Kids Earning Money

I have to laugh, thinking about some of this, because until the beginning of this year we were never able to give our kids an allowance. Maybe once a month (or less often) I would buy one of the kids something at Dollar Tree (where everything is literally priced one dollar) and promise the other two that I would buy them something another time. I gave a little to the church, paid the few bills we had (no cable, no cell phone most of the time, minimal insurance coverage), put food on the table, and then that was it.

So, when I mentioned wanting to start giving them allowances, my oldest daughter kept saying she “wouldn’t feel right” about accepting money from me. As I discussed it with her, she finally said, “Oh, I get it….you just want to give me an allowance so you’ll have something to take away when I’m bad!”

Took me a long time to stop laughing…..

We are Dave Ramsey fanatics here so we follow his advise for kids earning money.  We have a morning and evening chore list for everyone in the house that gets done because we are all a part of the family.  We have $5. a week budgeted for comission.  When my dd comes to me and ask for extra jobs she gets paid a comission dollar upon completing the assigned tasks.  We then help her with Tithe, savings and spending.  We try to help her find something she wants to save up for so she can learn about delayed gratification.  This is good training for staying out of debt as an adult!!!  When my dd was six years old she saved up enough money to buy herself an American Girl Doll.  Since then she has also purchased her own bike and scooter.  If she does not ask for extra jobs than she doesn’t get the comission dollars.  However when she is saving for something big, we will often post pictures of the item and ask her about it often.  We want her to take the initiative in earning money because we feel that it is most like reality.  

To bigger families:  My sister has 5 dc and my brother 4 dc.  I understand that in larger families you can’t always budget $5. per child per week, but something that might work is having a set ammount per week and extra jobs are available until the money for that week is gone.  Say you have 4 dc but only $10. a week available.  Let your dc know that whoever ask for extra jobs earns the money and when the money is gone its gone.  This would be very much like reality and great training in what the job market is really like.  

I heard a Mom recently talking about this. She said that she had reminded one of her sons to empty the dish washer three times and he kept putting it off.  She went to her other son and asked him if he would like to earn some extra money by emptying the dish washer.  At the end of the week, instead of each one getting $5. the first one got only $4. and the one who did the work got $6.  At first the one with less thought it wasn’t fair, but she was able to teach him that if you go to work but don’t work, they will fire you and hire someone who will work.

Our goal in letting our dd earn money is to teach her about sound financial principles and working/saving for what you want.  No matter how much or little our children earn each week, they will always have wants.  As soon as we get one thing we want, another item replaces it on our want list.  God promises to supply our needs, but I think He allows us to have wants so that we can work for them and have things to look forward to in the future. Credit cards destroy this God given drive!  If our dc can learn to delay gratification while they save up for something they want they are going to be alot happier as adults.  Okay!  That is the end of my Dave Ramsey Philosophy plug!!!   

We do something similar to NJCountrygirl. We have 6 children so we can’t pay too much a week, but we also pay based on age IF they complete the chores. We have some chores that are just expected (making bed, washing their clothes and putting away for older three, dish duty, etc.), but then they can do extra chores for their allowance. If they don’t do them, they don’t get their full allowance or if they do some, they earn partial.

We also charge them a quarter if we have to put away their shoes! With 6 children plus DH and myself, it can get crazy if people don’t put away their shoes/coats/caps/etc. This is rarely an issue b/c they don’t want to pay Mom or Dad part of their weekly allowance to put away shoes/pick up dirty clothes, etc.

My oldest son is needing $$$ for a week-long Boy Scout trip. He washes the blinds for $10 each, and it takes him about an hour to do this job. Believe me, it is $$$ well-spent on my part. He will also baby-sit his two 6YO siblings for an hour here and there and we pay him for that, usually $5 for an hour (to watch them both).

He is now cutting the grass and while we don’t pay him for each time he does that, DH has upped his weekly allowance a bit b/c it takes him 2+ hours a week. If we have to nag him to do it, obviously the pay is modified.

We also make sure our children know how much 10% of their weekly pay is on Saturday evenings, though we don’t *require* tithing b/c we want them to do it from a biblical perspective–from their hearts. Thankfully, they usually always want to tithe, but if they don’t, we don’t punish them. We model for them and pray they will have this desire in their hearts always.

As for saving for an expensive item, I think saving for months for an Ipod is great, b/c they will hopefully not lose it and will also have plenty of time to decide if this is really what they want to spend that much money on.

Grandparents paying more than us for the same job … yep. I am OK with it as long as the children worked hard and did their best. It is not often ours work for the g-parents but when they do, I know our parents will pay more than we would. Like I said, if the job is well-done and done with 100% effort, I’m fine with the higher pay scale.