Chores and Comission

Last year Jim and I completed Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University, an awesome 12-week money management course based on Christian values.  It was an incredible journey of self-reflection and growth for the two of us.  We thought we knew everything there was to know about managing our money... ha!

The things we learned revolutionized our household and the way we live.  One of the coolest lessons taught was how to teach children about money and responsibility.

Dave teaches to pay them commission for successfully completing their weekly chores and guide them to split their money in three categories:  Savings, Spending and Giving.  There's more to the lesson but for now I wanted to show you guys how we got Lucy started.

She is just barely starting to grasp the concept of money so we are taking baby steps.  We have assigned her 4 chores.  Well, only one is an actual chore, the other 3 are things that she struggles with (remembering to say please and thank you, sharing and brushing her teeth) so we included them in this exercise to be able to put more emphasis on them for the time being.  Eventually, we'd like to move on to giving her more responsibility but we feel this is good to start with.   We use the Melissa and Dough magnetic responsibility chart to keep track of how she does on a daily basis.  Thursdays is pay day and her commission is $3 per week which works out to be a 75 cents per chore... so if she messes up on one chore she still gets paid for the others. 

Here's the nifty contraction where she puts her money... it's created by Moonjar, an awesome little company out of Seattle.  It has three diamond shaped clear top containers that fit together and can be held in place by a rubber band or separated if need be.  Each container is labeled with its purpose "Save", "Share/Give" and "Spend".  They are pretty portable as well so she can pull out her "Share" container on Sundays to take to church for the offering, or her "Spend" container when going to buy something at the store.  I also really like that it has a clear top so the kids can see what's inside.  Pre-schoolers are so visual!

We are pretty excited about helping her develop a love for giving to others and saving as well as an apathy towards debt.