Kids and Chores

I have been through a LOT of different systems of chores with our kids, but I'm loving the new one we started. It's just a tweak on what we've already doing, but it combines allowance too. I'm not one that believes a kid should be paid for everything they do at home, but I also think they need to learn how to handle money. And, I found that I had to keep forking out money for a bunch of different things that would come up that should really be coming from their allowance. So here's what we're doing:

The famous Pie-Chart... my mom used to do these with us as kids, and I keep coming back to it because it is so nice. We rotate ours on a daily basis, and the amount of work done for each job varies by age of the child. For example, when my 6-year-old is on dishes, she only has to put away the clean dishes, but my 12-year-old would have to load the dirty as well.

Now comes in the allowance part of it. I have to thank my sister Maria, because this is brilliant! Each week my child has a certain amount of tasks I expect them to do. Their allowance is based on age... we have a tight budget and a lot of kids, so they can earn up to 25 cents/week/year old. So my 12-year-old can earn $3 a week. The percentage of their allowance they get is determined by the percentage of jobs they complete. But her's the exciting part... IF they complete 100% of their chores, they get a bonus! Yes, that's free money for just doing your job. We set our bonus as 25%, but you can decide whatever works for you. I track it weekly on a laminated chart with a wet-erase marker. Here's what our chart looks like:

 

 

You might not be able to read all of those, but for 6 days of the week they have to:

• Make Bed
• Clean their Room AM
• AM Chores
• Put Away Backpack/Coat/Shoes
• PM Chores
• Clean their Room again

Once a week they have to do their Laundry, and then Saturday they have an Extra Chore.

(The other little checks at the bottom are bonus money they get for practicing the piano... it seems to help motivate them and that makes me happy to hear them practicing nicely.)

Once they get their allowance PAID OUT, they put 10% into tithing, and 10% into savings, and what they do with the rest of it is up to them. I give my advice and influence as I can, but the ultimate choice is theirs. It was SO nice when we had the school book fair and I didn't have them all whining for me to buy them a book... they had their own money, they had to choose a book that they could afford and it was a HUGE success!