For the past several years, my daughter has earned a small amount of money for each of her usual jobs she does to take care of herself and for her responsibilities helping the family. We started this when she was four years old. Once a month we paid her in actual dollars so she could have the experience budgeting out her money into piles and visually see how much she had earned and where each dollar went. It also taught her math percentage skills.
The categories she had were: First, Pay Heavenly Father Tithing 10%. Second, Pay Yourself (savings) 40%. Third, Pay Your Bills: violin lessons, ballet lessons and violin purchase (she paid off her violin $15 each month). Fourth, Share (fast offerings, temple fund, etc.) Finally, Spending. We chose the amount given for each job according to how much she needed to earn to pay the above bills and have at least enough money left to buy a couple of items at the dollar store. for us that meant a quarter per job.
This method worked very well in teaching budgeting, math, and a sense of accomplishment and responsibility. If she didn't do enough of her chores, she didn't have enough to pay her bills and had to either pay us interest or do extra jobs to make up the difference. She has also built up a savings account for college with the 40% she saved each month. It also helped us as parents when we were out shopping and she wanted an item it was easy to answer, "do you have enough spending money for that?"
Be Inspired,
Janelle Joy
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