Does it seem your son or daughter always "needs" (or wants) money? One way to save YOUR money is to help your preteen/teen develop a small business. Your son or daughter will learn the life skills of work, responsibility, and accountability. He/she will experience the pros and cons of independent business ownership/management, learning self-reliance and customer service. Recognizing the value of money and making better purchase decisions can result.
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As a single mom of 4 I got checking and saving accts for each of the kids at an early age. Their $15 / month allowance went into the checking account and birthday, holiday $ went into the savings acct. They tithed 10% to the church from their earnings--we all worked together for the good of the family and were all entitled to have allowance for working together.
Every Friday we did Friday Jobs which rotated weekly: 1) dust, vacuum kitchen, laundry room, dust and vacuum their room; 2) dust and vacuum the living room, hall bathroom, and their own room; 3) "Blue Juice" --the youngest's name for windex! --all the mirrors, glass doors, tv screeens,etc., their room, ; 4) Kitchen Helper--set table, clear dishes and load/unload dishwasher daily., and spot clean tile floors.
Extra jobs--yard work, polishing silver, etc. could earn extra $, as well as babysitting, and part time jobs at age 16.
The little ones got strange looks at Christmas time when they wrote checks at Walmart and had no ID--my license worked fine! They grew up knowing how to balance a checking account, never bouncing, being very responsible. They got a credit card to take to college, which they then build credit in their own names.
The 25 yr old was 9 when I started this, the baby is now 16 and they all are very savy with money!
when my children were old enough to work their paycheck was split 3 ways...
1/3 into their savings account
1/3 for school supplies and clothes
1/3 was theirs to spend any way they wanted to (within reason)
i'll never forget the day when i took the oldest shopping with her first $100 they had saved and walked out of walmart with 2 shirts,2pair of shorts and a pair of jeans and they commented how they hadn't gotten much for as much as they had spent
I never got an allowance, but when we had money, I got paid to do extra jobs (like yard work, shoveling snow) I learned about money from babysitting and stretching the money. I think after my boys reach 10 we'll start paying for extra jobs (some you just have to do no matter what!) and do the savings account.
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