Would you stoop to pick up a found penny? If you believe in the value of money or the possibility of luck, you would. Unless, of course, you’re a teenager. When Nuveen Investments asked 1,000 kids aged 12 to 17 to name the sum they would bother to pick up, 58 per cent said a dollar or more. Some won’t give pocket space to coins even if they’re already in hand, says Neale Godfrey, author of Money Doesn’t Crow on Trees. Many high schoolers buy lunch and throw away the change, she says. As one boy explained to her, “What am I going to do with it?”

This cavalier attitude is making some parents rethink the allowance tradition. The weekly stipend is meant to help kids learn about money, but some experts say too much cash easily handed out in these flush times and too few obligations can lead to a fiscally irresponsible future. Many kids have a “lack of understanding (of) how hard it is to earn money,” says Godfrey.

Allowances, done right, are a way to teach children to plan ahead and choose wisely, to balance saving, spending, investing, and even philanthropy. Doing it right means deciding ahead of time how much to give and how often to give it. And it requires determining what the child’s responsibilities will be.

About 50 per cent of children between 12 and 18 get an allowance or cash from their parents, says a survey conducted in 1997 by Ohio State University for the US Labour Department. The median amount they got was $50 a week. (Teenagers in the East North Central region, which includes Ohio and Indiana, get the most, a median of $75 a week.