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| Abigail & Ashby's To Do Charts |
The girls' charts start on Sunday and are complete Saturday evening. Abigail's has 4 To Do Categories. They include staying in bed/in her room every morning until at least 7am, bringing her dishes into the kitchen after each meal (she has actually started washing them out on her own and will put them in the dish washer), picking up her toys, feeding her frogs twice a week and helping me with baby boy I nanny for Monday-Friday. She is able to earn $1 per category or $4 per week if she gets all her checks every day for the entire week. The checks are not given freely. She must do each thing each day to earn a check on her chart. When she turns 5 in October, she will get another "to do" and will be able to earn up to $5 per week. Ashby can earn up to $2 per week by picking up her toys before nap and bedtime. Once she gets the hang of this we will add another "to do" for her as well. At each birthday we will continue to add responsibilities and pay.
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| Abigail's Frogs Rocky & Numbers She purchased her first pets with commission money |
At the end of each week (Saturday evening), we get together as a family and go over their charts and pay them their commissions (we do not believe in an allowance, but they get paid a commission for the "work" they do.) We celebrate for each dollar they get. The girls wad up their money and throw it into a tall, clear jar that we keep on their dressers.
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| Commission Jars |
They are able to watch the money grow and grow week after week. Once the jars are full, it's pay day! We count all of the money and then divide it into 3 envelopes.
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| Pay Day |
The first 10% goes into the "tithe" envelope. We teach our girls that our first fruits back to God. Abigail fills out an envelope at church and we take it and drop it in the offering bucket for her. She will do this on her own once she gets into a class that collects tithes & offerings. The next 10% goes into the "savings" envelope. We are teaching the girls about their savings accounts and how their money will grow when we leave it in an account at the bank. We take them to the bank to make the deposit. The rest of the money is theirs to spend on whatever they wish. They can take it and spend it all or continue to save it for a more expensive want. If Abigail picks out a $25 toy and only has $23, Scott & I DO NOT throw in the extra money. We don't even help out with tax. If she doesn't have enough for what she really wants, she can wait until the next pay day. This means she will leave her money in the envelope and wait until her jar is completely full of $1 bills until she gets paid again. Believe it or not, at 4 years old, she has done this! She saved and saved until we went to Disney World and she picked out and purchased some pretty fun stuff. Sometimes she will ask to go to a particular store and she will spend it all. Today we went to Mardel. She got paid $21. She purchased $20.55 worth of stuff. The $0.45 went back into her envelope. Other times, she spends a little on herself and then will pick out things for her sister or others. When she got paid around Christmas, she decided she wanted to use her own money to pick out gifts for family and friends. We took her to Dollar Tree where her money would go a lot farther, and let her pick out and pay for gifts for whoever she chose. (When Abigail is ready to make her purchase, she takes it up to the register and counts out her money to pay for it.) When she turns 5 next month, we will start teaching her about offerings (giving over and above the tithe) through our church and give her the opportunity to use her money in that way if she chooses.
For more about teaching your children about money, I encourage you to check out this article by Dave Ramsey.
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| everybody, everywhere! |
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| Clean up, clean up... |
