Money, Money, Money: Part 2

Adel and I have been attending Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University this past month.  We really liked one of the ideas he has for teaching kids to be responsible with money.  For any money that the kids receive or earn, Ramsey recommends dividing it into three separate envelopes or containers: Spending, Saving, and, Giving.*

I liked this because I feel like we've done a good job teaching the kids about saving, but not about spending or giving.  Up until now, if they gave, it was our money, not their own, and when they received money, it tended to go straight into savings and nowhere else.  While saving is good, on its own it doesn't teach them the value of money or how to handle it.

After the last chore chart I made (in the first "Money, Money, Money" post), I realized that I am not up for checking daily chore assignments.

We still keep the chart so the kids can opt to earn extra money here and there, but this time we aimed to try for one larger, weekly chore for the kids to do to earn their money (supervised for now, but training them to one day work independently).  For now we're going to try having the kids help out with whatever Adel and I are working on in a particular week.  For example, this weekend we did yard work.  We had the kids do 30 minutes of weeding to earn their pay.  

Isaac was actually genuinely helpful while Abby needed a lot more directing: "Over here, Abby.  Here's a weed.  Stop playing around Abby.  Come get this weed.  Right here.  It's right here.  I've been trying to show you for the past five minutes.  Come pull this weed.  Good girl!"  Needless to say, I chose to pay Isaac a bit more than his sister.  Next weekend we may wash the car and get them to help.  And so on.

Once they were done with the work, we introduced the three containers and showed them how we wanted to divide up their pay.

Later in the week, when they were along with me on a shopping trip, we brought their spending money so the kids could put our plan in action.  The shock of value was a good lesson for them.  Here they are looking at big toys they could not afford to buy with their first pay check:

While I encouraged them to save up their Spending money for bigger purchases, the allure of the power to buy was too strong for them and they lowered their expectations to items of more appropriate value for their budget (no surprise, Abby got candy!).

And we'll work to make it a habit to bring their Giving money at church on a monthly basis.


*Side Note: Ramsey advocates paying kids for chores as long as they have the understanding that there are other things we do for our family just because we're part of the family (ie: you don't have to pay them for everything they do to help out!)


**Update from Oct 17:  The following weekend, the kids helped us wash the car, inside and out.

Isaac was again genuinely helpful, but for some reason I have no pictures of Abby actually working.

But isn't she cute?  

Isaac got paid more than double her earnings this time!  And this time, he decided to save it up for something he really wanted, rather than waste it on a cheap toy.  They're learning!