I know there are two sides of the argument for parents. But a regular amount of allowance - for a list of 'jobs' to be done, and then holding kids accountable for what they do with the money, is great training for adulthood. And lord knows, schools don't teach kids about money.

Vs 'piece meal' random pay (even though chores are done) has a different sort of training - which is often "Mom & Dad, can I have some money"?

IMO

 

Watching the first season of SOA. So much stuff already makes more sense, and some of the stuff that is said has such dramatic meaning when you know what happened later on and how things played out. In the third episode I think, Clay and Gemma are talking and as she walks off he says something to the effect of "loving that woman is gonna kill me".


Just wish I would have seen these before I saw the later ones.

 

Referring to the top, what is an allowance? I didn't see my own money until I was 11/12 and was babysitting my neighbors kids...and even then that $10 or $20 went to my parents because I felt bad keeping money when they were strggling to pay the bills...

 

Lol same here. The only time I got money was for school supplies and lunch at school(which was $5/day, compared to the $10+/day most of my friends got, which really sucked when off campus lunch started in high school, although this was supplemented by me having a job at that point.)

Like you said, everything else was an expectation. If I didn't do it, I got in trouble, as opposed to getting rewarded if I did do it.

Edit: I did babysit quite a bit up throughout the years to give me extra money, but anything I wanted typically had to wait until a birthday or Christmas, unlike most of my friends. Coincidentally, I'm one of the few who has something other than a dead end job.

 

I started shoveling cow **** when I was 5 years old, added horse **** when I was six, every morning before I got ready for school which was 45 minutes away. Five-thirty, in the dark except for the flashlight I had taped to my shoulder by my mom every morning. Not kidding.

Anyone else wanna show their battle scars?!

We didn't get paid. We lived so far out of town, my parents' reasoning was, "It would cost us as much in gas to take you into town as it would for us to pay you for cleaning out the pens, feeding the animals and working the horse. That takes up all your time anyway, and what would you buy? You've got everything you could want out here." As much as it irritated me at the time, they were right. I was given toys for Christmas, but I always stopped playing with them and rode the horse by the time New Year's rolled around. My last year with the horse, I got a lever action BB gun, a new horse blanket and bridle for christmas. It was what I'd asked for.

 

I thought you were gonna say snow, and I was like, you don't have snow down there.

 

That sounds like the life. If I had a ranch/small farm that would be my reasoning. But, I live I the SF Bay Area. Things cost ridiculous amounts of money. As long as we're living here, I need to teach him how to save, which I only recently learned and am lucky to have some cash stowed away for car repairs (going through that right now) or other emergencies.

Now in 5-10 years, when I have 10 acres and live in the boonies, maybe my tune will change to something like you got from your parents when growing up

 

I can't wait until I'm out of this house and in my own, on my own piece of land. With a couple of horses and a 3-car garage with a two-post lift. One day at a time.

 

You don't have your own place? Confused.

 

I do, it's just in town. Mine will end up being well out of town, probably half an hour if possible (the wife will kill me, but I might just want to fight that battle).

 

Oh ok. Thought you said you had a place in Houston. I don't blame you. Entirely too big of a city to live there. Texas is just too spread out to live out there. Big piece of land anywhere out there is a hell of a commute to work.

 

Enjoying my day off with my grandmother, had pedicures and went to Applebee's, It was nice.

 

lol...I must be lousy at explaining where I live. You thought I had a place in Houston, Steff thought I lived in Dallas.

It's big but when you grow up in the middle of nowhere, you get used to it--or you go the opposite way and never want to leave the city. I'm the former. It was weird to me that I was only an hour away from Baton Rouge when I lived in NOLA. Houston is three hours from me now (San Antonio) and DFW is roughly four hrs from both Houston and SA. Austin's not too far away but about the only thing big city about Austin is the traffic.

 

I hear ya. You can drive an hour is Houston and still be in Houston. I'm in the middle of Nola and Baton Rouge. Small town quiet and laid back. Just a short drive to BR or Nola if I need to be in the city. It's great.

 

One thing I miss like hell is crawfish boils. Can't get those here.

 

We are catching hell with crawfish this year. Long winter is making them hard to come by and very expensive. Gonna be a lot of people catching their own this year. Already see a lot of people crawfishing on the sides of the road every day.
Are there no crawfish in Texas or do they just not catch and eat them?

 

I know you're in San Antonio and I'm not even from TX.

 

My parents never gave me an allowance, but I never did without either. Once I got to a point where I was old enough to have some spending money, my grandmother would give me some here and there, and so would the parents. I hope I can offer my kids the same thing my parents offered me. When I got of age, they paid for my gas to school and the insurance because they knew there was no way I could afford those and keep my grades up. They also helped me out tremendously when I was without a job by letting me stay at the house.

Now that I'm able to, but since I can't afford my own place realistically, I pay some money for rent and my car insurance and such. I'm hoping that one day I'll be able to really pay them back with a house in a decent neighborhood where they can retire, and get my dad the '57 T-Bird he's always wanted but never bought.

 

They do, and in far east Texas (Beaumont and surrounding towns/areas) it's still really good. But out here there just aren't any; not enough people appreciate cajun and creole cuisine.

I was wondering whether the winter was going to affect them. It's a shame they're so hard to find this year. I remember driving back into Texas in March of '94 and seeing a few people on the sides of the roads crawfishing. That was shortly before I went to my first boil, and I fell in love. Potatoes, corn, shrimp, sausage and bags and bags of crawfish. I must have sat at that bench and eaten 5 lbs. of those things. We used to have a place here in SA called the boiling pot, and it was the only place that served boiled crawfish the same way. They didn't last a year. The proprietors were from Breaux Bridge, I believe.

 

Getting ready for the rodeo tonight going to see
Florida Georgia line