It was my parents, and I'm sure my mom read it in some magazine. We had ours year round. We got allowance, but if we wanted anything extra that our allowance couldn't afford, we had to do extra chores. They used to give cash, but then they decided to teach us about checks. So we would do chores to "add" to our account, and we could let it sit there if we wanted, to build it up to something big. We not only learned about checking, but we learned the value of money that way. Huge lesson that should really be taught to all so they don't have to learn it the hard way.