This Way or That Way

Perspectives on money.

We strongly believe in teaching our children how to be independent and self-reliant. And with that comes a need to manage their own finances. Something about this whole idea of training them up really excites me. I've read all about it and have come up with a working model that gives us a good start to use with our little guinea pig, Roundabout. Many of our ideas come from a book I read entitled "The Parenting Breakthrough" by Merilee Boyack. It's a fabulous book.

So, with that in mind, take a look at a few of our perspectives on money.

• Giving an allowance to young children is the best way to teach tithing and money management. The lessons they will learn through this will be invaluable.
• We do not tie chores to allowance. It only takes one time having your child look up at you and say, "Keep the allowance. I don't want to work today." to uncover the flaws in the system of tying allowance to chores.
  
• To pay children for everything they did would be a very warped sense of reality. We all do lots of things in life that we are not paid for...and the sooner they can learn that, the better.
  
• We have regular chores required of every family member for which they don't get paid. Then we also have "Money Chores" that the kids can do to earn extra money. They are larger chores that require extra effort.
• We pay a monthly allowance beginning at age 5 and ending at age 12.
• On the first Saturday of the month, we give out allowance. This gives the children a chance to manage a "large" amount of cash at one time. This gives them the opportunity to manage their own money all month. This is a great opportunity to teach frugality and postponing pleasures.
• Each child, beginning at age 5, receives $1 per month for each year of his age. So, a 5 year old gets $5 per month. Enough. And a 10 year old gets $10 per month. Again, plenty. This dollar amount is enough to help the children learn to manage and enjoy money, but not enough to meet all of their needs. You want them to be motivated to do money chores, right?!
• Fast Sunday is the designated tithing day. Since they just received their allowance the day before, it's very easy to pay the next day. Tithing is an important principle to teach early and well so that by the time children have a large sum of money to manage on their own, they will hopefully have a testimony of tithing.
  
• If you give an allowance, do it with no strings attached on how the money will be spent. There are great lessons to be learned about value and quality! It is also helpful to help them learn about having both short-term savings and free spending.
• We do have two ground rules regarding spending: No bags of candy. And no items in our home that could drive away the Spirit. (I don't think we'll have to worry about that second one for a while.)
• Allowance ends at 12...and I'll have to post more on that later.

Since Miss Roundabout turned 5 years old, on Saturday she received her first allowance

This was very exciting for a little girl. And we quickly learned that she is very much like her mother and father. In giving her the opportunity to go out and spend her own $4.50, she opted to stick it in an envelope for safe keeping and to save it until she has enough for either a Barbie or a bride's costume. What a good little saver she's going to be.

On Sunday, she could hardly wait to fill out her tithing slip for .50 cents and hand it in to the Bishop. She went up, gave it to him, and thought it was very silly that he stuck her envelope in his "tithing pocket" of his suit. As she and Straight Arrow were walking back to their seats, Roundabout said, "Daddy, it feels so good to pay tithing that I want to pay it everyday. I'd pay all my money because it feels so good!"

What a special little girl.