Saturday, April 13, 2013

Creating money smart kids

Earlier this year, we started reading some of Gail Vaz Oxlade's books. The one I particularly liked is her Money-Smart Kids book. I ordered it through the library. It is short and an easy read.

She really believes in giving kids an allowance. We have sporadically given Sophie an allowance but it wasn't done with any real regularity. She needed to learn the basics of money and Gail believes that you have to give kids the tool (money) and teach them how to use it.

So, Sophie gets $5 per week and Fynn $2 per week. We have debated over the years if the money should be attached to do chores and there are different philosophies on this. How we work it is, that the kids have some core chores they must do to earn their allowance: Sophie making her bed each morning and Fynn getting dressed each morning on his own. Those sound so easy and fundamental but let me say that it was about 4 days of reminders for Sophie to get into the habit and I can't honestly say that Fynn has found it a habit of getting himself dressed on his own yet. There is still much complaining and gravitating to mom or dad doing it for him.

If they don't do their core chores or only do it a occasionally, I deduct dollars from their allowance. Sophie earned $2 this week and Fynn .50 cents. It was one of those weeks. Hit and miss.

The like the money that I use for their allowance to come from "extra" cash that Vic or I might have coming in that week if possible. For me this week, I took in a bunch of their outgrown clothes to the consignment store. This particular stores buys the clothes outright and pays me 30% of the price she puts on them. I think I got $14.50 for the lot of them, which is better than nothing or having them sit in drawers and closets taking up space.

Sophie seems to be connecting the dots with money much more lately. She took her own spending money to the pool today for a snack. Like anything, kids have to learn and the best way is usually by doing.

Vic and I have a date night tonight. We are off to see Side Effects. Can't wait.

1 comment:

Mary Jo said...

Great plan.
I have to say that we started giving Evan an allowance at 5. He received $5 each pay period. When we got paid, he got paid :)
When he reached $100, I opened a savings account for him at our bank. And his money is "automatically deposited" by me each pay period.
Now that he is 10, it is $10 a pay period.