Sky TV if we really wanted it. We couldn't afford that. However, we had the best Internet connection available in our area (ISDN). So all my entertainment has been web-based. The TV set was too old for consoles (only SCART, no composite video), so all my games were on computer (and we used Mac, so there were very few games). Instead, I started building my own things with AppleScript, and I'm still doing that now.