American kids are pulling in an average of $37 a week in allowance, according to a Wells Fargo survey conducted with Ipsos. Seventy-one percent of parents say they hand out an allowance at all, and the vast majority believe it’s genuinely teaching their kids something about spending. But dig one layer deeper into the same survey and a different picture shows up: 51% of those parents admit they struggle to explain basic money concepts to their kids in a way the kids will actually understand. Parents are paying for the lesson. Plenty of them aren’t sure they know how to teach it.
Most Parents Are Paying Up, and the Number Keeps Climbing
The $37 weekly average comes from a survey of 1,587 U.S. parents fielded by Ipsos between April 28 and May 8, 2025, with a margin of error of about 3 percentage points, according to Wells Fargo’s release. Each parent was asked about one child in their household, randomly assigned across four age bands from 5 to 17. Seventy-one percent of parents overall said they give some form of regular allowance, making it less an occasional treat and more a default feature of American childhood.
Parents Believe In the Lesson, Even When They Can’t Teach It Well
Eighty-five percent of parents say allowance teaches their kids good spending habits, according to the survey, a near-consensus that money handed out on a schedule builds real financial instincts. But 51% of the same parents say they find it hard to explain money concepts to their kids in an age-appropriate way. That’s a striking split: most parents trust the tool, while roughly half feel unequipped to actually use it as a teaching moment rather than just a cash handoff.
Letting Kids Fail With Money Feels Nearly Impossible
An even bigger share of parents, 65%, say they find it difficult to step back and let their kids make their own money mistakes, per Wells Fargo’s findings. That reflex to intervene, steering a kid away from blowing their allowance on something regrettable, is understandable, but it also cuts against the theory of allowance in the first place. Financial mistakes made with $37 a week are exactly the low-stakes kind experts generally consider useful; parents overriding them may be trading a real lesson for short-term comfort.
Cash Still Rules, But Apps Are Catching Up
Despite a digital-payments world, cash remains the default way allowance changes hands: 73% of parents pay in cash, according to the survey. Peer-to-peer apps like Zelle and Apple Pay come in at 24%, direct bank deposits at 20%, and prepaid debit cards at 14%, meaning a meaningful chunk of families are already using more than one method. Notably, 70% of parents say teaching kids about money today requires focusing on digital tools rather than cash alone, suggesting the payment method may shift faster than the habit of paying weekly.
Parents Know They Need to Talk About Money More
Most parents seem aware of their own gap. Eighty-five percent say they should be having more conversations with their kids about money habits, according to Wells Fargo, while 32% admit they feel outright uncomfortable discussing finances with their children at all. That combination of high intent and real discomfort helps explain why so many households have settled into handing over cash weekly without much of the accompanying conversation parents themselves say they wish they were having.
The Point Was Never Just the Money
Louann Millar, who leads youth and student banking at Wells Fargo, framed the whole exercise in the company’s release: “An allowance is a vehicle that enables children to learn about money with guardrails. The weekly activity of giving the allowance presents an opportunity for parents to discuss needs versus wants with their children.” She also called out the cash finding specifically, noting it was “the most surprising result of this study,” given how clearly parents already understand that their kids prefer digital payment options. Her larger point cuts to the center of the survey’s split results: “The value of an allowance is not only dollars and cents, it’s also the conversation and teaching opportunities parents have with their children.”
Allowance, in other words, has become the easy half of financial parenting, and the harder half, the actual talking, explaining, and letting kids stumble, is the part most households are still working out.