I swear someone should let me at the computer after the sun goes down. I knew Elmred was a man….I had two different conversations in my head when I was typing that response. Oh, Lord, I can only imagine what I wrote in the other email I sent.

I couldn’t have made the April payment anyway. It’s hard to pay a $900 mortgage when you only get $324 for unemployment(which ran out the previous month).
I didn’t get a REAL check until I got back home on the 18th. You obviously had enough money coming in between July 2011 and Dec 2016. I didn’t.

You’d think they’d be more on top of things. Another option is to set up payment through your bank’s online bill pay service. Most banks have then now and offer it as a free service. I pay our mortgage that way every month. Basically you set up the service with account numbers and payment address. Then you go in and pay them when you want with the amount you want. The bank then either sends them the payment either electrically or a check on your behalf (depending on what the payee allows). I’ve never had any issues, but just make sure you double check the account info when you enter it.

Not sure what day “end of the month” but if got a check in the mail today, I wonder if it would get there on time. Having said that, I agree with what Sharon said. I would pay the extra $10 to make sure your payment gets to them on time. Just this once. Late fees would likely be higher than that.

Hope you’ve got a lot of money saved. Since May 1st you will have another payment due.

I’d never heard of them before. I got the notice from BOA of the change last month, but hadn’t gotten anything from Nationstar. So I hadn’t paid anything. I finally get a call from NS last Friday, I think.
The lady says that my payment is late, which I knew. Before she can start on my case, I attack first: I never received ANY info from the company. I don’t have an account number, never received a bill, don’t know where to send payments to, etc. She says, “you haven’t received anything yet?” No, I haven’t. So then she says it was sent out on the 17th. Remember, this call was on the 19th.
So then I asked, when was the payment due? She told me April 1st. So my question was “How could I pay it on the 1st when you didn’t send the bill until the 17th???” Her:”Well, we didn’t receive info from BOA until the 14th.” I started to say, “That’s not MY problem”, but I let it slide. So she asks if I’d be able to make a payment by the end of the month. If I could, she’d waive the late payment fee. Yeah, I should get another paycheck by then to be able to pay. I figured I’d pay it online this weekend. So I just created a user account on their website. Guess what? There’s no instant pay on the site. My payment options are:

-Monthly auto draft, which I may do later when I get more money
banked, but not right now.
-Pay by mail, which means it won’t be paid by this weekend.
-Western Union web payment
-Western Union pay by phone
-Western Union Quick Collect(extra fee)
-MoneyGram Express Payment(extra fee)
-Equity accelerator(bi-weekly payments)

I had thought that ALL the Western Union options had an extra fee, but in looking through all the definitions, maybe not. I’ll try the web payment and see what it says.

Chores were expected of him as a member of the family and I paid for most extra things as we went along.

When my son reached middle school age we started looking at what we spent on him a month for his activities, sport fees, dues etc.. THings paid out once a year were divided by 12. That became his montly allowance with the expectation that he would manage the money and pay for these things himself. Extra money could be earned by doing extra chores that were not part of his normal routine. This was his to spend on as he wanted. If he over spent on a weekend, there was no money for baseball sign ups and there was no bail out from mom and dad. Hard lessons learned at an early age.

When he reached high school we added in the amount we felt was fair for clothing for the year and again divided that by 12. Allowance was paid in sync with our pay cycle at the time. So he learned to manged things monthly and bi-weekly.

