The summer is upon us. We have scheduled camps, signed up for reading programs and completed our Spring Cleaning. With so many things around our home getting a face lift before the wedding I thought that re-vamping our chore system was fitting.
We are big followers of Dave Ramsey. He teaches adults about getting out of debt, living within your means, paying in cash, and giving back to church or other charities. When we saw Dave live in San Antonio this past Spring we bought his program for children. Financial Peace Jr. is a program to teach your children how to use their money to Spend, Save and Give. One of the principals of his program is that you don’t give your child an allowance. Instead, your child earns commissions for jobs they complete. And, just like in real life, if your child breaks a rule they are fined. The kit came with a chart but we soon found it unpractical.
The former teacher in me devised our Job Sticks.
The girls each have one container to hold their sticks for the week. They can refer to the sticks daily as a reminder of what they need to do. The fine sticks will be pulled and placed into their containers for infractions of the house rules (i.e. fighting with her sister, not listening, back talking, not doing their jobs.) At the end of the week their commission will be docked $.25 per fine.
There were a ton of red sticks in the pack I bought. I hope that’s not a sign of what’s to come!
Yellow sticks are for daily chores. Most of these chores are “expected behaviors” and therefore not very high paying (20 cents per stick per week.) The big kicker with Yellow sticks is that the fine for NOT doing them is more than the commission for doing them–so it’s better to do them then to skip
These tasks can be different for kids of different ages. Yellow sticks will always stay in the child’s container. And before anyone asks “HAPPY HOUSE” is something we came up with while the girls were in Therapy–Basically everyone gets along, no tantrums, using our words, loving each other, etc.
Orange sticks are tasks that are only done one time a week. They are worth $.25 each. I tried to make jobs that would complement each other. This week Clara is folding towels and Emma is hanging up shirts. Clara will sweep the loft, Emma will sweep downstairs.
Blue sticks are like orange in that the might not be done daily. They tend to be a little more time consuming. Blue sticks are worth $.50 each.
And the Green sticks…those are the hardest Jobs of all…worth $.75 each task!
I have the girls blindly draw for these jobs since there is the dreaded Pooper-Scoop stick. Clara actually cried with that one. I’m sure we’ll be out there helping her at first. As they get older these jobs can get much harder–like washing the car. I also have some purple sticks that we didn’t use. I’m sure I could make those for bigger jobs worth a few more dollars.
As the girls respond to this program we can make more “optional” jobs they can do for additional commission. This will help them reach their goals for saving and spending. At this time they can earn $7.75 a week–they must tithe 10% to church and save 10-15%. We have also informed the girls that we are no longer buying them incidentals like gum, the ice cream man, nail polish, etc. They really think about if they need something when they have to buy it themselves. They actually treated us to Blizzards at Dairy Queen in April–so it does work!
Our fingers are crossed that their enthusiasm continues for this project.
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