You never give me my allowance

That was tossed my way tonight, as we headed out of Target, where we had just dropped $60 on a hair straightener (her old one died and she just can't live w/o it) and new mascara, since she had used all of mine.

"$10 of your money is going toward that straightener," says I, still griped by the fact that she refused the $19 model for the $35 model she just had to have.

"I never get an allowance anyway," she shot back.

"No, maybe not in $$, but you get it in skirts, in shirts, in sweaters and trinkets that I gladly buy you," says I.

"Not the same," she sniffed.

I pointed out that I could, in annoyed enough, just say "sorry, you've used up your allowance this week, you'll have to wait until next. or give you the $10 each week and from that, you'll have to buy your wish list. Silence.

Fine.

Allowance, or no allowance?

I pay my daughter an allowance. $7.50 a week. But sometimes, when she comes up to me in a charming pout, asking for the moola, I'm tempted to be a hard ass.

Usually she has not cleaned her room, helped me with one dinner during the week, cleaned or bathroom or fed the cats. Okay, forget the cats, but the rest of the stuff, I really want her to do. So I say, do the room, the dinner and your bathroom, and get back to me.

With a huff, she's off, and usually gets two out of three. I'm still working on the dinner. Now when I was 14 (I won't bore you with the 5 miles through the snowdrift stuff) I was cleaning up the dishes every night, mowing the lawn, keeping my room clean and weeding the gardens. I think I was supposed to clean out the catbox as well, but I usually managed to skip that.

So, back to my daughter. Do I withhold the cash? I think the answer is yes. It's just hard to be consistent about the entire affair.

And then there's the scenario when she asks for an advance on her allowance. Then I have visions of her running up a $5,000 credit card balance by the time she's 18. So I usually nix that.