I gave my now much older children a set amount when they were in high school to cover clothing, beauty/hair cuts, entertainment and gas. I honestly can’t say that it drove the concept of budgeting in for them as young adults as we’d hoped. On the flip side, my youngest children have grown up constantly hearing that impromptu wants of theirs aren’t in the budget. They completely accept this and stop asking for things as soon as we remind them of our budget. We also tell them all the time to put things on “the list” when they ask for extras. (i.e., my little girl will say, “Momma, can I have this stuffed bunny?” I’ll say, “O.K. sweetie, let’s put it on the list!” She’ll get excited, and that’s the end of the conversation. Works everytime! lol). They’re both good with this, too. The thing is, we do, every once in a while, tell them that we have a surplus of money, and what would they like to buy that is on their list? We also give them opportunities to earn money for certain tasks, but the ironic thing is that they never want to spend the money they earn themselves. They’ve also learned that there is a reason we save money. Last year, as a lot of you know, we took them to Finland to meet the real Santa Claus and to ski. They know we saved and saved for that trip. Right now we’re saving to go to the UK so that we can go to every amusement park that Peppa Pig and Thomas the Tank Engine has rides at, and we will do this. The children have decided they really want to do this, and they know we have to save (again) to do another one of these fun family trips. We choose short term and long term goals as a family and make sure it happens. I think this is why our saying that something isn’t in the budget is an acceptable answer to our children, and why they are willing to stop bugging us for things, and are willing to earn money for individual tasks rather than our just handing out money on a weekly basis. I don’t know the answer is as to whether allowances and commissions are the way to go, I just know what seems to work for us, and what hasn’t worked for us (doling out the money for the bigger kids and yet they still can’t budget, even while they are in their 20’s). I think you just have to mess around with different things and see what works successfully with your children and for your family.

Oh my, then we are cheap. We give 1/2 their age per month, so our 10 year old gets $5.00. BUT that has always been fun money only. I am seriously thinking of giving them a huge increase but then requiring them to pay for all their own stuff. I know a family that gives kids a huge allowance but the kids pay for everything thing themselves. Especially clothing! I like the idea, but I think we would have to work up to that gradually with my crew.

They need to have tangible money and a means to conduct their own transactions -even as we move more into the digital age. They should have responsibilities or allotments for their money such as giving and saving, spending they seem to pick up quite easily. As far as how much to give them, and what to call it when you give it to them (Allowance, commission) and whether you pay them for their chores,grades etc… I don’t really have an opinion.

I will say when my daughter was younger – I put her to work managing the money and paid her for it. She paid real business expenses, balanced my real books etc, opened the mail, made note of how much electricity and gas and other utilities and necessities were etc.I reasoned I was employing her at the same time I was teaching her. I think if I hadn’t had a business, I would still have become creative enough to pay her to actually do the work and learn from it. I see I failed her in the grocery shopping department – but then I always hated going to the grocery store and rarely made lists. She’s in the situation now where she has to carefully budget and grocery shopping /planning is a problem for her.

I know Dave likes the “pay as you work” commission program, but honestly, I’ve always found that to be so much maintenance, esp when the kids were younger, that I stopped doing it too many times.

Not saying my kids didn’t work around the house, nor did they get money just for existing, but a “you work around the house to help upkeep and be part of the family” then you get to share in the prosperity as well. Cuz for sure they get to share in the ‘recessionary times’ as well.

My 12 year old uses about $10 a week on average for activities on the weekends. The two younger don’t use much of anything except infrequently. I used to give allowance once a month. It was based on age. They got double their age per month. So the 7 year old got $14 a month, but it was split into three categories. Give, Save, and Spend. I’ve fallen off the wagon giving them their allowances and want to start again. I’d like to hear what other parents have been doing to teach their kids about money, saving, finanaces, investing, checking accounts, etc….
How Much To Give?
Kids’ Money
This ongoing survey yields the following average weekly allowance amounts for each age and gender indicated:

Age – All – Boys – Girls

3 – 3.20 – 3.03 – 3.38

4 – 2.85 – 2.48 – 3.29

5 – 3.15 – 3.03 – 3.27

6 – 3.85 – 3.32 – 3.99

7 – 4.10 – 4.12 – 4.07

8 – 4.32 – 4.45 – 4.12

9 – 5.52 – 5.33 – 5.71

10 – 7.18 – 6.56 – 7.83

11 – 7.92 – 6.80 – 9.07

12 – 9.58 – 9.38 – 9.85

13 – 9.52 – 9.95 – 9.10

14 – 13.47 – 13.50 – 13.51

15 – 15.57 – 16.65 – 14.38

16 – 17.84 – 15.79 – 19.62

17 – 30.66 – 27.65 – 35.61

18 – 40.10 – 70.57 – 24.86