money management

In 2022, Vulture declared it was the “year of the Nepo Baby,” with a jaw-dropping, borderline-controversial cover story featuring various famous offspring of celebrities, including Zoe Kravitz (daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet), Maya Hawke (the daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman), and Jack Quaid, Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid’s son.

“Like psoriasis, the label was something you were born with, and those who had it found it equally irritating.” - Nate Jones, Vulture

According to the article, the phrase “nepo baby” quickly became synonymous with “the child of a celebrity,” insinuating that people born into the lime light were out-of-touch and over-privileged, and it was the Internet’s job to keep them humble. However, tennis superstar Serena Williams and her husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, won’t rely on online obsessives to instill humility in their children. As is the case with their seven-year-old daughter, Olympia, they’re playing a different game. Despite the power couple’s combined net worth approaching half a billion dollars, the two formally drew up a surprisingly modest $7 per week allowance system, in the hopes of teaching their daughter the value of hard work.

“Yes, Olympia’s got a contract,” Ohanian revealed in a video posted to social media. “[A] $7 per week allowance, negotiated by her mom (who, yes, got her weekends off).”

The duo’s approach to parenting has gone viral, withs fans praising their commitment to keeping Olympia grounded, rather than just spoiling her rotten. Which, of course would be easy to do, given that Williams, one of the highest-paid female athletes in the world, has an estimated net worth of $340 million, according to Business Insider, while her husband earned a net worth totaling $150 million.

During the negotiation, Ohanian insisted on creating a formal contract to outline expectations, while Williams served as Olympia’s counsel, creating an opposition Ohanian jokingly described as "really frustrating. The final terms of the contract? In order to receive her weekly allowance, Olympia’s responsibilities include:

• Feeding the family’s dog, Chip.
• Putting her clothes in the hamper.
• Making her bed.

Serena Williams with her daughter, Olympia. Credit: Fotonerd

Typical for a seven-year-old, but thanks to her mother’s formidable litigation prowess, Olympia gets the weekends off, ensuring chores are completed five days a week. Ohanian describes the compromise as a “flywheel” between effort and reward, explaining that “neither Serena nor I grew up with wealth, so we’re both trying to navigate how to create the circumstances for [Olympia] to be a functional adult while also having resources that we couldn’t have imagined.”

Their plan is already working: in the same video, Ohanian also shares an anecdote about how Olympia’s mentality is slowly shifting to understanding that work equals reward, and that good things come to those who hustle.

“She really wanted this Tamagotchi watch. She had saved up quite a bit of money, probably almost $100. [The watch] was like, $125. I asked, ‘You got money?’ And she’s like, ‘I don’t have enough.’ I replied, ‘Okay, good. Embrace that feeling. How many more weeks of allowance do you need to be able to save up for it?’ So, as soon as she gets it, we clear out the bank and she got the Tamagotchi watch.” - Alexis Ohanian

But it doesn’t end there—just like the adult world, there’s always something shiny and new to desire, to covet, to buy. And before long, Olympia had her eye on an American Girl doll dress. However, after emptying her piggy bank on the watch, financially, she was back at square one.

“She gave me the cute puppy dog eyes. Believe me, she knows how to work Papa,” Ohanian recalls with a smile. “[But] I need her to feel that little bit of pain of like, 'Oh, I got to wait two more weeks for that paycheck.’”

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Commenters flooded Ohanian’s posts with praise, applauding the couple’s level-headed approach, with people writing, “Amazing lesson here. This is the how privileged children should be raised so they can understand the value of money,” and “Reminds me of how my mother did almost the same, except that I got my favorite books and a small treat for ticking off everything on her list. You two are good parents.”

Others even tried to negotiate a higher allowance for Olympia, with one person saying: “This is good, it’s exactly how my allowance went, I also got $7 a week. But that was in the late 90s/early 2000s. I think she should renegotiate for inflation.” Another attempted to give the seven-year-old financial advice, writing, “Have her flip or resell the Tamagotchi on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, or [with] another kid in school or in the neighborhood. Learn how to sell and position. I involve my 5-year-old in as many negotiations as possible” (To which Ohanian replied, "Love this.").

Financial experts are also on board with Williams and Ohanian’s strategy. Investopedianotes that when children are taught money management early, they tend to develop better financial habits as adults. And in their groundbreaking paper, Habit Formation and Learning in Young Children, Dr. David Whitebread and Dr. Sue Bingham of the University of Cambridge discovered that by age seven, children are able to “cognitively ‘represent’ value,” and that “several basic concepts relating broadly to later ‘finance’ behaviors will typically have developed,” which has been taken to mean that by age seven, a child’s money habits are already set.

But you don’t have to explain that to Serena Williams or Alexis Ohanian. The two came from humble beginnings and learned early on the important connection between hard work and financial success. Williams began her prodigious professional tennis career at just 14, when she competed at the Bell Challenge in Quebec City in 1995, earning her first $240 in prize money (approximately $500 today). Ohanian, on the other hand, was 23-years-old when he co-founded Reddit in 2005, then sold the website to publishing giant Conde Nast a year later for a mere $10 million; a deal that’s been described as “what turned out to be pennies on the dollar compared to its most recent multibillion-dollar valuation.”

Williams and Ohanian at the Met Gala.Credit: Ron Buckmire

Compared to her peers, Olympia is already ahead of the curve when it comes to financial education. But that’s not because her parents are famous: while she may only be earning $7 a week now, she’s being set up with a toolkit filled with invaluable lessons to succeed in life—by earning it.