MANAGING MONEY {and the Role of Chores}

Recently, our friend Catherine asked what we do to cultivate a Biblical view on spending, saving and giving with our girls. It was in regards to a post in which the girls had saved money for a year in order to purchase roller skates.

Well, we certainly don't have it all down in this area, but to follow is a quick snippet of our journey. I don't believe there is an all encompassing "right way" to decide whether to pay or not to pay your children for chores, so please do not feel that I am saying that.

Really, anything that has worked in our family has been because of the Lord. There were plenty of false starts and mistakes along the way, but He is still working. And that is good.

 

BACKGROUND

 

When our older girls were younger, they had very little money available to them. We would not pay them for chores and so the occasional Grandma or Great Grandma money received on special occasions was about it.

Our family would still set goals; working together to "save up" for a swing set or something like that, but "saving up" just meant that they knew Mommy and Daddy wouldn't be buying anything extra until we had met our goal.

In the case of the swing set I remember one of the girls asking if we could just stop buying groceries until we had enough money. She was willing to dig a little deeper than I was (smile).

 

WHY NOT PAY THEM?

Why didn't we pay them for chores? I suppose we didn't want to cultivate an attitude that they needed to be paid for their reasonable service in the home. I didn't want to ask them to empty the dishwasher and have them ask how much they would get for doing that job. We simply taught them that: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." 2 Thess. 3:10 And then we worked, and we continue to work at, cultivating "hard and cheerful" workers.

As a side note, we did instead create what we called "Blessing Bucks." We used Doorpost's "Blessing Chart" and made our own "Bucks" on the computer. Whenever we saw the girls exerting themselves in a character area from the chart we would call them aside; write their name and what they did on their Blessing Buck and have them tuck it away in a safe place.

Each Sunday night they would redeem their Blessing Bucks for prizes I had purchased. Their dad would allow them to redeem them in his store (picture Daddy at toy cash register with kid sized orange *star* sunglasses on; wheeling and dealing his Dollar Store merchandise).

In this way, we could treat them for those character traits we wanted to emphasize without dealing directly in cash and without buying them things in the store.

It was fun and worked well... until they started announcing all of their good deeds just to earn a "Buck." I think that is when we stopped that system. *Sigh* I do miss Tom in the orange sunglasses.

SO WHY PAY THEM NOW?

As the girls have grown; however, we have decided to begin paying the girls for their morning chores. Why? Well, for one thing, it is difficult to teach someone to manage money when they have no money.

The amount is very small, but it is still an amount they can tithe on, save, spend and so on.

The stipulation for receiving pay is that the chores are done well, cheerfully and by 9:00 am. And we inspect the chores.

We don't pay them for their other daily chores; just those that must be done by 9:00 am. This has not yet backfired.

 

MANAGING MONEY

Another way we are working to teach them to manage money is with vacation spending.

Tom and I decided that on our vacation last year, we would simply give the girls a flat spending allowance. We were not yet paying them to do chores and we did not want to have them asking beyond what we desired to spend. So, ahead of time, we decided what we would be willing to give them~ an amount that would cover a sweatshirt, some post cards, links for their lock charm bracelet etc. We wrote the amount in the journal and helped the girls as we went (this did not include Lydia, age 3 at the time).

Although we counseled and okayed each purchase, we let them have a little rope. Sometimes we even let them make mistakes... not every mistake, but some. In some cases this worked out well, for some it was sad to have the money run out so quickly. But in every case lessons were learned and we were able to draw on those experiences later when counseling them about the next thing.

CHEERFUL CHORES

"Work hard and cheerfully at whatever you do,
as though you were working for the Lord
rather than for people."

~Colossians 3:23

Did I say that in addition to chores being done on time, they had to be done cheerfully? Really?

Absolutely.

Everything God asks us to do, even the everyday things, go against our flesh and remind us of how very much we need Him. There is really no way to live this life according to His will apart from His work in us to "will and do of His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13). If we are settling for anything less than hard and cheerful work we are not driving them back to their Father for help.

GREAT CHRISTIAN RESOURCES

You may also enjoy:

• A helpful article regarding children and finances at Crown Financial Ministries.
• And My Giving Bank; a bank that helps children divide money into tithing, savings and spending categories.

May the Lord bless you as you lead little hearts home!

 

 

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Two of my garden helpers. They get paid in peas and strawberries for this job. : )