At 10 is when I began giving my DDs an allowance. Not fun money allowance, but serious learn-to-budget allowance. They had to choose and buy all of their own clothes, school supplies, gifts, toiletries etc and try to still have enough left over for fun stuff. I started this after one of them insisted that the Limited Too $60.00 swimsuit was so superior to the $12.00 Target swimsuit that it was the only option. I don't think they ever shopped at Limited Too again and they even began to embrace hand my down clothes :-).
It was a pretty short learning curve and they really felt like they had serious responsibility.
They also each had a designated night to plan/cook/prepare dinner for the family. Lots of macaroni and cheese, loaded baked potatoes and tomato soup to begin with but they branched out pretty quickly and they took pride in having such a responsible role (also, it cut down on the complaining about whats for dinner as they realized how hard it is to please everyone).
