We finally decided to change our reward system for the kids over to allowance instead of the marble jar.
The marble jar was great, awesome and I loved it.
The concept was that for every chore the kids did they would get marbles, once the jar was full we would discuss a reward. It usually took them a couple months to fill their jars and almost never at the same time so it was a great way to do a ‘date night’ type thing. Juliette would usually choose to go to Cold Stone for ice cream and Linus, the Lego Store. Christian has yet to fill a jar and as a blossoming two year old really doesn’t understand the concept anyway, he just knows the other kids get excited about it so he should too. So he has his own little jar of marbles and for him, this is still working just fine so I am not giving him an allowance yet.
But Linus came to me one night a few weeks ago and said, “Mom, I’d really like to start earning money instead of marbles. That way I can buy my own Legos.”
Wow. I think he gets it.
One of the reasons we had held off giving him his own money was he obviously did not understand the concept of money and wasn’t ready to.
He also never kept track of any of the pennies he DID have and that lack of responsibility also spoke volumes.
But as an almost 6 year old, I thought, with the right system, a carefully monitored system, he might just be ready.
I knew that I needed to do some research, talk to people and really have something figured out and in place before I actually acted on it.
I did a lot of reading on forums and different websites, looked at Clark Howard’s recommendations as well as Dave Ramsey’s, did a Facebook status asking my friends what their thoughts were and eventually came up with a system I thought would work well for our family.
So my first thought was this needs to be simple. I don’t want any complicated charts or have to DO a lot to make this work. I also wanted to model it after the real world. Meaning like a job. You do the work, you get paid on pay day.
I have recently read a book called, “Parenting with Love and Logic” and it really had me thinking about the concept of letting your kids experience making mistakes in a safe environment where the mistakes are not going to have adverse, longterm effects. Making financial mistakes as an adult can be devastating, however, making financial mistakes as a child when the mistakes are made with nickels and dimes rather than large dollar amounts, can really set your children up for financial success in the long run.
So as I said, I wanted them to have a, so-called ‘regular paycheck’ but I also wanted them to have the option or opportunity to earn extra, A.K.A. : Overtime.
So what I ended up coming up with is this: payday is every saturday. Linus gets $3 a week and Juliette gets $2 as sort of a salary. To earn this they each have a list of chores that must be completed every day. Linus’ list includes, emptying the dishwasher, taking out the trash, putting his laundry away, his room has to be clean at bedtime, and all legos must be put away. Juliette has to also clean her room, pick up her toys, put laundry away and feed the dog. These are all things they were already doing every day anyway so it has been very easy to transition to paying them for them.
If they decide they need to earn extra money for something specific they can choose to do more, or if I ask them to do extra chores I will pay extra for them. The way I have decided to keep track is to keep the good old marble jar around with each marble being worth .5 so the way it works is say I ask the kids to get the TV room ready for vacuuming and then ask Linus to vacuum it, I usually say something like, “I will give you each .25 for cleaning up the mess and Linus will get an additional .10 for the vacuuming” when the job is done and has passed inspection I then deposit 5 marbles in Juliette’s jar and 7 in Linus’.
Then on Saturday – payday – I give them each their salary and then count up the marbles. Today for instance Linus had earned an extra .80 on top of his $3.
The other part of this is of course I want the kids to learn to save and to tithe. So they each have two envelopes, one they put their savings into and one they put their tithe money into. I am having them save 20% and give 10% of their ‘paychecks’ each week. Linus seems to have caught on to the concept of the saving quite well and keeps putting ALL his money into his savings envelope, he has already saved $14 and plans to spend it all on, you guessed it, Legos.
One thing I really wanted to them to learn is that your reward can be greater when you save it up. So instead of buying himself candy and soda’s (things I usually don’t buy them unless for a special treat) throughout the weeks he can get something more fun and lasting.
I have to say, last week when he put all his money into savings I wanted to warn him that he then would not have any spending money for the week, but I held it in. The great thing is, he hasn’t seemed to mind and he was really proud of himself when we counted up his savings this morning. He has worked hard for that money and to see it accumulate, well as adults we all know how awesome that feels! And he gets to experience that feeling now, at 6, well, almost 6.
So hopefully I can instill a lifelong habit of loving to save money and not spend it on frivolous things and also to work hard of course! Plus there are the added benefits of the things the kids are learning in the process of doing chores. Of course hard work is one of those but I was reading a blog post the other day about the actual skills kids learn, like colors, shapes, visual spacial, fine motor and a plethora of other things that I had never thought about. If you want to read more about that check out one of my favorite sites:
It’s a very good, informative and quick read, plus she has lots of fun kid craft and educational ideas.
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