A quarter for your chores ma'am

I love my husband. Each night when I announce it is dinner time, he painstakingly turns off whatever baseball/football/basketball/ESPN/News program he is watching and comes to sit at the table. Even if it is only 20 minutes I really love dinner time. More often than not one of the kids has us cracking up over whatever ridiculous thing Emma said or the funny expressions Eli is so good at making (he really doesn't needs words, he makes himself well understood). It is really important to me that we do this at least 5 nights a week. Sometimes are bussier than others and it isn't poosible, but that is my goal. I have even started planning out our meal menu 2 weeks in advance (we only get paid every two weeks so I have to do A LOT of shopping at once) so that I don't have to stand in the pantry and think, "How do I make a meal out of this hodge-podge?" To simplify things even further, Wednesdays are always breakfast for dinner days : pancakes, eggs, bacon, the works. This usually leaves me the time to make my Lasagna or whatever for the rest of the week ahead of time. And saturdays are always leftover days. Since we generally laze around the house all day it is nice to just open the fridge and pull out what is left. Quite often though I have already cleaned it out for lunches...so in that case we fall back on a frozen pizza.
Hmmm, I didn't start this post intending to get so in-depth into our dinner process. But there you have it! So now on to the real reason for this post:
Last night at dinner (see, that's where I got off track) Ricky told me about this awesome idea he had heard on the Laura Ingrahm show that day (he drives around in a truck all day for work so he usually ends up listening to about 30 different talk radio programs in a day to fight the boredom). She had a guest that was discussing how to teach your kids financial resposibility. He didn't catch the whole program but here is the gist:
Every week you give your child $5.00 in quarters. If you so choose you then teach them how to thithe. So every sunday they would give .50 to your church. The rest of the money is theirs! (Stay with me hear, it is more than just an allowance) For the rest of the week obviously they should have chores based on their age. For example, Emma's responsibilites are to pick up her toys before bed, put her dirty clothes in the hamper, and bring me the small garbage out of her bathroom on garbage day. So let's say that one night she didn't want to pick up her things. Our response would be, "Okay, I will be more than happy to do it for you. But it will cost you a quarter." Supposedly the first couple of times this will sound like a pretty good deal. However, at the end of the week they get to decide whether to save their remaining money or spend it. So when Em decides she wants to go to the dollar store, but only has .75 cents because she paid us to do her chores, the concept starts to take shape. Sure you can pay someone else to do your work, but if you just get off your buns and do it yourself then you have so much more to spend at the end of the week!
I am really excited about this! I feel like it will be a great tool to teach her the reward of hard work and responsibility. Obviously it shouldn't be used as a punishment, "Stop being so loud or it will cost you." kind of a thing. And you really have to follow through on the reward part of getting to shop, etc. so that they see the benefit.
We have decided to add one other aspect. Neither of us are good savers so we want to instill that in our kids early. So along with her tithe every week she will be required to put .50 in her piggy bank that has to stay there.
I will let you know how it goes! I am pretty excited, we are starting this saturday.
The cool thing is they can use it for other stuff too. We have a kids fun place in town that for $3.00 the kids can go in and play on a bunch of bounce houses. She would totally be able to use her money to go there. Or maybe bowling, etc.
Have a lovley day girls! I will be burried up to my eyeballs in cleaning.