Since one of my goals for the year is to teach the kids about working, giving, saving, and spending, I chose this project for this week. We had already planned to start a new chore / payment system based on this blog post and book.
I ended up purchasing the book after reading the blog, but honestly it had a lot of stuff in it that wasn't related to the system, but more a sermon on the particular family's values. So, in hindsight I think there was enough information in the blog post to get started.
Since Hannah and Nathan are still pretty young, we started off with a pretty simple system. Each day they can receive up to four points:
1) Morning point - get up and get dressed without complaining or taking forever. We will add lots of other requirements to this point, but when I went over the whole system at one time their eyes were glazing over.
2) School point (M-F) - this point consists of getting their outdoor clothes on before school, listening to their teachers, and putting their outdoor clothes away when they come home. Neither of them go to school 5 days a week, so on the days they don't have school this is an automatic point.
3) Chore point - each morning I'll write 1 - 3 chores on little chalkboards on the wall. There is a separate chalkboard for each kid. I tell them what the chores are (since neither of them can read yet), and then remind them throughout the day. They get their point if they complete their chore(s) without complaining. So far this is the easiest part of the system for them - they really enjoy helping.
4) Round-up point - at the end of the day either Peter or I will supervise them as they are responsible for taking anything that they have left out during the day and putting it away properly. Lately we've been doing pretty well at having them pick up after themselves so it's usually only a few things. This takes no more than 5 minutes, but it's so nice to have a tidy house in the evenings!
They can earn 4 points Monday - Friday, 3 on Saturday, and we're not doing any points on Sunday for now. That's a total of 23 points for the week. They can also earn extra points by doing chores that aren't on their list, or by being extra helpful. So far we've given out one extra point. If the kids get 25 points for the week they get double their money. We decided to make each point worth $0.10, so if they do their normal points with no extras, they would earn $2.30 per week. If they get to 25 points, they would get $5.00. Since I don't anticipate them getting 25 points every week I think this is probably a good amount for their ages.
Borrowing from Dave Ramsey, we're not worrying about what specific percentages they use for give, save, spend, but they will need to put something in each jar when they get paid on Sundays. One other requirement we have is that their room has to be tidy before they get paid.
We had the kids decorate labels for their money jars before we started the system last week. My problem with these systems in the past is that 'saving' seemed too broad a term. For example, this could include saving for a Wii game Nathan wants, or saving for university. So I decided to have two 'savings' type jars - invest (for long-term savings like a car or university), and save (for shorter term savings like a Wii game or a bike). I think that will work well. Eventually I'd like to get them to these percentages:
10% Give
30% Invest
30% Save
30% Spend
We only started the points system officially on Monday, so we're definitely in the 'honeymoon phase.' I really want to be consistent with this for the long term - I hope it sticks!
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