In an earlier post we mentioned that we do not give an allowance but that Sammy was still able to have her own spending money to use at a rummage sale last month. We thought we would explain a little more about how she is learning to manage money.
We had tried a few different ways of helping Sammy learn to do her chores, be helpful to others, and understand how to handle small amounts of money. But in January this year, we heard of a book called Stewardship Street available from Doorposts, that seemed to cover all these topics in exactly the right way for us.
When the book came in the mail we were able to use the patterns included, along with 7 empty cartons that we'd collected, to get started.
We made a royal mess of the office floor that day! But it was time well spent and we had a lot of fun decorating the banks together.
The idea of Stewardship Street is to decide what categories are important for your family's use of money, and make a building shaped bank from the empty carton that will correspond with that category. For example, we have a church for our tithe and a 2 story house for Sammy's future household savings. The building and loan is her long term savings such as a car or college courses, etc. The art shop is her fun money that she can spend however she wants (though while she is still learning, Mama and Daddy get the last word on whether her purchase is a good decision or not). We also have a home with a broken window to save money for helping others, a gift shop for short term savings such as Christmas gifts for friends, and the clothing store is for living expenses. Obviously she is not buying her own clothes right now, but she can use that savings for new socks or a shirt or belt she likes from a garage sale etc.
We left the back of each bank open to make it easier to deposit and withdraw her earnings.
Sammy doesn't get paid for every job she does. We made a list of chores she is expected to do because she lives here. Those include making her bed, tidying her room and bathroom, and feeding the pets daily. If she does not do her basic chores, she gets fined from her fun money bank! (Ouch!)
We made another list of Service Opportunities where she would be helping Mama or Daddy by doing some chores we try to stay on top of ourselves, such as loading and unloading the dishwasher, emptying all the trashcans in the house, or clearing the trash out of Mama's car. If she does a job from the Service Op. list, but complained or had to be reminded to finish it, she is still paid the set wage. But if she does that job with a good attitude or without even being asked, we pay her double the set wage to encourage a good attitude towards helping others and taking initiative when she sees something needs to be done.
Mama records Sammy's daily earnings and every Monday is pay day. We add up Sammy's earnings together, and divide it according to the percentages we have set up for each category. We liked the format shown in the the book and so did not need to change any of the categories or percentages listed for our family.
Then Sammy practices counting out the correct change for each bank. As she gets older, the pay and chores will increase. But it is surprising how much money she has been able to tuck away week by week so far.
(Honestly, we don't wear PJ's all the time, although you wouldn't know that from the last few posts!)
We really like this method so far. We've only been using it since mid January this year, but HIGHLY recommend it!
