I have my kids on commission. We never believed in allowances in our house. The allowances worked like this: If there is enough food left over, you get to eat. If there is an empty bed, you get to sleep.

When I was growing up, we never had allowances. I had ten brothers and sisters. I actually did not sleep alone until I got married (and there's more truth to that than I'm willing to admit).

Not only did we not have allowances growing up in the little town of Lexington, SC, all the money we earned peddling newspapers (the now defunct Columbia Record) or working in my uncle's grocery store (Mack's Cash & Carry) was turned over to help feed the gang.

In high school, I wrote for three newspapers and worked for Ralph Corley in his service station on the corner of Main Street and South Lake Drive while also driving a school bus. That bus-driving job paid a whopping $35 per month.

I earned $1 per hour working 96 hours a week during the summer for Ralph Corley Esso Station. The Lexington Dispatch-News paid me $35 per week to write columns for the local weekly. I was doing okay for a kid in high school, but every nickel was turned over to "Mama Alice" to run the house.

So when I decided as an adult not to ever award my kids an allowance, you have a pretty good idea about how I arrived at the decision. Not only did I not give them an allowance, I actually charged my three sons $228 each per month to live in our home. That covered their life insurance (which I proudly sold them), money for their college education and finally, to give some back to God, which was how we did it in our house.

But we also rewarded them for good behavior. If you make your bed, you could earn a $1. Clean up your room, you earn a $1. Take out the trash, you earn a $1. Every task was worth a $1. We kept things simple. However, they had to do at least 228 tasks per month just to break even.

Initially, they had charts that showed the tasks and they simply put a check mark by the chart and we'd settle up at the end of the month. That became too cumbersome, so we switched to the instant pay system.

I went down to the old Lexington State Bank and got $500 in one dollar bills, took it to the local printer, had him paint glue on the edge and padded them up. Then, as the twins did their tasks, they'd tear off a buck for every job they did. Recognition, I've found, works better when it's done instantly, not a month later.

One month, Cory and Jason came to me and said, "Dad, we didn't earn enough money to pay the bills this month, what are we going to do?"

I try to run my life as much like the real world as possible so I introduced the concept of a loan.

"Dad, what's a loan?" A loan works like this… I'll loan you a dollar for every dollar you're short this month, but I have to charge you interest.

"Dad, what's interest?" Interest works like this, for every dollar you're short, you're going to pay me $2 back. One per-cent! (I was in the half of the class that made the top half possible). "Dad you can't charge that much interest!"

Here are my innocent little children, who, in the one breath don't know what a loan is and in the next breath they are experts on South Carolina's usury law.

"In addition, I require collateral," I added. "What's a lateral?" they asked. "A lateral is something they do in football; collateral is your bicycle." I had to repossess a bicycle. Some would say that's a cruel and heartless lesson you're teaching those kids. I'd rather they lose a two-wheeler as a kid than a four-wheeler as an adult.

Now they know about loans, interest, promissory notes and repossessions. Life's lessons are best taught early on so that you won't make mistakes later on. God knows I've made my share of those mistakes over the years; why have your children duplicate them.