Woman reveals her parents ‘taxed’ her chore money growing up: ‘This is pretty brilliant’

A TikToker has gone viral for revealing that her parents “taxed” her allowance growing up, and parents everywhere think it’s genius!

The video, posted by Sami (@samikaye0), was a “stitch” (duet) response to the question, “What’s the weirdest thing your family did until you grew up and realized it was just y’all?”

Sami’s mind-blowing answer to that prompt has since garnered over 10 million views and 12,000 comments — and possibly turned the allowance game on its head!

@samikaye0

#stitch with @rachel.devin19 “Weird”, yet super smart thing my parents did. #tips #money #parenting #smart #fyp

♬ original sound – Sami

Sami explains with on-screen text in the video: “My parents taxed my chore money at 25%. When I was 10, I’d do 10 points worth of chores a week to get $10. $2.50 of that would go to family taxes and $2.50 went into a savings account, and then I’d get to keep the other 50% for spending.

“Once family taxes built up enough, we’d have a family meeting and vote on how we were going to spend it.

“So like one time, we bought a new microwave. My mom said ours worked fine, but the other three of us thought it was slow and old, so we overruled her.

“Honestly, as an adult, I’m so glad they did that. Because when I got a real job and all those taxes were taken out, I was like, what else is new?”

‘That’s actually genius…’

TikTokers were quick to share their thoughts on Sami’s childhood tax system — and most were totally in favor of it!

“I was upset for you until you got to the family vote part. That’s actually genius, and I really love that idea!” wrote one user.

“Your parents should totally write a book about this!” wrote another user.

“This is pretty brilliant,” another user commented.

“I love this because it teaches at a young age that YOU benefit from your tax money, and you get to choose what it goes to with voting,” said another user.

“Wow, that’s actually really cool and healthy money management practice!” another user wrote.

Some TikTokers weighed in with their own unique money-management experiences growing up. “Cousin got charged rent at 16, rent went up at 18. All the money went into a savings account, and they had a down payment on a house when they moved out,” shared one user.

Other TikTokers responded with humor. “You should have clapped back with itemized deductions and tax credits,” one user wrote.

“That’s funny, my chore money was taxed at [a] 100% rate,” joked another user.

It’s clever parents like Sami’s who are raising the next generation of forward-thinkers and responsible citizens!

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