Someone asked about pocket money on good ol' Facebook and my answer was so long and detailed I thought I'd share it with you here, too. Over the last few years I keep hearing friends asking 'what to do, what to do?' about it and even I was asking for a while... this is what we've developed and I LOVE it.
(direct copy/paste of my FB answer):
Yes for pocket money – better they learn spending mistakes with small
amounts of money
What for – we have 3 categories they get a designated amount for.
Spend. Save. Give.
Over the last 20months, the older 2 (now 8.5 and almost 10) have been
given $2.50 each week. $1 for spend, $1 for save and 50c for give. Timothy has
had 50c = 20c 20c & 10c... only because others were getting pocket money.
Before this there was no pocket money happening in any decent way because I
couldn’t find/figure out a system that matched with our values of hard work,
family participation, long-term wise money management.
Spend is what they can spend when they want to, pretty much on what
they want to. If they want a larger amount of spending money, they can save up
their spend category. We give them the heads up of big event they may want to
save their spending for. Sometimes on a big spending occasion... like a family
holiday, we might give an extra $5 or $10 ‘just because’ we can. They also love
to use their ‘Spending money’ for buying gifts for people.
Save – gets banked every time it adds up to $10. They have their own
accounts and this money is for long term savings. Car, house etc. We’ve passed
on our ‘cash only for getting a car’ value, and they’re excited to be saving
towards these things. It is not able to be withdrawn for other purposes and
this is not negotiable. Sometimes they choose to put birthday money in the bank
too. Same rules apply.
Give – they can give to offering etc as desired. During children’s talk
in church there is an offering box and the money put in here supports 1-2
sponsored children. Sometimes they like
to give extra from their spending money to this or to other giving
opportunities... fellowship offering at church (a once a month offering to be used for people who come to the church
for financial help), red shield appeal and so on.
They do not earn this money (spend/save/give). Most importantly, I don’t
want them to ever think they’re doing anyone a favour by doing the household
jobs they are expected to do because they are a part of this family. This list
is LONG. Washing washed, hung, folded, away, vacuuming, bed stripping, new
linen on, cat feeding, collecting the mail, kitchen bin & recycling daily,
big bins to and from street weekly, vegetable preparation for meals, setting
table, clearing table, dishes away, groceries in from the car – and more! These
are just a part of normal life. I refuse to be a part of them ever thinking
that doing these things is anything more than real life. Secondly... Pete and I
do all these types of things and don’t get paid!!
If they want extra money or we want extra jobs done... they get paid
for extra jobs. Jobs that fit in this category are jobs that it might be
reasonable or normal for others to pay for anyway... Gardening jobs like edges,
raking etc and eventually lawn mowing will be added in here, car washing,
window washing and so on. A figure will be named for the job i.e. $3 to trim
the edge of the nature strip, reduced to $2 if I have to point out bits not
done. Sometimes a bonus... Nj was offered $2 for cleaning out the chook shed
this week. He did such a great job in work and attitude (was meant to shovel out
everything on the floor... did that PLUS cleaned out the nesting boxes then set
up new nesting boxes AND shovelled up the pathway to the chook house that was
covered with an inch of revolting chook sludge) that we upped it to $4 to bless
him for his blessing! It’s times like that, that I can see the way we handle
jobs around here IS training good hard workers! (Nj’s biggest weakness has been
that he’s easily distracted from any job and he has severely lacked in diligence
and excellence in what he does) Extra jobs might come up once a month, on
average, at the moment.
We are about to increase pocket money to $5 per week for M & Nj and
put Timothy on $2.50
Increasing because they ‘get’ the system and it works for all, and I
want to increase the things they are responsible for buying.
And there you have it – the “House of Bogwitz Ethos & Practice of
Pocket Money”. Can you tell we’ve had a few years to think it over???? (over
think it even??) (minus all the ‘oops, I forgot to mention’ bits, that I’ll
think of later)
